Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. turned the tables on Democrats on Thursday during a fiery Senate hearing in the wake of the recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez.
As the hearing commenced, Democrats held a rally outside the Capitol, demanding that he resign his post.
But inside, they struggled to land a punch.
After Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) almost hysterically claimed that Kennedy was putting children in danger, Kennedy called out the Senator for doing nothing to prevent the rise of chronic disease in American children.
Kennedy delivered straightforward answers — and, at one point, demanded that they answer his questions. When Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) objected to Kennedy firing the government’s panel of vaccine experts, Kennedy noted “and you were never there, complaining,” when the pharmaceutical industry backed its own candidates.
As Bennet claimed that Kennedy had lied about the safety of vaccines, Kennedy countered:
“Are you saying, Senator — that the mRNA has never been associated with myocarditis or pericarditis?”
Bennet refused to answer.
“You’re evading the question,” Kennedy said.
“No, I’m asking the questions here, Mr. Kennedy,” Bennet replied.
That was the tone for the entire two-hour proceeding. Democrats referred repeatedly to an op-ed published Thursday by Monarez in the Wall Street Journal in which she claimed he had fired her for refusing, in advance, to approve the conclusions of the new vaccine panel.
Kennedy denied her accusations and answered “yes” when Democrats demanded to know if he was calling her a liar. Kennedy also said that he had never met privately with her, and said that he could on witnesses to every one of his meetings while in office.
(His story: he had fired her because he had asked her if she was trustworthy, and she had said she was not.)
Throughout the hearing, Democrats shouted at Kennedy and interrupted him, refusing to allow him to answer their questions even as they made incendiary accusations that he was “corrupt” and a “charlatan.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) attacked Kennedy for removing the recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for otherwise healthy people, saying he had broken his promise to keep vaccines available to everyone who wanted them.
Kennedy said they were still available, and free for most people. Warren said that because in some states, people would now have to pay or them out of pocket, Kennedy had broken his promise.
He then pointed out that she had taken “$855,000 from pharmaceutical companies,” and said that she was asking him to recommend vaccines for which there was no clinical indication.
Warren then defended ousted CDC director Monarez, and Kennedy countered that Warren herself had recently voted against confirming her.
There were some newsworthy revelations, such as Kennedy’s report that the Biden administration had manipulated the public presentation of data about the controversial abortion drug mifepristone.
More at:
Kennedy Calls N.M. Senator ‘Ridiculous,’ Accuses Him of ‘Talking Gibberish’ During Bizarre Senate Exchange
Democrat after Democrat pummeled Kennedy with hostile questions Thursday morning, repeatedly interrupting him when he tried to answer, Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) deployed this tactic to a surreal degree, accusing Kennedy of being evasive after repeatedly blocking his answers.
Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slammed a Democrat senator to his face, calling him “ridiculous” and accusing him of “talking gibberish” during a bizarre exchange in the Senate, Thursday.
Kennedy Jr. was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on President Trump’s health care agenda following the recent resignations of four top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez less than a month into her tenure.
“The CDC once stood as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health. But bureaucracy, politicized science, and mission creep corroded its mission and destroyed public trust,” Kennedy said in a video statement Wednesday. “My mission is clear: restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, drive innovation, and rebuild trust through transparency and competence.”
In his opening statement, the Secretary explained how under his leadership U.S. public health policy is transforming in a “once-in-a-generation shift” from a “sick-care” system into “a true health care system that addresses the root causes of chronic disease, embraces radical transparency in government, and champions gold-standard science as the foundation upon which all of our decisions are made.”
Kennedy also announced that the CDC will continue to clean house by removing the health officials responsible for the catastrophic COVID response.
“The people at CDC … who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” he said.
Democrats have launched a resistance campaign in response to the policy shifts, with lawmakers and disgruntled public health officials calling on Kennedy to step down from his position. More than a thousand current and former HHS employees signed on to a letter this week claiming that Kennedy is “compromising the health of the nation.”
Understanding their mission, Democrat after Democrat pummeled Kennedy with hostile questions Thursday morning, repeatedly interrupting him when he tried to answer.
Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) deployed this tactic to a surreal degree, accusing Kennedy of being evasive after repeatedly blocking his answers.
