Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke to the U.S. Senate for a contentious hearing on Thursday after he fired top officials at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the director was forced out.
MSNBC cut from the first hour of the Senate hearing to call in medical doctors to fact-check the claims from Kennedy's statements.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said that he doesn't think the Republican Senators fully realize "just how much of an anti-vaccine zealot he is. And he's a zealot against vaccines because he believes that vaccination causes chronic disease. He doesn't say that here, but he certainly said that many times before."
"He believes that vaccination has simply substituted chronic diseases for infectious diseases. So, therefore, his war on vaccines, he believes, is a war against chronic diseases," he added.
Dr. Vin Gupta, MSNBC's medical contributor, explained that other false statements from Kennedy involve his claim that the so-called "big, beautiful bill," President Donald Trump's 2026 budget, created some groundbreaking funding for rural hospitals. In fact, he said, it cuts the funds.
"I think it's easy for him to be dishonest here, not to be held accountable," Dr. Gupta began. "They talked a lot about the Rural Health Transformation Fund, as though it's some balm for the 'big, beautiful bill' and the impact it had on Medicaid, on Medicaid specifically. Just for your viewers, it's a $50 billion funding mechanism to support rural hospitals over the course of the next six years. It does not come close to offsetting the $807 billion that they're cutting that also impact rural hospitals. Every hospital across the country about 1 in 5 health care dollars in the U.S. are Medicaid dollars. So, this notion that the rural health transformation fund is transformative and will be a boon is false.'
He also explained that the idea that physicians and health care providers love him is false.
"Frankly, from my vantage point, nothing can be further from the truth," said Dr. Gupta. He cited 79 medical societies that have banded together to counter Kennedy's "guidance" that isn't backed by science, research or fact.
"They wouldn't have to do that if they were in favor of his policies. So this notion that he's in is positively received by the majority of health care providers across the country — again, there's no proof points to that," he said.
Kennedy also blamed "chronic disease" on the previous administration, saying that it was somehow their fault.
"I direct all your viewers to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. They have beautiful visualizations of what impacts our communities across the country. And the epidemic of chronic disease dates back decades," he said, calling it a legitimate health care problem that has nothing to do with President Joe Biden.
Dr. Richard Besser, the former acting director for the CDC, repeated his previous conversation with CDC Director, Dr. Susan Monarez. She told him last week that she was asked to do something illegal and contrary to science. When she refused, she was told to resign. When she refused, she was fired.
See the full discussion in the clip below or at the link here.