Four years after the rollout of the most controversial and suspect “vaccine” in U.S. history, debate over its legitimacy — or lack thereof — has been reignited in the chambers of Congress.
One of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet members is stirring a whirlwind of controversy over changes he’s been making at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Meanwhile, a social media post by Trump published earlier this week indicates he is under pressure to defend the Covid-19 injection. The message suggests he’s leaving room for the possibility that it’s not the benefit he said it was.
“We are the sickest country in the world, that’s why we have to fire people at the CDC.” That was one of the many defiant statements Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made during Thursday’s fiery hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Kennedy went to Capitol Hill to answer why he fired short-tenured CDC director Susan Monarez, as well as for his “efforts to upend the nation’s vaccine policies,” as mainstream media put it. The Covid-19 injection was a central point of dispute during the hours-long hearing.
Democratic committee members ripped into Kennedy and asked him to resign over the changes he’s making to what he considers one of the most corrupt government agencies. Kennedy became visibly flustered and pushed back. At one point he accused the committee of not being interested in the truth. Another time he called a senator “ridiculous” before accusing him of “talking gibberish” and telling him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And he told at least two senators that they were lying. He said they were “making stuff up” and they were “being dishonest.”
Trump published a social media post demanding that Big Pharma “justify the success of their various Covid Drugs.” Four years after their rollout, controversy around the injection rages. Moreover, inoculation plummets with every passing year, not only among the general public but among healthcare workers. Fewer people in the medical field are taking the jab. By the turn of this year, only 15 percent of healthcare workers took the shot. Apparently the only demographic that still fosters overwhelming support is the Democratic wing of Congress.
The CDC is the agency in charge of vaccine recommendations. While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves vaccines (and other drugs), the CDC creates the guidelines that states and school districts from coast to coast follow as if they’re law. In his post, Trump said the CDC was “being ripped apart over this question” of whether the Covid-19 injection is beneficial. He said he’d seen information from Pfizer and other manufacturers “that is extraordinary,” but for some reason, they don’t “show those results to the public.” He continued:
They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don’t seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???
During Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) asked Kennedy to turn in a statement laying out his specific stance on Operation Warp Speed. Tillis said he couldn’t tell where the secretary stands based on their conversation in the hearing. Pages upon pages of comments Kennedy has made, as well as a book he wrote with a focus on the matter (The Real Anthony Fauci), indicate that Kennedy sees the injections as suspect at best. On Thursday, he said there is no clinical data supporting a Covid-19 injection for healthy people. But he also said that the first-generation “vaccine” approved in the early stages saved “quite a few lives.” He did not, however, acquiesce to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) prompt that they saved “millions of lives.”
Tillis also said he was concerned that the “credibility” of the CDC was “diminishing.” Kennedy has made a series of statements indicating he believes that ship sailed many moons ago. He told Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) that he’s working to ensure that the CDC tells people the truth “for the first time in the history of that agency.” His argument is that he’s trying to reverse the corruption in the CDC and restore crediblity.
Based on the number of legislators, CDC employees, and medical groups who openly advocate Kennedy’s firing, he’s got quite the fight on his hands. Kennedyias not sorry for the people he’s fired and changes he’s brought about. For a review of some of the major changes at the CDC this year, you can read our report “CDC Director Defies Firing Over COVID-19 Vaccine Stance.”
Susan Monarez’s firing last week drew a lot of attention to the evolving agency. On Thursday, lawmakers grilled the secretary about what happened there. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked Kennedy if he forced Monarez to resign because she wouldn’t approve changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. Kennedy said:
No, I told her she had to resign because I asked her, are you a trustworthy person? And she said, no. What if you had an employee who told you they weren’t trustworthy? Would you ask them to resign?
Monarez said she was fired because she wouldn’t oblige Kennedy’s order to fire “senior CDC staff and accept preapproved recommendations of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel,” according to mainstream reports. But on Thursday, the secretary told lawmakers that she was lying about that.
During his exchange with Warren, Kennedy accused lawmakers of shilling for Big Pharma, as he has done in other hearings. When Warren accused him of “taking away” the injection by removing its status of recommendation, the secretary said, “I never promised that I was going to recommend a product for which there is no indication — and I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, senator.” According to OpenSecrets, Warren received $818,997 from employees or political action committees affiliated with the pharmaceutical industry during the 2020 election cycle.
Warren’s socialist colleague, Sen. Sanders, admitted that “everybody” takes money from Big Pharma:
Just for the record, every single Republican — I don’t mean to be political here, Mr. Chairman — has received PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry.… Every Republican got corporate PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry, Democrats as well.
Sanders’ point, astonishingly, was that because everybody receives campaign support from Big Pharma, that somehow dismantles the accusation that they’re corrupt.
Sanders also acknowledged that Kennedy is up against the entire Medical Establishment, saying:
What I find a little bit weird in this discussion … is we got the entire medical community on one side. You got the AMA, representing hundreds of thousands of doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association — all of these organizations are telling us that Covid vaccines and vaccines in general are safe and effective. You are casting doubt on that…. Who are the organizations that are agreeing with you?
Kennedy cited his primary advisors — Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Mehmet Oz — before pointing out that there is a big difference between established science and the Scientific Establishment, “which has been co-opted by the pharmaceutical [industry].” He cited as an example the American Heart Association, which, he said, has been co-opted by the food industry.
In defense of the changes at the CDC, Kennedy repeatedly told committee members that Americans are the sickest people in the world. Chronic illness, obesity, and mental illness are indeed rampant in America. You can read more about that in our report “Making America Sick, One Bite at a Time.”
While he has not accomplished what those who view the Covid-19 injections as wholly destructive would liked to see, Kennedy has shaken things up for sure. The fact that he’s removed its recommendations for children and healthy people is a step in the right direction. It appears that he’s working to delegitimize the shot without being removed.
If America had a government that adhered to the Constitution, Kennedy would not have to defend himself. That’s because there would be no CDC, as was the case for most of the country’s history. There is nothing indicating that the Framers ever intended public health to be the federal government’s job. Health and Human Services should be defunded and eliminated, and states should embrace the unique health challenges that plague their citizens.