President Donald Trump reacted to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Senate Finance Committee testimony on Thursday, which came after a week of fast-moving shakeups at the nation's health agency.
It came a week after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) significantly narrowed access to the COVID-19 vaccine, a move that precipitated a public fallout and ousting of the newly installed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Susan Monarez. Four top CDC officials also resigned in protest.
Trump told ABC News that RFK Jr. "means very well" and that he heard his HHS Secretary "did very well" during his hearing on Capitol Hill, but noted he did not watch the hearing.
Trump said Kennedy has "got a different take" and "we want to listen to all of those things." He added that Kennedy is not "your standard talk" in his vaccine views but said, "I like the fact that he's different."
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The president's comments came after Kennedy clashed repeatedly with Democratic and Republican senators alike, many of whom questioned Kennedy's handling of vaccine policy.
During the hearing, the top Democrat on the committee, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden described the U.S. as being in "the midst of a health care calamity."
"Last week, most of the senior leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were fired, or they resigned after refusing to bow to Robert Kennedy's unceasing crusade against vaccines," he said. "Families are confused. They're scared about who to trust, about their health care. Robert Kennedy and Donald Trump have done so much to feed that mistrust."
Kennedy, addressing the "recent shakeup" at the CDC, doubled down on his decisions.
"These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world's oldest and public health agency, with the central mission of protecting Americans from crime from infectious disease," he said.
Thursday marks the first time Kennedy has faced questions from senators since May, when he testified before a Senate committee and a House committee, defending the massive cuts to the department's workforce carried out in April.
The new FDA approval for COVID shots allows for people who are aged 65 and older to get the vaccine, or younger Americans who have an underlying condition that puts them at a higher risk of severe illness from the virus.
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Public health officials and pharmacist groups have said the change will make it harder for young and healthy people to get the vaccine -- should they still choose to -- and raises questions about where they can get it or whether insurance will cover it.
The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which discusses vaccine data and makes recommendations for which vaccines Americans should get and when, is going to weigh in on the FDA's latest change, further informing insurance companies and pharmacies of how to carry out the policy.
But ACIP is also going to discuss a slate of different vaccines, including the COVID vaccine; hepatitis B vaccines; the measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine.
In June, Kennedy replaced all 17 sitting members of the committee with his own hand-selected members, including some who have expressed vaccine-skeptic views fervently sought to discredit the safety and efficacy of mRNA COVID vaccines.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, said he had spoken to other members of his caucus who agreed that they needed to investigate what potential changes Kennedy and the CDC committee were weighing to the childhood vaccine recommendations.
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"The issue is about children's health, and there are rumors, allegations, that children's health, which is at issue here, might be endangered by some of the decisions that are purported to be made. I don't know what's true," Cassidy said. "I know that we need to get there. And I've talked to members of my Republican Caucus, several of them. They've agreed with me that we need to get at it."
Cassidy, who pushed Kennedy during his confirmation hearings to issue support for vaccines and publicly struggled over his vote for him, has tasked the committee he chairs, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), to do "oversight" of Monarez' ousting, he wrote on X last week.
Cassidy maintained that he isn't "presupposing someone is right or wrong." "I just know we've got to figure it out," Cassidy said.
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Cassidy has also called for the CDC meeting to be postponed until "significant oversight has been conducted," citing "serious allegations" about the "meeting agenda, membership and lack of scientific process."
Sen. Bill Cassidy votes aye at the final moment as the Senate Finance Committee holds a roll call vote to approve the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department, at the Capitol, Feb. 4, 2025.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is on the HELP committee with Cassidy, told reporters on Wednesday that she is "concerned" and "alarmed" by Monarez's firing.
"I know that the president has the right to fire whomever he wishes when it comes to that kind of appointment, but I don't see any justification for it," Collins said.
Monarez, who was in the job for only a month, was pushed out after she declined to fire top officials and support Kennedy's vaccine policy changes in a meeting with the secretary early last week, a source familiar with her conversations with the secretary told ABC News.
"When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted," Monarez's attorneys Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said in a statement late last week.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters President Donald Trump had fired Monarez because she "was not aligned with the president's mission to make America healthy again."
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"It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5," Leavitt said. "This woman has never received a vote in her life, and the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission."
Other CDC officials who followed Monarez out the door included:
Deb Houry, Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and ScienceDr. Dan Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious DiseasesDr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory DiseasesDr. Jennifer Layden, Director for the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology.
The officials cited the political climate and a refusal to accept science that didn't align with Kennedy's beliefs.
Daskalakis, in an interview on ABC News' "This Week", said he thought the changes Kennedy has so far made are "the tip of the iceberg."
In addition to the recent FDA changes for the COVID vaccine, Kennedy has also canceled up to $500 million in research and development for mRNA vaccines and changed the COVID vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.
"I mean, from my vantage point as a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming. I may be wrong. But based on what I'm seeing, based on what I've heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, or ACIP, they're really moving in an ideological direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination," Daskalakis said.
Federal workers wait in line to access to the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building that houses the US Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2025.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Kennedy, when he testified in his confirmation hearings to be health secretary in January, denied that he was anti-vaccine and said he supports "the childhood schedule" for vaccinations.
"I am pro-vaccine. I am going to support the vaccine program. I want kids to be healthy, and I'm coming in here to get rid of the conflicts of interest within the agency, make sure that we have gold standard, evidence-based science," Kennedy said.
When pressed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Kennedy committed to supporting the measles and polio vaccines.
"Senator, I support the measles vaccine, I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines," Kennedy said.
ABC News' Selina Wang contributed to this report.