Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. engaged in a heated exchange with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on Capitol Hill, accusing the senator of deliberately misrepresenting his past statements. Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which held Kennedy’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday, pressed the nominee about remarks he had made on various podcasts in recent years.
“During a podcast interview in July of 2023, you said, quote, no vaccine is safe and effective, in your testimony today in order to prove you’re not anti-vax, you note that all your kids are vaccinated, but in a podcast in 2020, you said, and I quote, you would do anything pay anything to go back in time and not vaccinate your kids,” Wyden said to Kennedy. “Mr. Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true. So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine or did you lie on all those podcasts? We have all of this on tape, by the way.”
Kennedy pushed back against Wyden’s characterization, clarifying that his remark about “no vaccine” being safe and effective was taken out of context. He explained that during his interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, he was cut off before he could finish his full statement. “Yeah, Senator, as you know, because it’s been repeatedly debunked, that the statements that I made on the Lex Fridman podcast was a fragment of the statement,” Kennedy responded.
“He asked me, and anybody who actually goes and looks at that podcast and will see that he asked me, are there vaccines that are safe and effective? And I said to him, some of the live virus vaccines. And I said, there are no vaccines that are safe and effective and I was going to continue for, every person. Every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines,” RFK Jr. added. He continued, “He interrupted me at that point. I’ve corrected it many times, including on national TV. You know about this, Sen. Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.”
A transcript from the interview with Fridman shows Kennedy saying, “I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective. In fact.” Kennedy is then cut off and the conversation goes elsewhere. Kennedy has corrected the record on subsequent shows, including in an interview with HBO’s Bill Maher, where he explained he was interrupted and assured the public, “I would never say that.”