“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Confronted about his Controversial Health Claims”

Robert F. Kennedy Junior was told bluntly he ‘frightens’ people as he was grilled during his confirmation hearing to become health secretary.

RFK Jr faced scrutiny over various conspiratorial statements he has put forward, such as likening the CDC to Nazi death camps, alleging that pesticides can alter a child’s gender, and suggesting that Covid was engineered to avoid affecting Ashkenazi Jews.

During a tense conversation regarding RFK Jr’s past remarks on vaccines, Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse accused him of causing fear among the public.

When questioned about his controversial statements, the nominee for Health and Human Services (HHS) chief assured that he would not take any actions in his role that would impede or discourage vaccination efforts.

In the past, he has also repeatedly linked using vaccines to autism and 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.

The hearing has now concluded, although Kennedy will be back on Capitol Hill tomorrow for a second hearing also starting at 10am. 

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

Senator Bennet challenged RFK Jnr over his claims that Covid was genetically engineered to target white and black people.

‘Did you say that Covid-19 was a genetically-engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi jews and Chinese people?’, he asked.

‘I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted,’ RFK Jnr replied, ‘I just quoted an NIH-funded and NIH-published study.’

‘I quoted an NIH study, I quoted an NIH study,’ he insisted before Senator Bennet said he would ‘take that as a yes’ and move to the next question.

The New York Post reported that RFK Jnr made the claims to supporters at a press event on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, in July 2023.

He said: ‘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.’

Several studies have been published suggesting that people from minority ethnic groups have a higher risk of death from Covid than white adults.

But this has been linked to disparities in wealth, healthcare access and higher rates of comorbidities in some minority groups rather than Covid being genetically engineered.

Lyme disease is a ‘militarily-engineered bioweapon’

Senator Bennett also brought up Kennedy’s previous claim that tick-borne Lyme disease is an engineered bioweapon.

‘Did you say that Lyme disease is highly likely a militarily-engineered bioweapon?,’ he asked, before adding, ‘I’ve made sure I’ve put in the highly likely.’

RFK Jnr replied: ‘I probably did say that.’ 

A debunked conspiracy theory suggests that Lyme disease, which infects 475,000 Americans every year, was cooked up in a Long Island laboratory in the 1950s.

Scientific studies show, however, that bacteria causing Lyme disease has been circlating in North American forests for at least 60,000 years, and that ticks that carry it have been around for at least 99million years.

The oldest documented case of Lyme disease is the skeleton of the Tyrolean iceman mummy, from 5,300 years ago, found in the Italian alps.

Other studies have shown that ancient Lyme disease bacteria has been found in 15-million-year-old fossils of ticks preserved in amber. 

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.’

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.

The CDC’s work is reminiscent of Nazi death camps

Trump’s HHS nominee also had a fiery exchange with senators over his comments comparing the work of the CDC to ‘Nazi death camps’.

Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat for Georgia — where the CDC is based — told the hearing: ‘You have compared the CDC’s work to Nazi death camps. You’ve compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic church.’

He added: ‘For me, those are disturbing characterizations of the CDC workers I know who are trying to keep the American public safe every single day.’

RFK Jnr denied that he had made the comments, which prompted Senator Warnock to read out a transcript of the conversation he was referring to.

RFK Jnr tried to interrupt during the reading, but was told: ‘Let me finish, I am just reading your words.’

Senator Warnock said, reading the transcript: ‘Let me read your words. It says that the institution CDC and the vaccine program is more important than the children that it is supposed to protect. And, you know, it is the same reason that we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic church. It’s because people were able to convince themselves that the institution of the church was more important than these little boys and girls that were being raped.

‘To me, this is like Nazi death camp. I mean what happens, what happens to these kids, one in 31 boys in this country, their minds are being robbed from them.’

The words are from a previously unpublished private audience that RFK Jnr gave at AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children, back in 2019. 

They were first reported in November last year by NBC News.

