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Inside Politics
Confirmation hearing for HHS nominee Robert Kennedy, Jr. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired January 29, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
LUJAN: Is it important that expectant mothers and newborns have access to health coverage?
KENNEDY: Absolutely Senator.
LUJAN: Mr. Kennedy, do you know how many babies born in this country are covered through Medicaid?
KENNEDY: I would guess. I don't know the answer. I would guess about 30 million.
LUJAN: I have it, Mr. Kennedy. About 41 percent or 1.4 million babies -- births are financed by Medicaid according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
Yes or no? Do you believe that Medicaid is a critical program?
KENNEDY: I believe that Medicaid is a critical program but that -- it's not working as well as it ought to be. And President Trump has asked me to make it -- to make it work better -- that most Americans are not happy with. The premiums are too high. The deductibles are too high. And everybody's getting sick -- or too much money is going to the insurance industry.
LUJAN: Mr. Kennedy, I have a series of yes-or-no questions that are pretty simple because you heard we're not going to get a second round of questions. I ask for your indulgence to be able to get through them. Yes or no?
In New Mexico, as you know, Medicaid is often measured state by state. It might surprise you if you look at some of those surveys. In New Mexico the response was 90 percent of New Mexicans on Medicaid report satisfaction in getting care; 80 percent getting specialist care; 85 percent getting urgent care; 95 percent ease of filing was out of focus.
Not to pick on any one of my colleagues but in Louisiana, 86 percent of people on Medicaid are satisfied with their interactions; 83 percent are satisfied getting care; 85 percent are satisfied getting specialized care; 82 percent getting urgent care. I can go on state by state but we don't have the time today.
Yes or no? Do you support cutting Medicaid or reducing and especially in an area where you and I spoke about with the federal investment in Medicaid which is known as FMAP?
KENNEDY: President Trump has not told me to -- that he wants to cut Medicaid. He has told me to make it better.
LUJAN: Do you support cutting, yes or no?
The President -- let me ask you this way since you're -- It's only about President Trump.
KENNEDY: I support making it better, Senator.
LUJAN: If President Trump asked you to cut Medicaid, will you do it?
KENNEDY: Well, it's not up to me to cut Medicaid. It would be up to Congress. Oh, and I'm...
LUJAN: You know...
KENNEDY: I'm going...
LUJAN: ... why I ask.
KENNEDY: I'm going to work, Senator Lujan...
LUJAN: Mr. Kennedy -- Mr. Kennedy, you won't answer, I'll move on.
Do you know, how many states will end -- Mr. Chairman, if I may pause my time.
So I understand that people are getting asked to leave, if they stand up with signs but there's a lot of other as well, Mr. Chairman so it needs to be extended to everyone.
As Mr. Kennedy said, we should respect each other when we have a difference of opinion. We're just trying to do our jobs here and trying to ask questions. That's all. And that's all I'm doing with Mr. Kennedy, folks, so.
CRAPO: Senator...
LUJAN: (inaudible)...
CRAPO: Senator Lujan, you are right. And I ask the audience to please be respectful.
LUJAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that very much.
Mr. Kennedy, do you know, how many states will end their Medicaid expansion if the federal share of Medicaid drops?
KENNEDY: Well, there's 40 states that have signed on to the expansion. So you know...
LUJAN: it's a smaller number. So it's nine states would quickly have to end their expansion because of the laws that they have; that's about 4 million folks across the country. And in New Mexico, Iowa, and Idaho, they have triggers that it would immediately have to go into effect, if in fact that gets cut.
The reason I'm asking those questions is, there's been a lot of chatter and conversations around Medicaid. Now I agree we can always do better. And we must be doing better in America. But Medicaid has been shown to improve health outcomes including mortality, quality of life, and access to preventative care as well. And there's some areas Mr. Kennedy, that you and I touched on specific to Native American communities.
One of the concerns that I have are these programs matter to folks. You shared your passion about caring for folks. I believe that passion. My question in this area is, as you know, when folks are doing research and they're going to check to see if medicine works on someone, if they're not included in that trial, it often doesn't help them. That's what all the evidence shows. So what are you going to do when programs are eliminated to require the inclusion of Native Americans in clinical trials when it comes to life-saving medicine?
[12:35:00]
KENNEDY: I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that there's Native Americans in clinical trials. As I said to you when I visited your office, I spent 20 percent of my career working on Native issues. My family's been deeply involved with them. My family, my father, and uncle, were big critics of the Indian Health Service; failure to deliver good health results or health care on the -- on the reservations. I'm going to bring a Native and for the first time in history, into my Central Office that all the major decisions in my office, will be -- that he will have -- he -- we've already interviewed candidate, a very, very, good candidate will have direct impact on all the major offices. And one of my priorities is to improve...
