In a contentious Senate hearing on Thursday, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr engaged in fiery exchanges with senators on both sides of the aisle who questioned his record in office, the administration’s vaccine policies and the ouster of top officials and advisers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

During the hearing by the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), many senators used their allotted five minutes to make impassioned speeches and air their grievances, often leaving Kennedy little or no time to respond.

The New York Times described Kennedy, who was visibly annoyed at times, as “remarkably salty and dismissive with senators at times today.”

“You don’t want to talk,” Kennedy told Senator Elizabeth Smith (Democratic-Minnesota). “You want to harangue and have partisan politics. I want to solve these problems.”

Senators Elizabeth Warren (Democratic-Massachusetts) and Raphael Warnock (Democratic-Georgia) called for Kennedy to resign or be fired by President Donald Trump during the hearing. On Thursday morning, Democratic senators on the committee issued a statement calling for his resignation.

Kennedy clashed with senators over the administration’s recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) narrowing of the Covid-19 vaccine approvals, the recent cancellation of $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccines, Kennedy’s restructuring of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices) and the upcoming agenda for that committee, which will address the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendations.

Several senators also pressed Kennedy on whether Operation Warp Speed was a great accomplishment, and raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid and funding for rural hospitals.

Kennedy shot back at his critics, promising to fix the “malpractice” within the public health agencies, and touting his agency’s many accomplishments since he took the helm.

He blasted the CDC, which he said, “is the most corrupt agency in HHS,” for its history of failing to protect Americans’ health, particularly during the Covid-19 crisis, during which the US “did worse than any country in the world.”

“The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” he said, adding, “That’s why we need bold, competent and creative new leadership at CDC. People who are able and willing to chart a new course.”

After Committee Chair Mike Crapo (Republican-Idaho) kicked off what he predicted would be a “spirited debate,” ranking member Ron Wyden (Democratic-Oregon) attacked Kennedy for the “costs, chaos and corruption” he allegedly brought to the agency.

That was also the title of a report Wyden co-authored with Senator Angela Alsobrooks (Democratic-Maryland) and submitted to the record, summarising their take on Kennedy’s tenure at HHS.

Wyden called Kennedy a liar and made what he called an “unprecedented” request that Kennedy be formally sworn in, presumably so the committee could later prove he lied under oath. Crapo refused the request, which isn’t customary in Senate hearings.

Wyden then launched a long attack on Kennedy’s “agenda,” which he said is “fundamentally cruel and defies common sense.”

Kennedy shot back: “Senator, you’ve sat in that chair for how long? 20, 25 years? While the chronic disease in our children went up to 76 per cent, and you said nothing. You never asked the question, why it’s happening. ‘Why is this happening?’ Today, for the first time in 20 years, we learned that infant mortality has increased in our country. It’s not because I came in here. It’s because of what happened during the Biden administration that we’re going to end.”

Several senators referred to an op-ed written by Monarez and published on Thursday morning in The Wall Street Journal. Monarez, who was fired last week by Trump, claimed Kennedy pressured her “to compromise science itself.”

“I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote.

When asked, Kennedy disputed Monarez’s account of her firing. “I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, ‘Are you a trustworthy person?’ And she said ‘no,’” he said.

Wyden quoted Monarez to Kennedy and asked whether he had pressured her to preapprove recommendations. “No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy responded.

So she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?” Wyden asked.

“Yes, sir,” Kennedy responded.

Kennedy said the opposite was true. Monarez indicated she would refuse to endorse any CDC vaccine panel recommendations even before the committee met to make them, he said. He said he asked her to walk back that stance so she would hear the recommendations and their rationale before making any decision, but Monarez refused.

Several senators, including Smith and Warren, accused Kennedy of going back on his commitment and “taking away vaccines” from the American people.

Warren cited the FDA’s decision to end emergency use authorisation of Covid-19 vaccines and limit approvals of the vaccines to people at high risk. However, HHS also confirmed the vaccines would be available for anyone who decided they wanted them anyway.

Defending the move, Kennedy told Warren, “We’re not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication, is that what I should be doing?”

“I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator,” he later told Warren.

Senators accused Kennedy of holding a contradictory position on Operation Warp Speed, which Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican-Los Angeles) said deserved a Nobel Prize, but few gave him time to respond to the accusations.

Several senators also lambasted Kennedy for not acknowledging that the Covid-19 vaccines saved millions of lives.

Senator Roger Marshall (Republican-Kansas), a physician who supported Kennedy and spent much of his five minutes questioning why the hepatitis B vaccine is given to all babies, asked Kennedy to respond.

Kennedy said that when the Covid-19 vaccines were first rolled out, they were necessary because the virus was dangerous but that the vaccines were significantly less necessary now.

“The virus has mutated, it’s much less dangerous, where there’s a lot of natural immunity and herd immunity, and so the calculus is different and it’s complicated.”

Kennedy added: “They think I’m being evasive because I won’t make a kind of a statement that’s almost religious in nature, ‘it saved a million lives.’ Well, there is no data to support that. There’s no study. There’s modelling studies. There’s faulty data.”

Senator Ron Johnson (Republican-Wisconsin), who thanked Kennedy for “putting up with this abuse,” backed Kennedy’s statements on the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccines and said federal health agencies hid the early signals for myo and pericarditis.

At the end of the hearing, Crapo offered Kennedy the floor to make a statement if there were things he wanted to clarify.

“I think I’ll have mercy on everybody here,” Kennedy said. “Let’s adjourn.”

• A Tell Media report / By Brenda Baletti – A senior reporter for The Defender.