Republican Senators Corner RFK Jr. On Trump’s COVID Vaccine Push

Sen. Bill Cassidy made clear that he doesn’t approve of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine policy Thursday by praising the president who nominated him.

“I believe that President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed,” Cassidy told Kennedy during his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, referring to the first Trump administration’s initiative that developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. “We saved millions of lives.”

Kennedy, in a sign of the limits of his ability to criticize the president, agreed.

“The reason that Operation Warp Speed was genius was it’s something nobody had ever done,” Kennedy said.

But when Cassidy went on to question Kennedy on the Department of Health and Human Services’s decision to cancel $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine research, saying it seemed like a commentary on Trump’s earlier priorities, Kennedy pushed back.

“Is this a question, Senator Cassidy, or is this a speech?” Kennedy asked. He didn’t directly address the canceled contracts.

Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, was closely watched Thursday, after saying earlier this week in response to turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices picks are compromised and that any vaccine schedule recommendations from the panel would be “lacking legitimacy.”

The Louisiana Republican criticized Kennedy’s decision to appoint ACIP members who have served as expert witnesses in legal proceedings against vaccine manufacturers, asking Kennedy if he would consider that a conflict of interest. Kennedy has claimed that former ACIP members were conflicted due to their work with pharmaceutical companies.

But Kennedy denied that his ACIP appointees were conflicted, telling Cassidy, “It may be a bias, and that bias, if disclosed, is okay.”

Cassidy wasn’t the only Republican senator to invoke Operation Warp Speed in questioning Kennedy’s positions on vaccines. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming also did so and questioned Kennedy on how he will ensure that the CDC’s vaccine recommendations will be based “solely on science and not politics.”

Kennedy responded by saying that only 10% of children have received a COVID-19 booster, and that was a sign that Americans had lost faith in the CDC.

“We’re going to be transparent,” said Kennedy.

Sen. Thom Tillis asked Kennedy to deliver a “definitive statement” on where he stands on the merits of Operation Warp Speed.

“I can’t conclude from the discussion today, where you are on Warp Speed. So I would like a definitive statement on exactly where you are,” Tillis said. “Was it good? Was it bad? Were there things that worked? Were there things that didn’t work? I can’t discern that from what you said here. I for one think it was a signature accomplishment of President Trump.”

Kennedy cut Tillis off to say, “I agree with that.”

Tillis again said he looks forward to hearing a statement.

Kennedy spent the bulk of his testimony doubling down on his policies, calling them part of a “once-in-a-generation shift” from a “sick-care system” to a “true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease.”

Even as Republican senators attempted in their questioning to steer the conversation back to more standard health care topics like pharmaceutical ads, abortion and spending, Kennedy often returned to railing against the Biden administration’s public health policy decisions and the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which he called “politicized.”

“We were lied to about everything,” Kennedy told Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

Both Kennedy and the senators often grew heated as they argued over vaccines and other public health policies. Kennedy’s opening remarks were quickly interrupted by an audience member shouting that the administration’s decisions on prior authorization were “killing millions of people.” The protester was quickly escorted out by Capitol Police officers.

Sen. Ron Wyden even invoked Kennedy’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, saying he couldn’t be trusted to make decisions on children’s health when he had ridden on Epstein’s plane.

In a shift from his previous Senate hearings, Kennedy was remarkably candid about his anti-vaccine views. When Sen. Michael Bennet raised Kennedy-appointed ACIP member Retsef Levi’s claim that “evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm, including death, especially among young people,” Kennedy didn’t argue with the comment’s substance.

“I wasn’t aware that he said it, but I agree with it,” Kennedy.

Kennedy was also adamant that his recent changes to CDC leadership were “absolutely necessary” to return the agency’s central mission to protecting Americans from infectious disease. Former CDC Director Susan Monarez wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday that she was fired last week for refusing to pre-approve the vaccine recommendations released by a Kennedy-designed committee.

Kennedy told Sen. Ron Wyden that Monarez was lying and that he never had a private meeting with Monarez like the one she described in her op-ed.

The dismissal of Monarez, a career public health servant, led to multiple other high-level CDC officials resigning and to over a thousand current and former HHS employees signing a letter calling for Kennedy to resign.

Democratic lawmakers have also called for Kennedy’s resignation, with some gathering before the hearing to speak on the lawn of the Capitol. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut pointed out that some Republicans have begun to push back on Kennedy’s decisions, including Sen. John Kennedy, who Murphy said called the CDC a “goat rodeo.”

“I don’t really know what that is,” said Murphy, “but it doesn’t sound good.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, where the CDC’s headquarters are located, said the secretary has “systematically demolished” the agency that issues the vaccine schedule recommendations for the U.S.

Ossoff told NOTUS that he would have to think about whether other states should issue their own recommendations, as California, Oregon and Washington announced they would do earlier this week, but didn’t rule it out.

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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Verite News.