LUJAN: I appreciate that. I have a follow up in that space. Specifically, will you commit to finalizing the congressionally mandated FDA Guidance to increase Clinical Trial Diversity?
KENNEDY: Just repeat that again? I'm sorry.
LUJAN: Will you commit to finalizing the congressionally mandated FDA Guidance to increase -- increasing Clinical Trial Diversity?
KENNEDY: Yes.
LUJAN: I appreciate that.
Will you commit to reinstating all of the pages that were eliminated and people that were fired from this administration that have this responsibility?
KENNEDY: I cannot commit to that because I don't know who they are.
LUJAN: Well, there's (inaudible)...
KENNEDY: I'll commit to working with you to make sure those positions are adequately staffed. LUJAN: I will follow up in writing in those specific areas because I think there's some commonality here. But answers matter and so I'd like to get those as timely as possible.
The last thing, Mr. Chairman, that I'll say is, one of the conversations I had last -- before this hearing, was with the family that I've been working with to work with my Republican colleagues when it comes to autism and federal programs, and making a difference in these families lives and this little girl's life.
What I'm asking now, Mr. Chairman, is unanimous consent to enter into the record, an article from Autism Speaks, titled, quote, Do vaccines cause autism?" End quote. And I'll note that the first sentence states, quote, "vaccines do not cause autism." End quote.
Thank you. I yield back.
CRAPO: Without objection.
And before we move on, we've had a request from several quarters for a quick restroom break. We will take a five minute recess.
I'm sorry to those remaining five or six senators who must wait a few minutes but we will have a quick break. We will be back as soon as we can.
(RECESS)
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': And we have been watching and listening to a very contentious confirmation hearing, as expected, for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the HHS Secretary, the Health and Human Services Department, a very, very big job in the United States government. As you've heard from the subject matter in these questions, it hits so many different aspects of American life in healthcare.
And so, as we are going to start to digest a lot of what we heard, I am lucky to have a lot of terrific colleagues at the table, starting with Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Can you just give me and all of us, our viewers, your kind of top-line takeaway from what we heard and what we didn't hear?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it was a reminder of just how big a job this is. I mean, he's the CEO of the largest health enterprise in the world if he gets confirmed. And so, you're hearing questions from polio to food to agricultural policy, to Medicare Advantage, all these things that would come under his dominion. And there was -- there was a large variety of questions. There weren't as many questions as I expected there to be about vaccines and autism. There were a few questions about that, but I think it's one of those things that has sort of been asked and answered.
He has obviously these views about vaccines that he has talked about quite a bit in the past. Even though in his opening statement, he was quite conciliatory towards vaccines, saying that he got his children vaccinated, that he is pro-vaccine, even though he has said that he regretted having his children vaccinated. This is the challenge, I think, and we heard a lot of that sort of back and forth.
I think what I was most surprised by, Dana, as much as this Make America Healthy Again has I think pretty significant support from just about everybody --
BASH: Yeah.
GUPTA: We spend close to $5 trillion -- $4.9 trillion on healthcare. We have some of the worst health outcomes in the developed world, and we have not heard really any specifics about what to do. I mean, this is part of the reason I became a medical journalist, was to talk about the issues and the idea that you have potentially a former -- a future HHS Secretary saying, Hey, look, I don't care what people eat, I just want them to know what's in their food. That is not a policy, that's something that people have been doing for a long time. These are complicated issues and I think I'm a little surprised that we're just not hearing a little bit more of the specifics on how exactly some of this gets done. It's not that it's not important. I think everyone thinks it's important, but the wildly contentious issues, I think went just as I thought they were going to go.
[12:40:00]
But I think with regard to the specifics around things that people agree on, we're still not hearing how this country moves forward on some of these things.
BASH: Yeah. I mean, you're right. Kind of the big picture, a reason, a big reason why he is so appealing to so many people in this country, particularly moms and dads of young children, for a variety of reasons as people learn more about what is in American food --
GUPTA: Yes.
BASH: -- they are looking for answers. And I guess a question beyond the lack of specifics that you just talked about that we've heard so far in this hearing is, is the HHS Secretary even equipped to and has -- does he have jurisdiction over a lot of these questions, which is farming and process --
GUPTA: Right.