Nazi death camps were extermination centers established by Nazi Germany in World War Two as part of the Holocaust, a systematic genocide against Jews and other groups.

The 80th anniversary of the Soviet Army’s liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, observed as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, was on Monday this week.

Pesticides make children trans

Senator Bennet also challenged RFK Jnr on his previous claim that exposure to pesticides was making children transgender.

In an irate voice, the Senator said: ‘Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?’

RFK Jnr responded: ‘No, I never said that.’

Quotes from an episode of his podcast, published in June 2022, however, show that he did make the comments.

He said: ‘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.

‘These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.’

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that are common in pesticides, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, although they haven’t been linked to making someone transgender.

Suggestions that this may be the case are based on a 2010 study in frogs, which found that exposure to some pesticides in young male frogs caused them to become demasculinized and completely feminized as adults.

There has been a surge in the number of people identifying as transgender in recent years, particularly among young girls — where the number has tripled, according to some estimates, in just five years.

Many scientists have said the uptick is down to a more accepting society.

But some detransitioners have also blamed it on rising rates of mental health problems, saying they were misdiagnosed as trans when they only needed therapy.

I wish I hadn’t vaccinated my children 

In a fiery exchange, senators also blasted RFK Jnr on his shifting position on vaccines and accused him of lying.

Seantor Ron Wyden, a Democrat for Oregon, said: ‘Mr Kennedy, you have spent years pushing conflicting stories about vaccines. You say one thing, and then you say another.

‘In your testimony today under oath you denied that you were anti-vaccine, but during a podcast interview in July of 2023 you said, quote, no vaccine is safe or 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.’

Raising his voice, Senator Wyden said: ‘Mr Kennedy, all of these things… CANNOT BE TRUE. So, are you lying to Congress when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?’

RFK Jnr has seven children and says he got them all vaccinated — meaning they likely received the measles and polio vaccines among others.

Responding to questions over his support of vaccines in the hearing, Mr Kennedy said: ‘I support the measles vaccine, I support the polio vaccine.

‘I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult to access any of these.’\

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democrat for Vermont, similarly blasted the HHS secretary hopeful over the ‘militantly anti-vaccine’ organization he co-founded, called the Children’s Health Defense.

Sanders showed images of onesies sold for $26 by the organization, daubed with slogans such as, ‘unvaxxed, unafraid’, and ‘No vax, no problem’.

Slamming RFK Jnr, he said: ‘Now, you are coming before this committee and you say you are pro-vaccine, and yet your organization is making money selling a child’s product to parents… which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines.’

RFK Jnr responded that he now had ‘no power’ over the organization and that he had ‘resigned from the board’.

But Sanders rebuffed that he had only resigned a few months ago, before shouting: ‘Are you supportive of this?! Are you supportive of this clothing which is militantly anti-vaccine?’

RFK Jnr then responded saying that he was ‘supportive of vaccines’.

African AIDS is ‘different’ from western AIDS

Facing yet more evisceration from the Senate committee, RFK Jnr was then asked about his views on the causes of aquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Senator Bennet said: ‘Did you write in your book, it’s undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from western AIDS? Yes or no Mr Kennedy?’

He replied: ‘I, I am not sure if I made that…’

Senator Bennet then said he had the record that he would hand to the chairman.

RFK Jnr reportedly made the claims in his book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’, published in November 2021.

At the time, they received coverage on the Joe Rogan podcast, with the host saying: ‘If it’s telling the truth, just about the AIDS crisis… Is this the guy that’s telling the truth?’

AIDS is a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which gradually destroys the body’s immune system — leading to severe complications and the development of AIDS. 

Studies show differences in HIV diagnosis rates between Black individuals in the U.S. based on whether they were born in the U.S. or Africa, with African-born individuals being more likely to have the disease.

This disparity has been linked to higher HIV prevalence in Africa rather than differences in how the virus behaves.

These studies were published to advocate for increased healthcare funding to prevent and control HIV infections among African-born Americans.