Democratic senators took activates Wednesday hammering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his excessive, conspiracy-addled views on vaccines and different well being issues. However one of the revealing exchanges throughout his affirmation listening to earlier than the Senate Finance Committee was with Republican Invoice Cassidy, a doctor who has not indicated whether or not he would help Donald Trump’s controversial choose to steer the Division of Well being and Human Providers.
For a lot of the listening to, RFK Jr., a peddler of junk science whose circle of relatives has publicly warned about his character and conduct, typically fell again on platitudes about setting apart political divisions “for the sake of a more healthy America.” However when Cassidy requested him easy questions on Medicaid reform, Trump’s nominee stumbled and stammered, struggling to reply in any substantive manner. “Medicaid will not be working for Individuals,” Kennedy stated.
“What reforms would you advocate?” Cassidy repeatedly requested him. Probably the most particular response Kennedy might muster was: “There are various issues we are able to do.”
Because the Democratic members persistently burdened, Kennedy is profoundly unqualified to serve in one of the consequential well being roles in the USA. He has made a profitable profession pushing harmful medical conspiracy theories. He has, like President Trump and a few of his nominees, confronted sexual misconduct allegations. And Kennedy has engaged in erratic conduct that raises additional questions on his judgment and capability to serve.
However Cassidy’s questioning, which got here early in Wednesday’s listening to, made clear that Kennedy can be an emperor with no garments—a person who will not be solely deeply cynical however fully out of his depth.
Some Democrats did higher than others in establishing that dynamic. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was a standout, as she pressed him to decide to not taking any cash from drug corporations or from lawsuits towards drug corporations—one thing he wouldn’t do. Kennedy “can kill off entry to vaccines and make tens of millions of {dollars} whereas he does it,” Warren stated on the conclusion of the fiery change. “Youngsters would possibly die, however Robert Kennedy can hold cashing in.”
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive, additionally received a telling reply out of Kennedy when he requested him to easily reply sure or no as to if he views well being care as a human proper. Possibly not, Kennedy prompt, as a result of, “When you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and also you get most cancers, you are actually taking from the pool.”
These traces of questioning lower by means of Kennedy’s efforts to forged himself as a protector of the frequent good. “The very first thing I’ve achieved each morning for the previous 20 years is get on my knees and pray to God that He would put me ready to finish the power illness epidemic,” he claimed in his opening assertion. The extra particular the query, the extra straight it associated to the potential penalties of his management, the extra Kennedy flailed.
It was a weird listening to, becoming for one in every of Trump’s bizarrest nominees. Sitting earlier than the committee in a slim tie and grey swimsuit, together with his spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, sitting behind him, Kennedy testified for greater than three hours about every part from his views on abortion—that are, in fact, everywhere in the map—to his position in a lethal measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019. (“You’ll not discover a single Samoan who stated I didn’t get a vaccine due to Bobby Kennedy,” he claimed at one level.) He could possibly be heard respiratory closely into the microphone all through. And the proceedings, which got here a day after Caroline Kennedy warned senators in a letter that her cousin is a “predator,” have been disrupted at a number of factors by jeering protesters. Supporters within the room applauded a number of of his solutions and cheered him because the assembly adjourned.
Democrats registered their settlement with Kennedy in regards to the brokenness of the American well being care system (“We spend probably the most and get the least,” Senator Peter Welch instructed Kennedy) earlier than skewering his lack of substantive concepts to reform it and demonstrating how his management atop HHS might in actual fact worsen it. “The truth that you discover it tough to reply primary questions,” stated Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, “is deeply troubling to me.”
Republicans on the committee, in the meantime, have been virtually uniformly pleasant to Kennedy, portraying him as a person who merely believes youngsters ought to eat their greens and that the price of well being care is simply too rattling excessive. After all, that’s a wildly incomplete and deceptive accounting of his beliefs—one which whitewashes the perimeter claims he might quickly inject into America’s prime well being division.
Ron Wyden, the rating Democrat on the committee, made it fairly clear in his opening assertion that Kennedy “shouldn’t be entrusted with the well being and well-being of the American folks.” Certainly, to verify Kennedy to such a key publish can be among the many Republicans’ most shameful capitulations to Trump. And but, at the least in his first listening to, they gave little indication they might think about bucking their chief. “I’ve little question that you’ll be confirmed,” Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn instructed Kennedy, “and you’re going to do such a strong job for the folks of this nation.”
