RFK Jr.'s Medical Misery Tour
The things we watch for you.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrapped up a string of seven (7) hearings with various House and Senate committees, ostensibly to explain and justify the Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal, which would if adopted (and maybe if not — Congress is an afterthought now) shift massive amounts of federal spending to the military, while chopping another 12 percent from HHS, on top of the huge cuts to public health and research Trump’s Wreck America crew has already made.
Kennedy said it’s sad we can’t have health or science anymore, but the cuts must be endured to bring the federal debt under control. (No, the proposed cuts won’t offset the giant boost to military spending exploding the deficit, because you can’t increase spending while cutting taxes, you shitheads.)
But since Kennedy hasn’t bothered showing up to testify to Congress in ages, Democrats on all the committees grilled him on a wide range of his shitty decisions in the first year of the Trump administration, which prompted him to lie shamelessly and loudly about a wide variety of topics, as is his wont.
As he did in the first set of hearings Yr Wonkette covered last week, Kennedy frequently responded to criticism from Democrats by just shouting lies at them, although the Associated Press blandly sanewashes that by saying he “became more defiant, even at times screaming his rebuttals — though some of them didn’t align with the facts.”
One thing we like about working at Wonkette is that we can just call a lie a lie, and we won’t ever pretend that Kennedy has “shifted his tone” when he gives a vague answer that’s framed to disguise his utter contempt for science and evidence, like saying the measles vaccine is safe “for most people” or agreeing that vaccinations “could have” prevented the deaths of children in recent outbreaks.
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Robyn covered the lies and strategic misdirection Kennedy spewed in last week’s hearings, so we’ll focus on the crap he came up this week, although we’ll warn you in advance that some of it was just rehashing lies he’s already told, such as his favorite lie of all, the claim that “I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” which he repeated several times this week. What he always means is that in theory, he’s all for vaccines that are “safe and effective” — but he doesn’t believe any such vaccines exist. Needless to say, he denies he ever said that, despite recordings of him saying it, and then he claims whoever is questioning him just made it up.
RFK Jr.’s Years Of Anti-Vaccine Advocacy Haven’t Influenced Anyone In Particular
On Tuesday, Kennedy continued to insist that his own anti-vaccine advocacy, which doesn’t exist, has nothing to do with the rash of measles outbreaks (ahem) in the US, because during the pandemic, people just stopped trusting vaccines and medicine altogether, for some reason that has nothing to do with anti-vaxxers like himself.
As HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery points out, Kennedy has in fact continued, even as HHS secretary, to downplay the seriousness of measles and to lie about the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine.
In his role as the nation’s top public health official, he has minimized the seriousness of measles outbreaks in Texas, emphasized the importance of personal choice over science, baselessly claimed the measles vaccine leads to “deaths every year” and misleadingly suggested the vaccine “causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”
In Tuesday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) said that changes to the vaccine schedule pursued by Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer-filled vaccine committee were already leading some of her constituents to believe bullshit, which she said is one of the reasons behind a measles outbreak in Michigan.
“I had seven cases just in the last couple of weeks in my county,” Dingell said. “The contagious spots have been in grocery stores, colleges, you can’t stop it.
“I’ve met with families, and I said, ‘Why didn’t you get immunized?’ And they said, ‘We’re listening to our government. Our government tells us not to.’ You may think you’re pro-vaccine, but people aren’t hearing that.”
Kennedy insisted, “It has nothing to do with me,” because Canada and lots of countries in Europe that had eliminated measles by the late 1990s have — like the US — seen an upsurge in measles cases in recent years. It’s just a thing that happened, and totally unrelated to the decline in vaccination rates due to antivaxx rhetoric promoted by Kennedy and others.
Aha! And others? Even liberal mommyblog Wonkette admits that other people lied in addition to Kennedy, so we can’t prove it was specifically RFK Jr.’s lies that caused people to stop vaccinating their kids, so he is utterly blameless for contributing to the disinformation around vaccines.
