Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) used his Thursday interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes to tear into Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the avowed anti-vaccine and anti-medicine conspiracy theorist President Donald Trump put in charge of the nation's health policy.
This comes as a wave of senior policy officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resign en masse in protest of the Trump administration's move to oust the agency's director.
"Well, senator, first, your reaction to what is happening at CDC right now?" asked Hayes.
"Well, it's horrifying," said Welch bluntly.
"I mean, there's two things," he continued. "One, very inspiring, and the other very alarming. And the inspiring part of this is the folks who resigned in solidarity with their director, who was standing up for science and for public health, was the pressing is that RFK is a lunatic. I mean, he is setting us back a century on public health. He basically does not believe that scientific basis for vaccines is valid. And that the answer that he gave to Senator [Angela] Alsobrooks, my colleague, shows what a nut he is."
"So you literally have somebody who has the confidence of a person with no knowledge, but with a family pedigree and a certainty that because he's a Kennedy, he's right, that is dismantling the CDC," said Welch. "And I've got to say, it's pretty inspiring to me that the folks at the CDC ... in top leadership positions are out there advocating for the benefit of the public health of all of us in this country. Whether you're in a red state or a blue state, whether you voted for Trump or you voted for Harris, we have to have vaccines to protect us against diseases that could kill us if we don't have them."
Watch the video below or at the link here.