[Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face intense scrutiny at his Senate confirmation hearing to become President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary due to his history of controversial and inflammatory comments. Kennedy is expected to face tough questions from Democrats regarding his false claims that vaccines cause autism and his conspiratorial rhetoric on federal agencies and other health policies.
Kennedy has also made incendiary comments in the past, such as comparing Covid-19 pandemic mandates to Nazi Germany and apartheid laws in South Africa. He has also baselessly suggested that human-made chemicals in water systems could turn children gay or transgender. Most famously, Kennedy has promoted the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism in children and that they are widely unsafe.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine profile has risen during the Covid-19 pandemic as he made conspiratorial and sometimes racist accusations against the Covid vaccines and public health officials. He has claimed that Covid-19 is “ethnically targeted” to disproportionately attack Caucasian and Black people, and that vitamin D is an effective remedy to Covid.
Kennedy’s stance on abortion has received less attention than other subjects, but it is likely to be the subject of Republican scrutiny. Prior to switching his Democratic presidential bid to run as an independent, Kennedy argued that abortion decisions should remain solely with women during the first trimester and rejected government interference in personal medical choices.
Kennedy has also peddled AIDS denialism conspiracy theories, which falsely claim that HIV does not cause AIDS. He has long questioned the “theology that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS” and has baselessly alleged that Fauci, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the AIDS epidemic, spent decades crafting public responses to a series of real and concocted viral outbreaks to create public fear and covet more power and control.
If confirmed, Kennedy would command a budget of more than $1 trillion to regulate food and drugs, approve and recommend vaccines, and manage the health insurance programs that provide coverage to millions of Americans.
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