Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet tangled with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccines and recent uncertainty over federal guidance for parents — at one point screaming at each other — during a Senate committee hearing Thursday.
Kennedy was called to the Senate Finance Committee to talk about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but he soon faced questions about the turmoil at federal health agencies. The Trump administration official said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leaders who left the agency last week deserved to be fired.
During his time for questions, Bennet, a Democrat, called attention to Kennedy’s appointments to a CDC vaccine advisory panel, many of whom have criticized vaccines and spread misinformation. Kennedy himself is known as a vaccine skeptic. The panel is scheduled for an upcoming review of recommendations for a series of common childhood vaccines.
“Should parents and schools in Colorado be prepared for more measles outbreaks as a result of that? How about more mumps outbreaks?” Bennet asked.
Kennedy said he didn’t anticipate a change to recommendations for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine but said he thinks parents should be able to “make their own choices.” Given recent uncertainty over vaccine guidance, Bennet pressed for more details.
“This is not a podcast. It is the American people’s health that is on the line here,” he said.
The back-and-forth soon escalated into verbal warfare, with Kennedy and Bennet screaming questions at each other and accusing the other of failing to answer. (The most heated exchanges are in the final two minutes of the video below.)
Kennedy raised his voice to ask Bennet if mRNA vaccines — which played a role in the fight against COVID-19 — have been associated with myocarditis and pericarditis, types of heart inflammation.
Bennet pivoted back to his line of questioning about panel appointees, and Kennedy interjected: “You’re evading the question.”
Typically, that’s a phrase used by senators to rein in a congressional witness, marking an unusual reversal of roles that Bennet didn’t seem to appreciate.
“No, I’m asking the questions here, Mr. Kennedy,” Bennet said, his voice rising, adding that it was “on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership.”
Kennedy retorted: “They deserve the truth, and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of that agency.”
That heated exchange ended Bennet’s allotted time. Elsewhere in the hearing, Kennedy criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, claiming — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself.”
“The people who at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.
The ousted CDC director, Susan Monarez, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Kennedy was trying to weaken public health protections.
“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”
Kennedy told senators he didn’t make such an ultimatum.
Senior public affairs editor Jon Murray and the New York Times contributed to this story.
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