RFK compared CDC to 'Nazi death camps' and child vaccines to church sex abuse: report

A new report unearthed years-old comments made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — President-elect Donald Trump's nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services — in which Kennedy said a separate federal health agency harms children similar to "Nazi death camps."

That's according to a bombshell report published Wednesday night by NBC News, which surfaced remarks he made over years dating back as far as 2013 to private audiences at a conference for parents of children with autism.

“The word 'fascism' in Italian means a bundle of sticks, and what it means is the bundle is more important than the sticks,” Kennedy told audience members of the AutismOne conference. “The institution, CDC and the vaccine program, is more important than the children that it’s supposed to protect."

Kennedy added: “It’s the same reason we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. Because people were able to convince themselves that the institution, the church, was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped. And everybody kept their mouth shut. The press, the prosecutors, the priests, the bishops, the monsignors, the Vatican, and even the parents of the kids who just didn’t want to believe it was happening, or believed so much in the church they were unwilling to criticize it. And you know, that is the perfect metaphor for what’s happening to us. There have to be parents who stand up and say, 'We don’t give a s---.'"

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Additionally, Kennedy called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a "cesspool of corruption" filled with people who profit off Americans and who hurt children in a manner similar to “Nazi death camps.”

Kennedy and Trump's transition team didn't respond to NBC's requests for comment.

Kennedy stands to take over a massive agency dedicated to protecting the health of Americans. It represents about a quarter of all federal government spending.

He's faced intense questions and backlash over his controversial statements, including pushing various baseless conspiracy theories, including that the federal government secretly orchestrated the COVID-19 pandemic and broadly calling vaccines into question, even claiming: "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective."

The World Health Organization touts vaccination as one of the "best ways to prevent diseases."

"Childhood vaccines save 3.5 to 5 million lives every year," the organization wrote on its website. "In 2021, COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have saved 14.4 million lives globally."