(Washington) Trusted in questions in the American Senate, Donald Trump’s Minister of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr, fiercely defended his measures criticized against vaccines on Thursday when scientists and democrats call for his resignation.
“I do not withdraw the vaccines to anyone,” said this former lawyer contested for his anti-vaccine positions, during a stormy hearing that lasted almost three hours.
His passage before the Senate finance committee should have focused on its policy for 2026 but quickly degenerated into verbal confrontation with democratic parliamentarians.
They accused the Minister of Health of having lied by promising at the start of the year of respecting science and maintaining Americans access to vaccines, which he strongly denied.
“When did you lie, sir: when you declared before this commission that you were not anti-vax, or when you told Americans that there was no safe and effective vaccine? “, Attacked her the Democratic senator Tina Smith, in reference to former remarks of the Minister.
Other parliamentarians on the left, like Ron Wyden, have gone so far as to ask for his departure: “He is in the interest of the country that Robert Kennedy Jr resigns, and if he does not do, Donald Trump must dismiss him,” he thundered.
Inconsistencies
The day before, more than a thousand current and past employees of the ministry had called him to leave his duties in an open letter, saying that he “endangered” the population.
Drawing these accusations as a whole, the Minister accused the Democrats of “inventing things to scare people” and to be in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry.
In a few months, “RFK JR” began a profound overhaul of American health and vaccination policy, dismissing renowned experts, restricting access to COVVI-19 vaccines or suppressing funds for the development of new vaccines.
So many measures which have indignant many experts and medical institutions, and which worry even in the ranks of the Republican Party.
Several conservative senators interviewed the Minister, in a friendly tone, however, on his vaccination policy, Thom Tillis even going so far as to point certain inconsistencies between his remarks and actions.
Defining his social networks, vice-president JD Vance attacked parliamentarians who “tried to teach” to the Minister: “You tell anything,” he said.
“Confidence person”
This hearing occurred a few days after the polemical dismissal of the director of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC), the main health agency in the country.
This scientist had assured through his lawyers that he was pushed outside in particular his refusal to validate “non -scientific and dangerous directives”.
What “RFK JR” denied, offering a rather surprising justification on Thursday: “I told her that she had to resign because when I asked her” are you a trustworthy person? “, She replied” no “,” he said.
He also insisted on the “need for a new bold direction” and “competent” at the head of the CDCs, whose “disastrous” management of COVVI-19.
Former lawyer respected in environmental law, Robert Kennedy Jr has relayed years for many conspiracy theories and false information on vaccines.
Many experts fear that the population will lose confidence in vaccines, which could result in a return of missing contagious diseases, such as measles, which killed several deaths in the United States in 2025.
And which could lead to dividing the country even more, the vaccines being at the heart of a political show between Republicans and Democrats.
Florida, a conservative state, announced this week that he wants to remove all vaccination obligations while Western Democratic States, California in mind, want to make a piece to make parts for vaccinosceptic policies.
