Robert F. Kennedy Junior was told bluntly he ‘frightens’ people as he was grilled during his confirmation hearing to become health secretary.
RFK Jr was challenged about a number of conspiratorial claims he’s made, including comparing the CDC to Nazi deathcamps, claiming pesticides turn children transgender and claiming Covid had been designed not to target Ashkenazi Jews.
‘You frighten people,’ said Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse during a testy exchange about RFK Jnr’s previous comments about vaccines.
The nominee to be Health and Human Services’ (HHS) chief promised he ‘will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines’ after being challenged on extreme comments he’d made previously.
In the past, he has repeatedly linked using vaccines to autism, and also raised concerns over their safety and effectiveness.
Democrat Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), who has voted for other Trump nominees, slammed the HHS Secretary nominee for promoting conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Among them was a suggestion from Kennedy that Covid had been ‘designed’ to target black and white people, but not Ashkenazi Jews.
And he was also challenged over his claim that Lyme disease — an infection spread by ticks — is an ‘engineered bioweapon’ from the 1950s.
Robert F. Kennedy was rattled by his first heated exchange with senators today, where they repeatedly brought up his past claims (image from the hearing)
RFK was in a packed hall for his hearing today, with many supporters – who were sometimes loud – in the background
Senators have now taken a break from the hearing.
Trump nominated Kennedy to head up HHS to ‘shake up’ America’s health agencies and ‘Make America Healthy Again’.
But senators will need to confirm the nomination, with many raising concerns over a number of his views dubbed as anti-vaccine and conspiracy.
These were some of the most tense moments from the confirmation hearing:
Covid was genetically-engineered to target white and black people
Robert F. Kennedy Junior claimed at a press event in New York City last year that Covid had been genetically engineered.
According to the New York Post, he told supporters at an Upper East Side restaurant dinner early last year: ‘Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted.
‘Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.’
Challenged about the comments today, RFK claimed he didn’t say it was ‘deliberately funded’ and that he was quoting an ‘NIH-funded study’.
Several studies have been published suggesting people from minority ethnic groups had a higher fatality rate from Covid than white adults.
One 2021 study suggested black people had a 68 percent higher risk of death from the virus compared to white people, while Hispanic people had a 78 percent higher risk.
Studies linked this to disparities in access to healthcare, and higher rates of comorbidities in minority groups — as opposed to the virus being engineered to target certain groups.
Lyme disease is a ‘materially-engineered bioweapon’
Senator Bennett also brought up Kennedy’s previous claim that tick-borne Lyme disease is an engineered bioweapon.
In a previous episode of his podcast published in January 2024, Kennedy said: ‘Another thing that keeps us from enjoying the outdoors and keeps us locked inside and the idea that this may have been, is highly likely to have been a military weapon.
‘We cannot say 100 percent for sure, but we do know that they were experimenting with tics there.
‘We also know that they were experimenting with diseases of the kind, like Lyme disease, at that lab, and they were putting them in tics and then infecting people.’
Challenged over these claims today, he admitted: ‘I probably did say that’.
A debunked conspiracy theory suggests that Lyme disease was cooked up in a Long Island laboratory in the 1950s.
In reality, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease has been circulating in North American forests for at least 60,000 years. And the ticks that carry it have been around for at least 99million, according to specimens preserved in amber.
Dr Rick Ostfeld, a diseases ecologist at the Cary Institute, previously told Politico: ‘Clearly, this disease was not created by even the most evil genius military biologists in 1954.
‘It is easy to refute with 100 pecent certainty.’
Kennedy has also previously suggested that West Nile Virus was created at the Plum Island lab and that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was purposely spread from apes to humans so pharmaceutical companies could profit from vaccines.
Pesticides make children trans
The number of children identifying has transgender has spiked in recent years, with the number tripling among young girls in just half a decade.
Many scientists have suggested that, as well as a more accepting atmosphere, this may be down to children with mental health problems being mis-diagnosed.
But Kennedy has previously suggested that the shift may actually be due to exposure to pesticides and hormone disrupting chemicals.
In June 2022, Kennedy said on his podcast: ‘I want to pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion and gender confusion.
The above shows insurance claims for mental health care, according to LexisNexis. They analyzed data from more than 300million patients
‘These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.’
Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones and endocrine system, such as pesticides.
Asked about these claims today, Kennedy said: ‘No, I never said that.’
Senator Bennett said he would pass the record on this to the chairman.
The Environmental Protection Agency has found that endocrine disruptors are common in pesticides.
Studies have suggested that exposure to some pesticides in male frogs caused them to become demasculinized and completely feminized as adults.
But the results have not been repeated in humans, and many experts say there is no link.
AIDS is not caused by HIV
Kennedy has previously claimed that AIDS is not caused by HIV, reporting suggests.
Scientists have known for decades that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) gradually weakens the immune system, causing the eruption of complications in the body leading to the disease AIDS.
But Kennedy pushed back on this in a June 2023 interview with the New York Magazine, saying: ‘There are much better candidates than HIV for what casues AIDS.’
He suggested that the causes of AIDS, instead, include environmental toxins and ‘poppers’, an inhaled drug and immunosuppressant.
Challenged on the claims again today, he said he was ‘not sure’ whether he had made the link.
Conspiracy theories have previously suggested that AIDS is in fact caused by smallpox vaccination rather than the HIV virus.
Studies have investigated whether factors like drug use, sexual behavior and bacterial infections were associated with AIDS, but they have all come to the conclusion that the only clear link was HIV.
Studies involving thousands of people have also found that AIDS occurs almost exclusivel in people who have tested positive for HIV. This virus can also be detected in virtually everyone with AIDS.