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Analysis: RFK Jr responding to sharp questions with full attack
There’s a pattern to contentious congressional hearings, in which senators or congresspeople hurl difficult questions from hostile lawmakers that require specific information from a witness, looking for a sound bite that can be used in political advertising later. The witness usually recognizes that and generally deflects these questions with vague, indistinct answers that can be more easily massaged later, giving no answer that can be weaponized.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. has instead chosen to respond to accusations with a full attack.
His testimony has largely been an assault on the effectiveness on the American health care system that demands a gutting.
“I want to fix the system, and that’s what we’re doing,” Kennedy said. He accused the CDC of having poor data on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. He said Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto was “making things up to scare people, and it’s a lie” as she asked him about how his policies would reduce the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine.
David Smith
Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, has begun a press conference on Capitol Hill by highlighting America’s affordability crisis.
“House Republicans are in complete disarray because they have no track record of accomplishment with respect to making life better for the American people,” he told reporters, flanked by signs that warned of a Republican healthcare tax hike.
“Costs are going up. Healthcare premiums are about to skyrocket.” They would cost Americans thousands of dollars more a year, “a crippling increase”.
Jeffries went on: “Electricity bills are skyrocketing through the roof, in part because of the damage that Republicans have done to the ability for America to generate the power that it needs.”
The leader added: “Donald Trump remains deeply unpopular. Democrats continue to win special elections all across the country. Their [Republicans’] efforts to gerrymander the midterm elections by rigging those congressional maps are going to backfire. And Republicans know that their One Big Ugly Bill is deeply unpopular.”
Changing the name of the bill will not help, he said, arguing that Republicans “stole food from the mouths of hungry children” to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a physician, pressed Robert F Kennedy Jr about whether Donald Trump in 2020 deserved a Nobel prize for spearheading Operation Warp Speed, which quickly developed the Covid-19 vaccine that Kennedy has been attacking.
The health secretary agreed that Trump deserved the award.
“The reason that Operation Warp Speed was genius is it’s something nobody had ever done. I don’t think any president but President Trump could do it,” Kennedy said. “It got the vaccine to market that was perfectly matched to the virus at that time when it was badly needed, because there was low natural immunity, and there were people getting very badly injured by Covid.”
Kennedy then touted the value of “therapeutics like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin” in Coid-19 treatment. Ivermectin has been found ineffective as a human therapy for Covid.
Robert F Kennedy Jr noted the gap in longevity between European countries in the United States. “We spend two to three times what European countries spend on healthcare,” he said, while having worse outcomes.
The US health secretary said these outcomes justify firing healthcare leaders. “It’s chronic disease that’s bankrupting us and destroying our national security,” he said.
Senator Michael Bennet asked if parents should be prepared for more measles and mumps cases, when a vaccine panel changes the recommendations for vaccinations. The Colorado Democrat said he expected no changes to the MMR vaccine, which is currently free.
“This is not a podcast,” Bennet said. “This is the American people’s health on the line.”
Kennedy shot back, asking if the senator was aware that one vaccine was associated with an increase in myocarditis. The two began shouting over one another about who was asking – or evading – questions.
In a contentious round of questioning from Senator Ron Wyden, Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr described the American Academy of Pediatrics’ criticism of changes to a vaccine approval board as “gravely conflicted”.
“Their biggest contributors are the four largest vaccine makers,” Kennedy said. “They run a journal, Pediatrics, which they make a lot of money on, that is completely dependent on pharmaceutical companies. So, I don’t think I wouldn’t put a big stake in what they say that benefits pharmaceutical interests.”
Wyden shot back. “They’re all wrong, too?”
Senator Ron Wyden questioned Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr about the truth of the claim in the Wall Street Journal by Susan Monarez that she was ordered to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel that has now been replaced with people who have publicly expressed opposition to vaccine use.
“I never had a private meeting with her,” Kennedy said. Kennedy then called her a liar.
“We are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at the CDC,” Kennedy said in testimony before the Senate finance committee.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr testified that changes in leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency in the central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease.”
“CDC failed that responsibility miserably during Covid when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality,” Kennedy testified. The “unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
Kennedy noted accurately that America is home to 4.2% of the world’s population and had 20% of its Covid deaths, without reference to rampant misinformation leading to public resistance to vaccine use that was not present elsewhere. “We literally did worse than any country in the world, and the people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”
RFK Jr's opening remarks interrupted by protester
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr opened his testimony this morning with an appreciation for Officer David Rose, who was killed while fending off a gunman at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) last month.
A protester interrupted his initial comments, shouting from the seats “You’re killing millions of people!” before being dragged out of the committee room.
Kennedy began with a recitation of the activities of the health and human services department, including a reduction in animal testing, research on child mutilation, nutrition education in medical schools and the East Palestine chemical spills.
“We are now on track to approve more drugs this year than at any time in history.”
Democratic senator opens hearing by calling RFK Jr's tenure a 'disaster'
Senator Ron Wyden said the US is in a “healthcare calamity” after CDC employees were fired or resigned because they wouldn’t go along with Robert F Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine views. The Democrat called Kennedy’s tenure a “disaster”.
Wyden called for Kennedy to quit or be fired, noting that Kennedy testified earlier that he would do nothing to make it harder for Americans to get vaccines. “That was a lie,” Wyden said, asking for Kennedy to be formally sworn in before testifying.
The chairman refused.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will begin testifying before congress momentarily. Healthcare workers, particularly those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are looking for signs that lawmakers are prepared to address how the firing of CDC chief Susan Monarez and the subsequent resignation of four CDC directors has thrown the agency into turmoil.
Dr Debra Houry, who resigned as a CDC director last week, wants to see three questions answered: will America be healthier? Will America be prepared for the next pandemic or major health threat? And is this the gold standard of science and transparency, or are those just slogans?
The hearing is ostensibly about healthcare budgeting as Congress faces a 30 September deadline to avert a government shutdown.
“Secretary Kennedy has placed addressing the underlying causes of chronic diseases at the forefront of this Administration’s health care agenda,” said Senator Mike Crapo, the Republican chairman of the Senate finance committee. “I look forward to learning more about the Department of Health and Human Services’ Make America Healthy Again actions to date and plans moving forward.”
