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Chaos has been a constant presence in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s life — his infamous late-night burial of a black bear in Central Park is a testament to that fact. His Senate confirmation hearing for health secretary was no different.
RFK Jr. arrived in the hearing room on Wednesday to cheers of “We love you Bobby!” from his applauding fans in the bleachers, with his long-suffering wife Cheryl Hines alongside him, and his children in tow.
Before long, the proceedings descended into a series of verbal brawls. There were interruptions by protesters, a fight about baby onesies, and a forensic search for the authentic views of a man who has operated on the fringes of health science for most of his life.
Senator Ron Wyden began by telling RFK Jr. that the committee had examined “thousands of pages statements, books, and podcast transcripts” of his words and that “the receipts show that Mr. Kennedy has embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines.”
“He has made it his life’s work to sow doubt and to discourage parents from getting their kids lifesaving vaccines. It has been lucrative for him,” Wyden added.
But Kennedy instead insisted that was untrue — his own children were vaccinated!
“News reports have claimed I am anti-vaccine and anti-industry. I am neither,” RFK Jr said in his opening remarks.
“You lie!” a protester shouted, before being escorted out of the room.
“I am pro-safety,” Kennedy continued, following the interruption. “I worked for years to raise awareness about the mercury and toxic chemicals in fish, and nobody called me anti-fish.”
Wyden had transcripts from dozens of hours of manosphere podcasts — the result of an insurgent presidential campaign by Kennedy that folded when he was offered a role in Donald Trump’s administration — likely collected by some now irreparably damaged staffer.
“Are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine or did you lie on all those podcasts?” Wyden asked.
RFK argued that his comments had been taken out of context.
Another protester stood and decried Kennedy’s activism on vaccines holding a sign that said, “Vaccines save lives.”
Cheryl Hines, a trained professional in keeping a straight face, sat behind him throughout the hearing, blinking furiously as the questions grew harder.
As is customary for confirmation hearings, a battle quickly broke out between Republicans and Democrats to define the candidate. Often it sounded as if they were talking about entirely different people.
One was a dangerous anti-vaccine campaigner who couldn’t be trusted as he’d had spent decades making unfounded claims about the safety of vaccines with deadly results.
The other was the Hudson Valley’s very own David Attenborough — a man who wandered through forests with hunters and fishermen to keep rivers clean and stop fish from getting sick, and cared deeply about the health of others.
That second Kennedy came through convincingly at times. He spoke passionately about his desire to end chronic disease. He called for an end to processed food in schools for American kids, and more research into the link between food additives and chronic disease.
“This is not just an economic issue, it’s not just a national security issue, it is a spiritual issue, and it is a moral issue,” he said. “We cannot live up to our role as an exemplary nation, as a moral authority around the world, and we’re writing off an entire generation of kids.”
He pitched himself for the role because of his “peculiar experience” as a lawyer who litigated against companies that damage the environment, as an author, and as a father.
“I know what a healthy kid looks like because I had so many of them in my family,” he said. “I didn’t know anybody with a food allergy, peanut allergy. Why do five of my kids have allergies? Why are we seeing these explosions in diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression, all these things that are related to a toxic environment?
“I was raised in a time when we did not have a chronic disease epidemic,” he went on. “When my uncle was president, 2 percent of American kids had chronic disease. Today, 66 percent have chronic disease,” he said.
If there is such thing as an RFK Jr doctrine, it is focusing more on chronic disease than ever before. How precisely to tackle the issue is where things are less clear, although Kennedy believes a greater emphasis on nutrition and our food is the best place to start.
But sometimes the questions were more direct.
“Are you a conspiracy theorist?” Senator Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, asked.
“That is a pejorative, Senator, that’s applied to me mainly to keep me from asking difficult questions of powerful interests,” he said, pulling on the thread that secured him the nomination.
“That label was applied to me because I said the COVID vaccine wouldn’t prevent transmission, and it wouldn’t prevent infection,” he continued, despite a stream of scientific evidence to the contrary.
Kennedy looked most uncomfortable when he was confronted by a true healthcare populist. Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who has campaigned for universal healthcare for most of his career, asked Kennedy if he believed healthcare was a human right.
“I can’t give you a yes or no answer to that question,” he replied. “In healthcare, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the poor.”
Sanders then asked Kennedy how the public could trust him when he had insisted that abortion is a woman’s right, only to join an administration that has taken that right away.
“I believe, and I’ve always believed, that every abortion is a tragedy,” Kennedy replied.
Sanders then showed Kennedy a set of baby onesies being sold by the Children’s Health Defense, an organization he founded, which displayed the words “unvaxed, unafraid” on the front.
“Are you supportive of these onesies!?” Sanders bellowed.
“I am supportive of vaccines,” replied the likely future health secretary.
Senator Elizabeth Warren also went on the attack, quizzing Kennedy on one of the most controversial incidents. She accused him of lying about the nature of his visit to the island of Samoa during a measles outbreak in which “70 people died,” and where, she said, he promoted anti-vaccine views. She asked if he took “a scintilla of responsibility” for the deaths or if he would do anything differently.
“No, absolutely not,” he replied, before being cut off from answering due to time.
The primary purpose of this hearing, as far as RFK Jnr was concerned, was to convince a handful of holdout Senators that he was not the crazy, bear-murdering, vaccine-denying lunatic that he had been portrayed to be.
There will be plenty of viral clips from this hearing to help senators make that decision.
But it is still unclear which Kennedy will turn up on his first day as health secretary, with the power to make life-or-death decisions for 334 million people: the podcast guest who spent years casting doubt on vaccines, or the concerned dad who wants to make kids eat their vegetables.
