Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slammed a Democrat senator to his face, calling him “ridiculous” and accusing him of “talking gibberish” during a bizarre exchange in the Senate, Thursday.

Kennedy Jr. was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on President Trump’s health care agenda following the recent resignations of four top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez less than a month into her tenure.

“The CDC once stood as the world’s most trusted guardian of public health. But bureaucracy, politicized science, and mission creep corroded its mission and destroyed public trust,” Kennedy said in a video statement Wednesday. “My mission is clear: restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease, drive innovation, and rebuild trust through transparency and competence.”

In his opening statement, the Secretary explained how under his leadership U.S. public health policy is transforming in a “once-in-a-generation shift” from a “sick-care” system into “a true health care system that addresses the root causes of chronic disease, embraces radical transparency in government, and champions gold-standard science as the foundation upon which all of our decisions are made.”

Democrats have launched a resistance campaign in response to the policy shifts, with lawmakers and disgruntled public health officials calling on Kennedy to step down from his position.

More than a thousand current and former HHS employees signed on to a letter this week claiming that Kennedy is “compromising the health of the nation.”

Understanding their mission, Democrat after Democrat pummeled Kennedy with hostile questions Wednesday morning, repeatedly interrupting him when he tried to answer.

Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) deployed this tactic to a surreal degree, accusing Kennedy of being evasive after preventing him from answering questions.

Luján began by citing the resignation letter of former CDC official/MonkeyPox Czar Demetre Daskalakis, who is infamous for being an S&M leather bondage devotee, an apologist for promiscuous gay sex, and a Satanist.

Luján praised Daskalakis as a “qualified expert” and said the HHS Secretary should have been receiving briefings from him.

Daskalakis had complained in his open letter that neither he nor any other CDC subject matter experts on his team had had the opportunity to brief the Secretary.  Luján asked Kennedy if anyone from the CDC had briefed him.

“I’m curious who you’re listening to since it’s clear you’re not listening to qualified experts like Dr. Daskalakis,” Luján said, reading from a script. “Can you give the committee the name of the person?”

Kennedy attempted to justify why he wasn’t briefed by Daskalakis, explaining “I don’t consider Dr. Daskalakis …” but the senator interrupted him before he could finish his sentence.

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Secretary!  The question I have for you is can you give me a name of who you’re being briefed by?”

“I’m getting briefed all the time by the CDC…” Kennedy began, before getting interrupted again.

“Just a name!” Luján interjected.

“Dr. William Thompson’s one name,” Kennedy answered, going on to offer Luján “a whole list” of other people who also brief him, but the senator interrupted him again.

“Mr. Secretary, that’s not a hard question!” Luján exclaimed, as if to suggest that Kennedy’s offer of total transparency was somehow evasive.

The senator then brought up an HHS autism study that he claimed was timed to be released before an upcoming Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting “to justify taking vaccines away from Americans.” Reading from his notes, Luján said that because autism affects millions of children, “I guess you’d have the nation’s top medical experts working on this.”

“Mr. Kennedy, you hired a man named David Geier to conduct this study, is that correct?” Luján asked.

“No,” Kennedy responded flatly.

David Geier is an outspoken vaccine critic who has been targeted by the left in recent days because of his heterodox medical opinions.

“Is Mr. David Geier working for HHS?” Luján pressed.

“He’s a contractor, but he’s not conducting this study,” Kennedy replied.

“Do you know who works for you, Mr. Kennedy?” Luján blustered.

“Yeah,” the Secretary responded bewilderedly.

“Do you know Mr. Geier is listed in the employee directory as a senior data analyst—not a contractor?”

Kennedy insisted that Geier is a contractor, not an SGE (Special Government Employee), but the senator was sure he’d caught the secretary in a lie.

“So is your website wrong?! Want me to pull up the website for you?! he exclaimed.

Flummoxed, Kennedy repeated that Geier is indeed just a contractor.

“I don’t know if a contractor can be classified as a senior data analyst or not,” he shrugged.

Luján then asked Kennedy if Mr. Geier is a doctor and Kennedy said “no.”

“Did you know he never went to medical school?” the senator continued.

“He’s not practicing medicine!” Kennedy replied, clearly baffled by the question.

“Did you know that he got caught in Maryland and was charged for practicing medicine without a medical license?” Luján pressed.

RFK Jr. was very ready for this question.