Kennedy then insisted that the problem isn’t US anvtivaxxers like him or his HHS, but instead recycled a favorite old rightwing lie. Oh, sure, Americans aren’t vaccinating their kids, but the real problem is those dirty diseased foreign immigrants bringing all the diseases with them! “If you’re worried about polio and tuberculosis, you should look at the immigration policies in this country, Kennedy lied. “‘Cause the place where it’s occurring are the place[s] where the immigrants are going, because they’re not vaccinated.” This is of course bullshit, but it’s very attractive bullshit to Trumpers.
It also, as Elizabeth Jacobs noted on Bluesky, echoes Nazi propaganda, isn’t that a surprise?
The RFK Jr. Spillover Effect
In that same hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Washington), the first pediatrician elected to the US House, pointed out that the climate of distrust Kennedy promotes is hurting children well beyond his claims about vaccines, and that thanks to fear of doctors and shots, there’s been a decline in parents authorizing Vitamin K shots for newborns. It’s a vital, completely safe shot that prevents potentially fatal brain bleeds in babies.
Schrier didn’t pull any punches, telling Kennedy, “Vitamin K prevents catastrophic brain bleeds, and now that you’ve made parents distrust doctors and shots, some parents are now refusing the Vitamin K shot and other routine care, putting these babies at risk for bleeding out. This has a name, it’s called the ‘RFK Jr. Spillover Effect’.”
Here’s video of that exchange, in which Kennedy seems confused about what she’s even talking about, asking whether she means the hepatitis-B vaccine, which he has discouraged, or maybe Vitamin B, which is also different.
Kennedy refused to say that Vitamin K should be given to newborns, and huffily complained, “I literally never said anything about it.”
Schrier shot back, “That’s exactly the point. You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”
Well that’s really unfair, because he never said nothing about no Vitamin K. Not his problem!
Hey, Did You See COVID Is ‘Over’?
On Wednesday, during RFK Jr.’s final hearing of the tour, Sen John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) asked Kennedy why HHS has largely defunded MRNA vaccine research. Instead of admitting he was indulging the conspiracy theorists who think MRNA vaccines alter human DNA (they don’t!), Kennedy lied some more, claiming, “I terminated the COVID vaccines because they didn't make any sense. COVID is gone, and the mRNA vaccines have a limited efficacy against respiratory illnesses.”
Neither part of that answer is remotely true, of course, although Kennedy did at least acknowledge the promise that MRNA treatments hold for finally fighting pancreatic cancer.
Also, Kennedy offered his own amusing metacommentary on healthiness by wheezing loudly into the mic again during his testimony. Stay healthy, America!
[AP / Fierce Healthcare / HuffPost/ Fierce Healthcare / House Budget Committee Democrats / MLive / Image: Guru Sno Studios, Creative Commons License 2.0
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Mengele-without-a-medical degree just showed his entire leathery ass for us in Congress. And yes Dems got plenty of dunks, but dunks aren't going to be enough.
I need it front and center. This piece of shit (who I want to remind you was bankrolled by Republicans as part of the full-throated press to shiv Joe Biden and Democrats in general in that manufactured crisis) has advocated for the genocide of Black children. The "rehoming" is the same thing as the genocidal "Indian schools."
This man, the Paragon of Pestilence, is set to kill millions via generational damage. He, along with Blotto von Bismarck and Herr Miller, is part of the Holy Trinity of extremely dangerous Maladministration 2.0 figures. And his heavy breathing through the microphone is just his regaling us with his reaction to sounding one of his acquired raccoon wieners. Probably uses them as swizzle sticks too.
Mengele-without-a-medical degree makes me sick...and when he gets to wild out...he's probably going to do it literally too.
It still absolutely astounds me that any Americans rejected the Covid vaccine. It’s a fucking miracle of modern medicine that they created and distributed a vaccine so quickly.
When it was first released, I would have crawled over broken glass to get the jab.
And I literally wept with relief when I got the jab. “You are a life-giver,” I said to the pharmacist.