The Kennedy Witch Hunt on Capitol Hill

On Trial: mRNA Vaccines

By John Klar, Contributor, The MAHA Report

Thursday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., at times felt more like an unruly boxing match than a vibrant exchange of opinions in the nation’s capitol.

In the center ring – Kennedy sparred with a determined phalanx of outraged Democratic senators before the Senate Finance Committee. The vitriolic name-calling and grandstanding, the hyperbolic taunts and gesticulations, failed to conceal that, at the core, it was not Secretary Kennedy who was on trial, but rather the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines and the trustworthiness of federal agency recommendations.

The hearing, scheduled prior to Kennedy’s ouster of CDC director Susan Monarez, focused on the secretary’s integrity and decision making. Yet repeatedly, the complaints against him concerned one thing: his agency’s decision to remove mRNA vaccines from the recommended vaccine schedule for American children. The bitter wrangling between a remarkably courageous Kennedy and the histrionic senators tag-teaming him centered almost exclusively on their push to include mRNA vaccine recommendations for children, and his assertions that the data do not support their use.

If mRNA vaccines are truly the wonder drug advertised by Senate Finance Committee Democrats, then Kennedy’s caution should not elicit such acrimony – the CDC decision leaves it to parents to consult with their physicians to decide whether to administer vaccines. If, however, mRNA vaccines pose risks to healthy children (who are at extremely low risk of death or serious illness from Covid, per CDC data), then agencies recommending them would be a dereliction of regulatory duty.

Exactly this issue dominated Kennedy’s strident exchanges with several senators. Senator Maggie Hassan (NH - D) accused the secretary of “act[ing] behind closed doors to overrule scientists and limit the freedom of parents to choose the Covid vaccine for their children” and asserted that parents will now have to “go off-label… to prescribe the vaccine for their children.” The HHS head scoffed, “This is crazy talk. You’re just making stuff up.” Hassan ironically charged, “Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession, Mr. Kennedy.” But the indefatigable secretary stuck to his guns, stating, “It’s not behind closed doors. The industry makes the studies, and they couldn’t provide a study that said that it is effective for healthy kids.”

This theme recurred in a fiery exchange with Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA - D), whose accusations often sounded more like confessions. Warren invoked Kennedy’s confirmation hearing “promise” that he “wouldn’t take away vaccines,” and insisted that he was depriving Americans of Covid shots where they might lack insurance coverage without CDC recommendation. Secretary Kennedy countered that anyone can still get Covid shots or boosters (the majority of Americans for free), and cast the gauntlet back at Warren, retorting, “We’re not going to recommend a product for which there is no clinical data for that indication. Is that what I should be doing?”

Warren refused to address the lack of scientific evidence for mRNA vaccine safety or efficacy, instead belligerently bellowing, “What you should be doing is honoring your promise that you made when you were looking to get confirmed in this job and that is you promised that you would not take away vaccines from anyone who wanted them.”

Warren’s attack was doubly weak. For one, no mRNA or other vaccines have been taken away. Secondly, her myopic insistence ignored the repeatedly proffered arguments that mRNA vaccines for children were and are unproven, unwarranted, and potentially harmful. Apparently, she would insist the CDC recommend parents jab their infants with a useless or even harmful drug!

Throughout the roughly three-hour interrogation, the committee's repartee was not really about the character of the witness, Kennedy, but rather about whether the mRNA vaccines were and are safe and effective as advertised.

Whether Kennedy is a villain or a hero depends on that “real science.” It may also be that American parents are the jury, not Kennedy’s would-be Senate Finance Committee executioners. Polls show many parents do not trust the mRNA vaccines and don’t want their children vaccinated. Kennedy is on their side: Democrat lawmakers appear to side with pharmaceutical companies in blind trust.

While Democrats have blamed Kennedy and so-called “vaccine deniers” for growing public distrust of vaccines, the loss of confidence was engendered by the CDC and other regulatory agencies long before RFK Jr. even ran for office. ABC News reported in May 2022 that a KFF poll revealed that merely 18% of parents with children under age five were eager to get their children vaccinated right away. A May 2023 Pew Research poll concluded,“Parents see the risks of MMR vaccines as a bit higher than other Americans, and about half of those with a young child ages 0 to 4 say the statement ‘I worry that not all of the childhood vaccines are necessary’ describes their views at least somewhat well.”

Recent polling suggests large swaths of the United States public side with Kennedy’s reduction of the recommended vaccine schedule, especially for young children. Many parents complain that some physicians refuse to accept patients who decline the Covid shots for their children – such coercion seeds greater hesitancy. A KFF poll reported on August 1, 2025, found “Most of the public (59%) say they will either “definitely not” or “probably not” get the Covid -19 vaccine this fall….”

