Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) confronted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his past controversial remarks about an agency he would oversee as the nation's top health official.
Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared Wednesday before the Senate Finance Committee, where the Georgia Democrat asked Kennedy whether he still agreed with his past comparison of the Centers for Disease Control to Nazi death camps.
"You have compared the CDC's work to Nazi death camps, you've compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic Church," Warnock said. "You've also said that many of them belong – this is a direct quote – many of them belong in jail. For me, those are disturbing characterizations of the CDC workers that I know who are trying to keep the American public safe every single day, and as you are presented as the nominee for this position, I need to know, do you stand by those statements that you you made in the past, or do you retract those previous statements?"
Kennedy denied ever having made those comparisons and insisted he supported the CDC's work.
"My job is not to dismantle or harm the CDC," Kennedy said. "My job is to empower the scientists, if I'm privileged to be confirmed."
Warnock asked the nominee if he retracted those statements, but Kennedy denied ever saying it.
"Well, actually, I have a transcript!" Warnock said, as Kennedy acted surprised.
"Of me saying that it's a Nazi death camp?" Kennedy said.
The senator then offered to read the transcript.
"It says that 'the institution, CDC and the vaccine program,' is your description of their work, 'is more important than the children that it's supposed to protect,'" Warnock said, reading from the transcript of Kennedy's previously unreported remarks in 2019 to a private audience at AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children.
“You know, 'it’s the same reason we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church,'” Warnock continued, reading from the transcript. “'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.'"
"That's pretty provocative language," Warnock added. "You said in another statement, 'to me, this is like Nazi death camp.' Let me let me finish, I'm just reading your words."
Kennedy again denied comparing the CDC to Nazi death camps, but also clarified what he might have meant.
"I was comparing the injury rate to our children to other atrocities," Kennedy said, "and I wouldn't compare them, of course, the CDC to Nazi death camps, to any extent, to the extent that any statement that I made has been interpreted that way."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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