Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for Operation Warp Speed, but he also decried the U.S. response to COVID as the worst in the world.
The Health and Human Services secretary and known vaccine skeptic appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, where he was grilled about the turmoil at the CDC, accusations that he was undermining science, and concerns over his department limiting access to the COVID vaccine.
When it was Republican Senator Bill Cassidy’s turn to question RFK Jr., the physician noted that he had said Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for Operation Warp Speed.
That was the public-private partnership initiated at the start of the pandemic in the U.S. in 2020 to develop and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, during Trump’s first term.
“Do you agree with me that the president deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?” Cassidy asked.
“Yeah, absolutely, Senator,” Kennedy responded.
That’s when the GOP lawmaker calmly tore into the HHS secretary, noting that he told Senator Mike Bennet that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID.
“I did not say that,” Kennedy responded. What he had floated was the threat of myocarditis and pericarditis from the vaccine in teenagers, which the FDA had said was eight in a million.
Cassidy also pointed out that Kennedy engaged in multiple lawsuits attempting to restrict access to the vaccine.
“It surprises me that you think so highly of Operation Warp Speed when, as an attorney, you attempted to restrict access,” Cassidy said.
The senator also noted that under Kennedy, the department canceled $500 million in contracts using the mRNA platform, which is used for the COVID vaccine developed with Operation Warp Speed.
Cassidy argued that Kennedy was being inconsistent.
“The reason that Operation Warp Speed was genius is it did something that had never been done,“ Kennedy said. ”It got the vaccine to market that was perfectly matched to the virus at that time.”
Kennedy also argued the effort brought in other therapeutics for treatment and claimed there were no mandates. He said he was actually litigating President Joe Biden’s mandates. The former president issued orders mandating vaccines for larger companies or weekly testing, as well as federal workforce requirements.
Cassidy called out Kennedy, claiming that his department did not want to take vaccines away, reading out examples of people who could no longer get to the COVID vaccine or were confused.
“I would say we’re effectively denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.
Kennedy shot back, “You’re wrong.”
Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan later in the hearing circled back to Cassidy’s line of questioning on Operation Warp Speed and called out Kennedy’s complete reversal since last year.
Hassan praised the operation and said she agreed with Trump when he called it a “monumental national achievement.”
The Democratic senator went on to accuse Kennedy of trying to undermine one of the operation’s biggest achievements. As she spoke, her staff held up a poster of a Kennedy social media post from 2024 where he called the president weak.
“Operation Warp Speed and the lockdowns were the most devastating impact of President Trump’s weakness, but not the only one,” Kennedy wrote last June.
She asked Kennedy if it was a monumental achievement, as Trump has said. Kennedy responded: “Yes, it was.”
But while Kennedy hailed Operation Warp Speed on Thursday, he also made some damning comments about the pandemic response, which took place while Trump was still president. He said the CDC failed miserably during the COVID pandemic and argued that the U.S. did worse than any other country in the world.
When grilled over how many Americans died of COVID during the pandemic by Senator Mark Warner, Kennedy could not give him an answer. He also pushed back on studies about the COVID vaccine saving millions of lives, saying, “It’s possible.”
Later in the hearing, GOP Senator Thom Tillis also said he could not conclude based on Kennedy’s statements where he actually stood on Operation Warp Speed.
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