Luján began by citing the resignation letter of former CDC official/MonkeyPox Czar Demetre Daskalakis, who is infamous for being an S&M leather bondage devotee, an apologist for promiscuous gay sex, and a Satanist.
Luján praised Daskalakis as a “qualified expert” who should have been allowed to brief the HHS Secretary.
The former Monkeypox Czar had complained in his open letter that neither he nor any other CDC subject matter experts on his team had had the opportunity to brief the Secretary. Luján asked Kennedy if anyone from the CDC had briefed him.
“I’m curious who you’re listening to since it’s clear you’re not listening to qualified experts like Dr. Daskalakis,” Luján said, reading from a script. “Can you give the committee the name of the person?”
Kennedy attempted to justify why he wasn’t briefed by Daskalakis, explaining “I don’t consider Dr. Daskalakis …” but the senator interrupted him before he could finish his sentence.
“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Secretary! The question I have for you is can you give me a name of who you’re being briefed by?”
“I’m getting briefed all the time by the CDC…” Kennedy began, before getting interrupted again.
“Just a name!” Luján interjected.
“Dr. William Thompson’s one name,” Kennedy answered, going on to offer Luján “a whole list” of other people who also brief him, but the senator interrupted him again.
“Mr. Secretary, that’s not a hard question!” Luján exclaimed, as if to suggest that Kennedy’s offer of total transparency was somehow evasive.
The senator then brought up an HHS autism study that he claimed was timed to be released before an upcoming Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting “to justify taking vaccines away from Americans.” Reading from his notes, Luján said that because autism affects millions of children, “I guess you’d have the nation’s top medical experts working on this.”
“Mr. Kennedy, you hired a man named David Geier to conduct this study, is that correct?” Luján asked.
“No,” Kennedy responded flatly.
David Geier is an outspoken vaccine critic who has been targeted by the left in recent days because of his heterodox medical opinions.
“Is Mr. David Geier working for HHS?” Luján pressed.
“He’s a contractor, but he’s not conducting this study,” Kennedy replied.
“Do you know who works for you, Mr. Kennedy?” Luján blustered.
“Yeah,” the Secretary responded bewilderedly.
“Do you know Mr. Geier is listed in the employee directory as a senior data analyst—not a contractor?”
Kennedy insisted that Geier is a contractor, not an SGE (Special Government Employee), but the senator was sure he’d caught the secretary in a lie.
“So is your website wrong?! Want me to pull up the website for you?! he exclaimed.
Flummoxed, Kennedy repeated that Geier is indeed just a contractor.
“I don’t know if a contractor can be classified as a senior data analyst or not,” he shrugged.
Luján then asked Kennedy if Mr. Geier is a doctor and Kennedy said “no.”
“Did you know he never went to medical school?” the senator continued.
“He’s not practicing medicine!” Kennedy replied, clearly baffled by the question.
“Did you know that he got caught in Maryland and was charged for practicing medicine without a medical license?” Luján pressed.
RFK Jr. was very ready for this question.
“He was charged by the medical board, sued the medical board, and the medical board was found to have acted in actual malice and was fined $2.6 million by a judge in Maryland,” he fired back.
Luján’s feeble response to Kennedy’s truth bomb was, “see you choose to know a lot when you want to know a lot,” again as if to suggest the Secretary was being evasive in his answers.
Kennedy replied, “Senator, you’re ridiculous.”
Undeterred, Luján continued, saying: “Here’s the question I have. You brought him in to do this study. I think there’s no question about that.”
Kennedy responded, laughing, “I told you he’s not doing a study!”
The senator asked if he was “participating in the study,” and again, Kennedy answered, “no.”
The Secretary explained that Geier’s job was to access vaccine safety data which the senator’s “friend” at the CDC (Daskalakis) had withheld for seven months.
Back in March, Kennedy revealed in a six-minute video posted on social media that certain “defiant bureaucrats” had impeded his office from obtaining the data, which Kennedy said “is the biggest repository for vaccine information.”
“A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating,” Kennedy explained in the video. “In one case defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.”
More at:
More Stories
The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On. I’m Filing for His Disbarment Today
Surprise! En-Banc Appellate Court Restores ‘Ten Commandments’ Law in Texas
NEW: Iran Caves, Declares Strait of Hormuz “Completely Open” for All Commercial Ships – Trump Responds