Americans trust their physicians far more than the CDC and other regulators. Kennedy’s removal of mRNA vaccines from the list of recommended childhood vaccines leaves the decision between parents and their doctors. It is troubling to some observers that many Americans are becoming increasingly distrustful of all vaccines, which raises the question: who is at fault and who should be held accountable – the vaccine manufacturers and government regulators, or understandably resistant parents and critics such as Kennedy and his advisors.

In a shoddy effort to discredit Kennedy, Senator Maria Cantwell (WA - D) highlighted the disparity between a century of traditional vaccines, which often employed attenuated viruses to stimulate an immune response, versus novel genetic manipulation via mRNA technologies. Cantwell had aides hold up a placard listing the major disease successes using vaccine technology, which conspicuously omitted the mRNA vaccines and the controversial (gain-of-function?) Covid -19 virus. She repeatedly gushed with glowing praise for vaccines without distinguishing between the technologies that most Americans can see are very distinct.

While conflating the polio vaccine with mRNA, Cantwell accused Kennedy of obscuring the discussion. Pointing emphatically at her deficient chart, the sarcastic senator proclaimed, “Sir, you’re a charlatan, that’s what you are. You’re the ones who conflate chronic disease with the need for vaccines. This is what was delivered with vaccines, and you don’t want to support that. You don’t want to support that evidence.”

Cantwell is flat out wrong. Kennedy has not tried to use chronic disease to discredit vaccines; he has emphasized that they are a far greater killer, while his detractors seek to focus almost exclusively on infectious diseases . Cantwell concluded by accusing the HHS Secretary:

“You’re perpetrating hoaxes. You, as the Secretary of Health. So you’re undermining the whole healthcare delivery system and you keep trying to point to chronic disease…. And you’re taking away the science and technology that has made us a leader, that has [sweeping gesture toward COVID-omitting chart] saved millions of lives, and you don’t want to keep that going.”

Indeed, Kennedy does not want to keep ineffective or dangerous mRNA vaccines going, and he repeatedly invokes strong scientific justifications in his defense.

Senator Ron Johnson (WI-R) interjected some science that bolstered Kennedy’s position, thanking Kennedy for “putting up with this abuse” before explaining that data is being reviewed that exposes gross failures in the nation’s regulatory agencies related to mRNA vaccines:

“Five minutes isn’t even close to refute all the falsehoods that have been ….spewed during this hearing,” Johnson said. “What we have discovered is that the CDC … hid the signal… on myocarditis [caused by mRNA vaccines]. They didn’t warn the public. They didn’t warn doctors. So that’s just one instance of corruption and lies told by the CDC. We’ve got a lot of others we’ll be rolling out.”

Democratic senators were hellbent on attacking Kennedy in order to defend mRNA products, making the latter the real culprit on trial. Yet the secretary knew this going into the fray, and laid out the stakes for all Americans in his opening statement:

“I would like to address the recent shake-ups at CDC. These changes were absolutely necessary adjustments to restore the agency to its role as the world’s gold standard public health agency with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease. CDC failed that responsibility miserably during COVID when its disastrous, nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools, caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science, and heightened economic inequality. And yet those oppressive and unscientific interventions failed to do anything about the disease itself…. [The USA] literally did worse than any country in the world. And the people at the CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”

Despite empty accusations that Kennedy is politicizing healthcare, the secretary pushed back, insisting at one juncture (to Senator Ron Wyden), “Senator, I didn’t politicize ACIP, I depoliticized it.” A common theme was Kennedy thwarting the barbs of his attackers back into a discussion about mRNA vaccines, which they clearly seemed loath to endure.

Viewers of the embattled Kennedy may have noticed the odd desperation of Democrats like Bernie Sanders invoking President Donald Trump as an authority on the salvific beneficence of mRNA vaccines, or the comical hypocrisy of Warren et. al. crying crocodile tears over the firing of Monarez after Warren herself and all other committee Democrats had opposed her appointment.

The trial of mRNA vaccines and the agencies that pushed them like a taxpayer-funded cartel has only just begun. Further data analysis and public disclosures are likely to expose additional regulatory shortcomings and be used by Secretary Kennedy to protect Americans’ health rather than Big Pharma profits.

Senate Democrats came out swinging at the Senate Finance Hearing, but found themselves repeatedly cornered and on the ropes, pummeled by a veteran litigator. Robert F Kennedy Jr. does not take such attacks lying down, and has proven he will always stand up for children’s health.