A Republican senator whose vote was crucial in confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services refused to admit that the notorious conspiracy theorist may not have been honest with him about his anti-vaccine views while courting his support.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, 68, who is a physician by training and pro-vaccine, was confronted on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday about his continued support of Kennedy even as the secretary has trampled on longstanding vaccine policy.
“RFK Jr., according to his own family, is causing real damage to the health of the U.S.,” host Jake Tapper said. “You don’t seem willing to criticize him by name at all.”
But Cassidy still wouldn’t bite. “Clearly, you want me to be on the record saying something negative,” he shot back. “Of course, it makes news if Republicans fight each other.”
Tapper challenged Cassidy on his characterization of Kennedy, 71, as a “Republican.” Before abandoning his presidential campaign last year, the now-secretary and a scion of the Democratic Party’s most famous political dynasty, had run as an independent.
“Whatever,” Cassidy shot back. “I’m all about, how do we make America healthy?”
The exchange comes after Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy and a cousin of RFK Jr.’s, announced a terminal cancer diagnosis on Saturday and blasted the Health and Human Services Secretary for his policies in an essay for The New Yorker.
Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was a pivotal vote in Kennedy’s confirmation earlier this year. The senator told the floor then that his support came in exchange for assurances the secretary would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes.”
In June, Kennedy abruptly dismissed all 17 members of that panel, citing conflicts of interest and stating the group had become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
The move drew swift and sharp rebuke from public health professionals, medical organizations, and even Cassidy himself, who subsequently warned Kennedy’s replacement appointees “do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology [and] may even have a preconceived bias” against certain vaccines.
At a House hearing later that month, Democratic Representative Kim Schrier outright accused Kennedy of having “lied to Senator Cassidy” and “lied to the American people” about his plans for the U.S. vaccine regime, adding that “I lay all the responsibility for every death from a vaccine-preventable illness at your feet.”
Cassidy, in fact, also blew his lid at Kennedy earlier this week after the secretary bragged about ordering the CDC to abandon its official position that vaccines do not cause autism.
Kennedy had otherwise promised Cassidy not to remove language to that effect from the agency’s website, a pledge he has now only technically kept after adding an addendum to the site that says the notice of the agency’s position is only displayed “due to an agreement” with the Senator.
Despite his reluctance to bad-mouth Kennedy in his Sunday interview with CNN, Cassidy has blasted the secretary for the “irresponsible stunt.”
“I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases,” he wrote on X Friday. “What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B, and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services for comment on this story.
