Outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) launched his most aggressive public attack on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an interview broadcast Sunday, accusing him of running America’s public health system “upon a foundation of lies” and breaking promises he made to secure Cassidy’s vote for confirmation.
“If you build public health upon a foundation of lies, then you’re going to have the absence of adequate public health,” Cassidy, a gastroenterologist and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”
“You need to build everything in life on truth. I go back to being a doctor. You got to search for the truth and use the truth for your solutions.”
“Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan had asked Cassidy about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website about vaccines, which includes the header “Vaccines do not cause autism” with an asterisked footnote claiming the statement only remained online due to an agreement with Cassidy.
Above the heading, the website features a list of “key points,” including: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Another “key point” claims that “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
“I can tell you that that broken agreement that I had with the secretary, that that was not supposed to happen … This is not truth, and there’ll be a consequence of it, and that consequence, unfortunately, will be borne by those who actually are influenced by it,” Cassidy told Brennan. “I will say, except for news anchors, very few people read the CDC website. And so I’m not sure how much influence that has, how much negative influence that has.”
The senator, who lost his bid for a third term in Louisiana’s Republican primary last month, also told Brennan that RFK Jr. “has not restored trust in public health, and you can see the administration, if you believe the press accounts, are trying to limit his range of activity. Polling shows that the American people understand that vaccines are important, and for someone to be out there saying that they’re not goes against their experience … So I think you can see the administration responding to the American people’s awareness that folks should be vaccinated.”
Cassidy also attacked Kennedy for withholding funding from overseas vaccination programs.
“We are in a global geopolitical competition with China,” he said. “One thing that’s helped us tremendously in Sub-Saharan Africa is the PEPFAR [HIV prevention and treatment] program and immunization programs, in which people there thank the United States and are predisposed to work with us. That is soft power. It is better than sending troops, it’s cheaper than sending troops, it’s a humane thing to do. And by the way, it’s in the US interest. Bobby was opposed to it because he had some foolish notion about the dangers of vaccines, but instead we see more people are dying of disease.”
Cassidy, 68, voted both to advance the nomination of Kennedy, 72, out of committee and to confirm him on the Senate floor, telling Brennan he wanted RFK Jr. to be in a position where he could be subject to congressional oversight.
“Bobby Kennedy was going to have the ear of the president. The president seems to be fascinated with the Kennedys,” he said. “So, either he was going to be in a position where there were guardrails, and I did have commitments made as to [the] kind of guardrails, or he was going to be appointed White House health czar, in which case he would have the president’s ear without the guardrails … That’s kind of my choice. And I chose, you can criticize it, but I chose to have the one with the guardrails.”
Kennedy insisted before a House committee in June of last year that “I’m complying with all the agreements I made with Sen. Cassidy.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to Cassidy’s claims.
