Incredible: RFK Jr. Finally Makes A Good Point
Absolutely no one should take medical advice from him.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent nearly five hours defending his bullshit and making his case to cut HHS by $33 billion in back-to-back hearings with the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees. I spent nearly five hours listening to him defend his bullshit, and I can conclusively say that he has no idea what he is talking about, what his department is doing, who he’s had fired, what day it was or what he had for breakfast that morning.
Or, as Democratic Senator Angela Alsobrooks put it during the HELP committee hearing, he was “not able to answer any specific questions about [his] agency.”
He did, however, make one good point, when responding to a question from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) during the House Appropriations Committee hearing about whether he would vaccinate his own children today, and that was “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”
Finally! We agree on something. Unfortunately, one of the major jobs of the HHS is to give people advice, and to be knowledgeable enough to do so — which he very clearly is not.
He also said that his “opinion on vaccines is irrelevant,” and, although we certainly wish that were the case, he is the head of HHS and therefore his opinions are, in fact, extremely relevant. Sadly, they are probably the most relevant vaccine-related opinions in the whole of the United States.
Pressed by Pocan to say whether he’d recommend parents vaccinate their children, he said he would prefer to give them a list of pros and cons and let them figure that out for themselves.
Later in the day, during the HELP committee hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy brought this up when he pointed out the myriad ways that Kennedy had undermined vaccines, the measles vaccine in particular, also noting that he had claimed that the vaccine’s effectiveness wanes very quickly, had not been “safety tested,” and contained fetal debris, none of which was true.
In response, Kennedy had a full-on tantrum.
Murphy explained that RFK Jr. cannot claim he was “recommending” that parents vaccinate their kids while he was saying all of these terrible things about vaccines (that were not true), as this would obviously discourage them to do so. He noted that this would be kind of like how saying “Look, I think you should swim in that lake, but the lake is probably toxic and there’s probably a ton of snakes and alligators in it,” would not be an actual endorsement of swimming in that like. Certainly an interesting choice of analogy given Kennedy’s activities last weekend.
Kennedy had a variety of lines he kept repeating over and over again throughout the day, namely that he couldn’t speak to the reorganization of HHS on the advice of his lawyers, due to a lawsuit; that “no scientists were fired” from HHS departments, a claim that is patently untrue; that (when he couldn’t come up with a reason for why something very important would be cut) Trump’s priority was ensuring that “$2 trillion in debt” was not passed on to future generations, which would also be a health issue (it would not be a health issue).
One of those things he kept repeating, in response to people telling him that it’s actually illegal for them to cut the budget for the HHS without congressional approval, and that it is illegal for Trump to impound funds already dedicated for a specific purpose, was that “No head of any agency wants his agency gutted or his budget lowered,” as if that’s not literally what he and Trump are doing to the HHS, again, without congressional approval. He laughed every time he did it, as if the person asking the question were being ridiculous.
Here is the time he said that to Rep. Steny Hoyer, who, I’m just going to need to point out, worked with RFK’s Uncle Ted on trying to improve US healthcare for many years. I’m actually surprised that this went unmentioned.
He only said one time, speaking to Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tennessee), that food dye causes ADHD, though I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together can agree that was one time too many. Of course, Kennedy also once claimed that he had ADHD (or would have been diagnosed with it) but that it was cured by doing heroin. Let us hope that he will not be bringing this particular solution to the HHS.
Speaking of his heroin use, one of the things that came up quite a bit in both hearings was the opioid crisis and the fact that funding for many, many programs related to that had been cut (which he denied). At one point, Rep. Josh Harder (D-California) pointed out that the rehab he got to get over his addiction would cost the average American $286,000.
"There are many really gold star rehabs that do it for a tiny fraction, like $20,000 to $40,000 a month," Kennedy, a man clearly in touch with the common American, responded.
During the HELP hearing, Sen. Maggie Hassan brought up the fact that Kennedy had brought on David Geier to head up an autism study, noting that he had previously been in trouble for practicing medicine without a license and for giving children hormone blockers he claimed would cure their autism.
Kennedy responded by having a complete meltdown and, well, lying a whole lot.
He claimed that Geier — whom he repeatedly referred to as a scientist despite being corrected multiple times — sued the Maryland Medical Board and that they were forced to retract the accusation and pay him $5 million for actual malice.
Is this remotely close to what happened? It is not! That ruling was never reversed. Another ruling involved his father (who did have a medical license) writing prescriptions for members of his own family. The Geiers sued on the grounds that their personal medical information was revealed and were awarded $5 million, though that was later reversed.
Strangely, one of my favorite moments came from when Republican Senator Jim Banks was trying to help Kennedy out by giving him an opportunity to say that he does not reject a genetic cause for autism, and Kennedy responded by telling him that, actually, that was true and that under his direction the HHS will only be looking at possible “environmental toxins” as a cause. Banks was one of only a few members who seemed to like what Kennedy was up to, as even Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Bill Cassidy were not too happy with his nonsense.
Sen. Josh Hawley was another who was quite defensive over Kennedy’s record, and spent his time with Kennedy bringing up the extremely bad mifepristone “study” that he and other Republicans have been drooling over for the last few weeks, with the two of them talking about what a great study it was and Kennedy promising him to try and get restrictions put back on the abortion pill.
Kennedy, who was previously pro-choice, repeated his favorite soundbite about how “every abortion is a tragedy,” claiming that the US cannot be a moral leader if we allow X number of abortions, though he did not share how many abortions he would find acceptable or how we should decide who was deserving of them.
The fact that Sen. Angela Alsobrooks closed out the show did no favors for Kennedy. Both she and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (who went right before) brought up the fact that the HHS had shuttered the Safe to Sleep campaign, which has prevented untold numbers of SIDS cases.
Sen. Alsobrooks asked him if he knew which department that came out of, eventually informing him that it had been part of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
“Although this is a very important agency [that] prevents babies from dying, this is the same one you fired every single person in this office as of April the 1st,” Alsobrooks said.
The scariest thing about these hearings is how many people on the Right seem to think they went very well for RFK Jr. Many of the clips included here are also available on YouTube with titles suggesting that he had totally owned all of the libs. In fact, the above clip is posted by a conservative account with the title “Senator Alsobrooks attempts to SMEAR RFK Jr painfully backfires.”
I guess that’s true if you ignore the fact that everything that came out of his mouth for the whole five hours was absolute bullshit.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
>>The scariest thing about these hearings is how many people on the Right seem to think they went very well for RFK Jr. Many of the clips included here are also available on YouTube with titles suggesting that he had totally owned all of the libs.
I'm not surprised.
Generally speaking, for normal people, if you get into an argument and start stomping your feet and yelling like a 3 year old, that's a sign that you're an idiot because it means that you don't have a counterpoint to whatever the other person said. When Sen. Hassan said that bit about RFK Jr. practicing medicine without a license and he melted down, he's admitting that Sen. Hassan was correct.
The right doesn't see it like this, though. They are a grievance culture, so showing grievance is the way to getting more clout. There certainly isn't any other reason they elected Trump president.
I’d expand that to no one should ever take advice from RFK jr on any decision whatsoever.