BASH: -- and procedure and business. And --
GUPTA: And you started to hear some of that. Where are the lines between USDA and HHS when it comes to agricultural policy, when it comes to pesticides? And it's always sprinkled with some of these things like, hey, these pesticides, like AstaZine, could potentially be causing gender dysphoria in human beings. Never been shown to be true. There's been some evidence of it causing this in frogs. But the idea that he takes these wild leaps and says, OK, based on a very small sort of frog study, we may upend policy on our agricultural system based on these types of things. He does the same thing with vaccines, by the way. It's these huge leaps that he makes. BASH: So I want to get you all in, but I do want to -- because you and I were talking, as we were listening about, there were a lot of notable exchanges with Democratic Senators. I just want to play one of them with Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET, (D-CO): Did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bio weapon that targets black and white people, but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?
KENNEDY: I didn't say it was deliberately targeted. I just quoted an NIH funded, an NIH published study.
BENNET: Did you say that it targets black and white people, but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese?
KENNEDY: I quoted a study, your Honor, I quoted an NIH study that showed that.
BENNET: I'll take that as a yes.
(CROSSTALK)
BENNET: I have to move on. I have to move on. Did you say that Lyme disease is a -- is highly likely a materially engineered bio weapon? I made sure I put in the highly likely. Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bio weapon?
KENNEDY: I probably did say that.
BENNET: Did you say that?
KENNEDY: And that's what the developer of (inaudible).
(CROSSTALK)
BENNET: I want all of our colleagues to hear Mr. Kennedy. I want them to hear it. You said yes. Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?
KENNEDY: No, I never said that.
BENNET: OK. I have the record that I'll give to the chairman and he can make his judgment about what you said. Did you write in your book and it's undeniable that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS, yes or no, Mr. Kennedy?
KENNEDY: I'm not sure.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Those are some of the examples of what Sanjay was talking about. I wanted to talk to you on the other side, but I do see that they have come back. That was a quick five minutes. Let's dip (ph) back in.
CRAPO: And I would like to thank the audience again. I know we had a couple of outbursts earlier, but I want to thank the audience for being respectful and encourage the audience to continue to be respectful as we conclude the hearing. With that, Senator Marshall.
SEN. ROGER MARSHALL, (R-KS): Thank you, chairman. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease -- obesity, diabetes, heart disease account for probably 80 percent of health challenges in America. You know how many times I heard my friends across the aisle mention any three of those? I don't know if we've lost the (inaudible) here. Vaccine is a critical issue. I understand that.
I don't see how Mr. Kennedy's position could be any more clear that he's going to support the vaccines. He's going to support the science and empowerment to parents and their doctors to make these choices. 60 percent of Americans have a chronic disease, that there's an epidemic of chronic diseases across the country. And this Make America Healthy Again movement is palpable to me. It started on the campaign trail in 2020 when moms I'd never met, that never involved in the political process, came up to me and said, look, I want to make these choices about my children with my doctor, not the federal government. That it's a very real thing.
Moms, dads, grandparents across the country grab me and say, look, why are -- why do 20 percent of our children now, why are they on a prescription drug?
[12:45:00]
So Mr. Kennedy, what is your prescription to help make America Healthy Again? What is -- what's your vision? What does that look like to you?
KENNEDY: Thank you, Senator Marshall. We're having epidemics of all these chronic illnesses, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases, allergic diseases, obesity. When I -- when my uncle was president, 3 percent of Americans were obese. Today, 74 percent of Americans are over obese or overweight. No other country has anything like this.
In Japan, the obesity rate is still 3 percent. And epidemics are not caused by genes. Genes may provide the vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin. Something is poisoning the American people, and we know that the primary culprits are food -- are change in food supply, the switch to highly chemical intensive processed foods. We have 10,000 ingredients in our country, in our foods. Europeans have only 400.
If you buy McDonald's French fries in our country, there's 11 ingredients, my understanding. In Europe, there's only three. If you buy fruit loops in our country, they're loaded with food dyes, with the yellow dye, red dye, blue dye, and many other ingredients. The same company makes the same product with different ingredients for Canada and Europe.
And at age (ph), we don't have good science on all these things and that is deliberate. That's a deliberate choice not to study the things that are truly making us sick, that are not only contributing to chronic disease, but to mortalities from infectious disease. We need to get a handle on this because if we don't, it's an existential threat.
Our country is not going to be destroyed because we get the marginal tax rate wrong, or because we get one of these culture war issues that we've been talking about today wrong, it's going to be destroyed if we continue down this trajectory of chronic disease. We need to fix our food supply, and that's the number one.
