Hearing Lowlights: RFK Jr. Repeats Lies to Project His Failures Onto Others

Washington D.C. – During Trump Health Secretary RFK Jr.’s latest two of seven back-to-back Congressional hearings, Kennedy stuck to his desperate strategy of denying his well-documented anti-science record while echoing familiar falsehoods to run from accountability. Protect Our Care examines Kennedy’s most egregious and risible lies from his testimony today that underscores Donald Trump’s incredibly bad judgement in ever hiring him and putting public health at risk.  

• RFK JR. LIE: “We’re also cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse.”
  

• • REALITY: A bombshell new report found that Donald Trump has granted clemency to individuals convicted of more than $2 billion in health care fraud cases.

“Secretary Kennedy has a funny definition of ‘cracking down’ on fraud and abuse considering his boss Donald Trump keeps letting his wealthy scammer friends off the hook for billions of dollars in health care fraud that drives up costs for everyone else,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Protect Our Care’s Public Health Project. 

• LIE: “There is no cut to Medicaid.”
  

• • REALITY: According to the CBO – the independent, non-partisan congressional referee – the Trump-GOP Big Ugly law slashed over a trillion dollars with a T from Medicaid and ACA marketplaces, jeopardizing coverage for 15 million Americans. Those cuts have already taken undeniable and painful effect for millions of Americans: three million Americans have already lost their Medicaid coverage since the law’s passage; states starved of federal Medicaid resources are now choosing between dropping coverage, raising taxes, or going into debt; hundreds of hospitals dependent on Medicaid are now on the brink of closure — all to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires.

“RFK Jr. thinks repeating his pants-on-fire Medicaid lie often enough will make it true. But there’s no denying the cruel realities already taking hold under Trump’s nearly trillion-dollar Big Ugly cuts to Medicaid, including 3 million Americans stripped of coverage so far and counting. Kennedy desperately wants to hide behind increased total Medicaid spending that’s attributable to population increases and inflation, but the very real Trump cuts are actively punishing the most vulnerable American patients including seniors in nursing homes while stretching state budgets to the breaking point,” said Hancock.

• RFK JR. LIE: “I’ve never been anti-vax”

  REALITY: C’mon. 

• • “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” declared RFK Jr. in a July 2023 appearance on Lex Fridman’s podcast.

  • Kennedy once called vaccination a “Holocaust,” repeating his claims about autism and comparing it to genocide.

  • A 2019 study found that “the majority of Facebook advertisements spreading misinformation about vaccines were funded by two anti-vaccine groups”, including Children’s Health Defense which was founded and led at the time by RFK Jr.

  • Kennedy told a podcast in 2021 that, “our job is to resist and to talk about [vaccines] to everyone.” Kennedy claimed that if he sees someone “on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get vaccinated.’”

  • In 2019, Kennedy visited Samoa at the invitation of a local anti-vaccine influencer. At the time the island nation was attempting to get its vaccination program back on track after two children died following a nurse’s error in mixing measles vaccines. Kennedy met with the Samoan prime minister and prominent local anti-vaccine activists. A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children.

  • During an interview on Fox News last March, Kennedy falsely claimed with no evidence that the MMR vaccine leads to “deaths every year” among other blatant falsehoods.

  • RFK Jr.’s HHS will reportedly “will likely appeal” a U.S. District Court decision last month to grant a preliminary injunction against the his CDC’s reckless and likely “illegal” downgrade of the children vaccine schedule, with RFK Jr.’s chief spokesman declaring: “HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned.” 

  • RFK Jr. has taken no known steps to squash a major new effort by his “longtime allies” to “repeal [state] laws that for decades have required children to be vaccinated against measles, polio and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten.”

“RFK Jr. denying he’s ever been anti-vax is like Donald Trump claiming he was never friends with Jeffrey Epstein. The same guy who recklessly declared “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” now says he’s never been anti-vax? GTFOH, RFK Jr.,” said Hancock.

• LIE: “The [measles] problem is not me.”
  

• • REALITY: Over 4,000 new measles have been confirmed since Kennedy’s nomination, mostly among the unvaccinated and many of whom took to heart his fabricated, deathly warnings against the MMR vaccine on national platforms. 
    

“For over 20 years, RFK Jr. has abused his celebrity to smear vaccines, including the proven safe and effective MMR shot, with no credible science backing him up. It worked to scare more people into vaccine hesitancy, which now fuels the measles crisis today — a crisis that has everything to do with him because he’s doing nothing to address it and making matters worse by continuing to fan the flames of vaccine skepticism.  Kennedy is spending taxpayer money on self-promotional podcasts and ads, but not a cent on ads promoting the MMR vaccine in the face of major outbreaks. That says it all,” said Hancock.

• LIE: “[Trump OMB Director] Russ Vought doesn’t want to cut NIH programs.”
  • REALITY:  Billions of dollars have been cut from NIH since Trump took office, affecting thousands of projects and scientists and putting cures and drug development at risk. 

“Trump’s budget director Russ Vought is notorious for trying to dismantle Social Security and Medicare for seniors for decades. It’s laughable to suggest that Vought is losing any sleep over the NIH cuts he authored that are now setting back decades the research and innovation into the cures of tomorrow,” said Hancock.

• LIE: “Only people who lost coverage were people who were never entitled to coverage.”
  • REALITY: Real stories from real Americans who’ve lost their coverage are emerging every day. And new data from the State Marketplace Network shows a growing affordability crisis as Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment declines across multiple state-based ACA marketplaces. After Republicans slashed $1 trillion from Medicaid and ripped away the ACA tax credits to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations, families are being forced off their health care coverage as premium costs skyrocket. The report finds that over 900,000 people have disenrolled since January 1, adding to the 1.3 million Americans who have been forced to drop ACA coverage through the national Marketplace during the Open Enrollment period. 

• LIE: “We have done more for maternal health than any administration in our history.”
  • REALITY: The Trump FY2027 budget proposal would eliminate support for some of the most critical maternal health programs in the country, such as Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs), Perinatal Quality Collaboratives (PQCs), the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), and Healthy Start. 

• LIE: “Americans no longer pay more than people in other wealthy countries for the same medications.”
  • REALITY: There’s no evidence that Trump has lowered drug prices for Americans. While Democrats have saved seniors and taxpayers billions on drugs, Trump’s drug pricing executive order was Big Pharma’s Christmas wishlist — his “deals” pad their bottom lines with tax breaks and tariff exemptions, and TrumpRx fails to save the vast majority Americans a single penny.

• LIE:  “MRNA vaccines don’t work on respiratory viruses.” // “We only cut funding for vaccines that don’t work.”

  REALITY: 
  

• • American Lung Association said MRNA vaccine research cuts will have “devastating consequences”

  • Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health calls it “nonsense” to say that MRNA is ineffective against respiratory viruses.

  • A recent study found that RFK’s MRNA vaccine cancellation could cost almost 50,000 lives a year. 

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