“He was charged by the medical board, sued the medical board, and the medical board was found to have acted in actual malice and was fined $2.6 million by a judge in Maryland,” he fired back.

Luján’s feeble response to Kennedy’s truth bomb was, “see you choose to know a lot when you want to know a lot,” again as if to suggest the Secretary was being evasive.

Kennedy replied, “Senator, you’re ridiculous.”

Undeterred, Luján continued, saying: “Here’s the question I have. You brought him in to do this study. I think there’s no question about that.”

Kennedy responded, laughing, “I told you he’s not doing a study!”

The senator asked if he was “participating in the study,” and again, Kennedy answered, “no.”

The Secretary explained that Geier’s job was to access vaccine safety data which the senator’s “friend” at the CDC (Daskalakis) had withheld for seven months.

Back in March,  Kennedy revealed in a six-minute video posted on social media that certain “defiant bureaucrats” had  impeded his office from obtaining the data, which Kennedy said “is the biggest repository for vaccine information.”

“A few isolated divisions are neglecting public health altogether and seem only accountable to the industries that they’re supposed to be regulating,” Kennedy explained in the video. “In one case defiant bureaucrats impeded the secretary’s office from accessing the closely guarded databases that might reveal the dangers of certain drugs and medical interventions.”

“What is Mr. Geier doing?” Luján persisted.

Kennedy explained that Geier was able to see the data in 2002 because Congress had ordered the CDC to open it up for him.

“He’s the only outsider who’s ever seen it,” Kennedy said.

Luján interjected to assert that Geier must be participating in the study then, but Kennedy again said, he wasn’t.

“Do you want me to explain it to you or do you just want to showboat? he asked. “Do you just want to showboat for your ads or do you want to hear a real answer to your question?”

Luján responded: “Mr. Secretary, you choose to know answers to questions from some colleagues and not to know the answer …”

This time Kennedy interjected, exclaiming “I’m giving you the answer!”

“Somebody should have asked you, maybe President Trump should have asked you, are you a trustworthy person,” Luján shot back, slamming his fist on the table. “And we should have waited for an answer then,” he added.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kennedy responded. “You’re talking gibberish.”

“Mr. Secretary, let me speak slowly and clearly so that you can understand me through my New Mexico accent. Does this help? Do you understand me?” Luján asked the Secretary mockingly.

“Yes,” Kennedy sighed.

Despite Kennedy’s insistence that Deier was not working on the autism study, Luján asked, “Mr. Secretary, yes or no, did you hire Mr. Deier to do this study?”

Kennedy indicated again that he had not.

The Democrat then asked Kennedy if he would share the protocols for the autism study with Congress and with the public.

The Secretary told him the information is already public.

Undeterred, Luján insisted that Kennedy provide the protocols for the study to the committee by the end of the week.

“Anybody can get the protocols,” Kennedy explained wearily.

Luján went on to ask the Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (Idaho) if he would sign off on a subpoena for the study protocols if Kennedy doesn’t provide them by the end of the week. Crapo said no because they are already public. He agreed to help the New Mexico senator find them.

Finally winding down, Luján pontificated that Democrats are only trying “know the truth,” prompting RFK Jr. to respond wearily, “I don’t think so.”

“I hope everyone recording that got that because there explains the secretary’s tenure here!” the senator exclaimed.

Luján concluded with a bizarre, gaslighting harangue about the sea shell pin a young constituent had given him that he had planned to give to Kennedy.

“But after your questioning today, I don’t think you deserve it because what this represents is to remember that every one one of us can make a difference sir. Something as small as a starfish on a beach that maybe got washed up. You throw it back in the ocean. You might not save them all but you can save one,” he said.

“I’m sorry that you’re not worthy of this pin, sir, this is a nice little reminder. I’m going to pray for you Secretary Kennedy. I hope we do better. I want you to do better, but today was a failure for you, man,” the senator said.

In another memorable exchange, Kennedy slammed Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) for criticizing his efforts to transform HHS after sitting in the Senate for decades and doing nothing while chronic illnesses exploded. Notably, Kennedy also blamed the Biden administration for the recent increase in infant mortality in the United States.

“I hope you tell the American people how many preventable child deaths are an acceptable sacrifice for enacting an agenda that I think is fundamentally cruel and defies common sense,” Wyden stated, referring to recent changes in vaccine policy. Wyden called on Kennedy to step down as HHS Secretary.

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