MARSHALL: Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. Certainly, I share your concern with ultra processed foods. On the other end of this food chain are my farmers and ranchers back home. Would you just take a second and share your compassion, how you feel about farmers and ranchers? That they respond to the market. They don't dictate the market. They grow what the market is wanting them to grow.
KENNEDY: And Senator Hawley told me the other day that his brother- in-laws are all farmers, and he said four out of every five of his brother-in-laws has Parkinson's disease, and that kind of cluster we're seeing across farm country, of cancers, autoimmune diseases, obesity, et cetera. And we can now not export American food to Europe because the Europeans won't take our food. That's not good for farmers.
We are also destroying our soil because some of the chemicals that farmers use destroy the microbiome and that causes the erosion of the soil. You can't get water infiltration. Water pools up and it washes the soil off. Agronomists now estimate that we only have a -- if we continue doing these processes, only 60 harvest left before our soil is gone. Farmers have -- are using seeds and chemicals that are over the long term, are costing them and us.
And what we need to do is we need to support the farmers. We need to -- we need the farmers as partners if we're going to make them work. And I don't want a single farmer to go out of business under our watch. I don't regulate farm -- if I'm privileged to be confirmed, I'm not regulating farms, that's under USDA, but I want to partner with all of my decisions with USDA and with the farm community to make sure that we don't lose more farmers in this country.
But we also transition, we offer and incentivize transitions to regenerative agriculture, to no-till agriculture and to less chemically intensive -- and by the way, I've also met with the chemical industry and the fertilizer and herbicide companies, and they want to do the same thing. And I think we're on the trajectory to do that, and we need to incentivize initiatives to accelerate that trajectory.
[12:50:00]
MARSHALL: Mr. Chairman, if I could, the great news is that my farmers in Kansas are selling products to Europe, that today's regenerative practices, soil health, all those things are priorities for Kansas farmers. We are -- many of us are doing many of those things already. We just need it to be more widespread. If I could just wrap up my remarks though is that, again, going back to the big picture here, 60 percent of Americans have a chronic disease. Mr. Kennedy, I believe for such a time as this, that you're not just one of 300 million people, I think that you are the person to lead HHS to Make America Healthy Again. That God has a divine purpose for you, and I look forward to your confirmation and working with you to Make America Healthy Again.
KENNEDY: Thank you, Senator.
CRAPO: Thank you. Senator Warnock.
SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK, (D-GA): Thank you so much, Chairman Crapo and Ranking Member Wyden. It's great to be here. Mr. Kennedy, welcome. Welcome to you and to your family. Thank you for meeting with me a few days ago. I'd like to follow-up, if I might, with some of the issues that we discussed in my office.
I want to talk to you first about the CDC or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I'm proud of the work that the CDC does, proud that it's located in Georgia with more than 10,000 employees in my state. If confirmed, you would be the cabinet secretary over the CDC, representing -- HHS is about 29 percent of the federal budget. CDC is a part of that. Do you agree that the CDC's work is critical to Georgia, critical for our country, and the health of the entire world?
KENNEDY: Yes, Senator.
WARNOCK: Senator Isakson, my Republican predecessor would agree -- would've agreed with that, bless his memory. He was a fierce advocate for the CDC, as am I. The CDC is an agency filled with hardworking, dedicated public health servants. They wake up every single day, working to keep us safe. I think we don't think often enough about their work because it's easy not to celebrate the folks who are protecting you from that, which doesn't appear because of the work that they're doing.
So grateful for the work that the CDC employees do. Some of them are members of my church. I saw that deep commitment firsthand when I visited the CDC just last summer. Mr. Kennedy, you have compared the CDCs work to Nazi death camps. You've compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic Church. You've also said that many of them belong -- this is a direct quote -- many of them belong in jail.
For me, those are disturbing characterizations of the CDC workers that I know, who are trying to keep the American public safe every single day. And as you are presented as the nominee for this position, I need to know, do you stand by those statements that you made in the past or do you retract those previous statements?
KENNEDY: Senator, I don't believe that I ever compared the CDC to Nazi death camps. I support the CDC. My job is not to dismantle or harm the CDC. My job is to empower the scientists, if I'm privileged to be confirmed.
WARNOCK: So you -- so you retract those statements? KENNEDY: I'm not retracting it. I never said it.
WARNOCK: Well, actually, I have a transcript.
KENNEDY: Of me saying that it's a Nazi death camp?
