In a tense Senate hearing that left Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visibly flustered, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) produced a damning transcript contradicting Kennedy’s vehement denials of past controversial remarks. The dramatic moment unfolded as Kennedy, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.
Warnock wasted no time pressing Kennedy on his past statements comparing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Nazi death camps and the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal. “You have compared the CDC’s work to Nazi death camps,” Warnock stated. “You’ve compared it to sexual abusers in the Catholic Church. You’ve also said that many of them belong—this is a direct quote—many of them belong in jail.”
Kennedy, seemingly caught off guard, immediately denied ever making such comparisons. “My job is not to dismantle or harm the CDC,” he insisted. “My job is to empower the scientists, if I’m privileged to be confirmed.”
But Warnock wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “Do you stand by those statements that you made in the past, or do you retract those previous statements?” he pressed.
Kennedy doubled down on his denial. “I never said that,” he claimed.
That’s when Warnock delivered his knockout punch. “Well, actually, I have a transcript!” the senator declared, as Kennedy’s expression shifted to one of surprise.
“A transcript of me saying it’s a Nazi death camp?” Kennedy asked incredulously.
Warnock then read directly from Kennedy’s own words, a previously unreported statement from 2019 at AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children. “‘The institution, CDC and the vaccine program, is more important than the children that it’s supposed to protect,’” Warnock quoted Kennedy as saying.
The senator continued, reading further: “‘It’s the same reason we had a pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church. Because people were able to convince themselves that the institution, the church, was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped.’”
Kennedy attempted to clarify his remarks, claiming he was merely making an analogy about harm to children. “I was comparing the injury rate to our children to other atrocities,” he explained. “And I wouldn’t compare, of course, the CDC to Nazi death camps, to any extent, to the extent that any statement that I made has been interpreted that way.”
Despite his attempts to distance himself from the remarks, the moment underscored Kennedy’s long history of inflammatory rhetoric on public health institutions. With the transcript in hand, Warnock made it clear: Kennedy’s past words weren’t going away anytime soon.