WARNOCK: Yeah, let me read your words. It says that the institution, CDC, and the vaccine program is your description of their work, is more important than the children that it's supposed to protect. And you know, it's the same reason we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church, is because people were able to convince themselves that the institution of the church was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped.
That's pretty provocative language. You said, in another statement, to me, this is like Nazi death camp. I mean, what --
KENNEDY: In another --
(CROSSTALK)
WARNOCK: Let me -- let me finish. I'm just reading your words. I mean, what happens -- what happened to these kids, one in 31 boys in this country, their minds are being robbed from them.
KENNEDY: Yeah, I was not comparing the CDC to Nazi death camps. I was comparing the injury rate to our children to other atrocities here.
[12:55:00]
And I wouldn't compare the -- of course, the CDC to Nazi death camps to any -- to the extent, and any statement that I made has been interpreted that way, yeah, I don't agree with that.
In 2003, the United States Congress Government Oversight Committee ended an over-a-year investigation at the CDC and used almost that same language. They said that the CDC, just one division, one branch, the Immunization Safety Office had put institutional self-interest and pharmaceutical profits ahead of the welfare and the health of American children.
So that was a conclusion by Congress. Not -- and I repeated that.
WARNOCK: So, I'm asking you because you're the nominee for HHS, it sounds like you stand by those statements.
KENNEDY: Senator, my objective is to support CDC. There's nothing I'm going to do that is going to harm CDC. I want to make sure that our science is gold standard science. So, and it's free from that same Government Oversight Investigation Committee, that the panels, the ACEP (ph) panel within CDC, I think 97 percent of the people on it had conflicts.
I don't believe that that's right. I think we need to end those conflicts and make sure that scientists are doing unobstructed science. WARNOCK: So, I want to enter this statement, by the way, into the record without objection.
CRAPO: Without objection.
WARNOCK: Last week, the White House gagged HHS and the CDC, preventing them from communicating all important public health information to anyone, including all of our allies, including our allies in the United States and global disease prevention. Can you just answer yes or no, because I'm running out of time. Do you agree with that action?
KENNEDY: I was not consulted on it, but that's pretty much asking standard operating procedure for incoming administration, Senator.
WARNOCK: So you -- so you agree with the action that gagged HHS and CDC from communicating important public health information to the public?
KENNEDY: That directive made sure that no -- you said public health, only non-essential travel and mass communications were temporarily suspended pending the confirmation of a new HHS secretary. There's standard operating procedure for every administration.
WARNOCK: I get it. You -- I don't think what we've seen over the last several days is standard operation for new administration. I think we're seeing some unprecedented actions, but you agree with it. Last night, members of the CDC along with other federal employees were actually invited to resign, these buyouts, and I got text messages and folks I know work from the CDC -- for the CDC that do this important work who got that note.
And it's really important because my experience is that when you send out that kind of note, the folks who resign are the folks who you least likely want to see resign. They got other options. They're gifted folks. They got a lot of expertise. They have options. A lot of them are doing this work because of their patriotism, because of their commitment. Do you agree with the buyouts that were presented to CDC employees just last night?
KENNEDY: I agree that the vast majority of the scientists and experts at CDC are patriots and good government servants. I --
WARNOCK: Do -- can you tell me yes or no?
KENNEDY: I don't think anybody is going to resign who's committed to Making America Healthy Again.
WARNOCK: Can you -- can you -- can you just answer? Yes? OK. You agree with the buyouts.
In our meeting, I asked you to confirm your support for the Affordable Care Act. You also mentioned that you and President Trump want to fix the ACA by making premiums more affordable. Can you answer me yes or no, as I don't have a lot of time? Did you know that tax credits that help families afford health insurance and save Georgians an average of $531 per month per person are set to expire at the end of the year? Did you know that?
KENNEDY: I do.
CRAPO: We need to move on.
WARNOCK: Do you support Congress extending these tax credits, so that Americans can continue to afford healthcare?
KENNEDY: I -- Congress has to make its own decisions about that. My instructions from President Trump --
WARNOCK: Mr. Chairman, you're saying I'm running out of time, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting the witness to answer yes or no to a yes or no question. And I've got one more question. I'm just --
CRAPO: You are almost at nine minutes, sir.
WARNOCK: Well, I need him to answer yes or no. Yes or no? Did you support --
KENNEDY: I'm not going to answer yes or no to a question that's not susceptible to an honest yes or no answer.
WARNOCK: I can't get an answer.
CRAPO: We need to move on.
WARNOCK: I think that the fact that you find it difficult to answer --