Scientists have endorsed the efficacy of vaccines for quite literally hundreds of years.

It's always worth noting that George Washington himself had his troops vaccinated for smallpox, so naturally in the year 2025, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent a day debating vaccination with various senators of both parties.

He also spent a good deal of time answering questions about his management of the aggencies responsible for protecting the nation's health, including and especially the Centers for Disease Control.

In normal times, these extraordinary arguments would be the only news we'd be talking about, but this is also the week we saw China, Russia, and America's now possibly former quasi ally India, create a tacit alliance against Trump.

Joining me tonight at the table to discuss all of this, Elizabeth Bewiller, a writer at large at The New York Times.

Leanne Caldwell is the chief Washington correspondent for Puck.

Stephen Hayes is the editor of the Dispatch, and Vivian Salama is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

I appreciate it.

Um, let me start with a very basic question just to level set.

Elizabeth, what, what is RFK's unvarnished view of vaccines.

How much of an extreme view does he actually have?

Well, he has one of the most extreme public views in the country, I would say among an official.

It's a little hard to know exactly where he is because he said in his confirmation hearings that he was not going to stand in the way of people having access to vaccines, the COVID va cc ine However, that is exactly where he is right now, and it caused a huge disturbance and huge shouting at the hearing this week where he basically said that the vaccine had killed more people than it saved.

He said very strange things.

He, uh, you know, he said that he said that the that the head of the CDC who he had fired had said she was she couldn't be trusted and and uh uh senators said, but you're lying.

So I, you know, I, he, we know for example that he has been vaccinated.

We know his children have been vaccinated, but yet he doesn't seem to want the rest of the country, or at least most, most people in this country to be vaccinated and it's, it's caused it to, you know, right now we're seeing, you know, states now are like in New York and Massachusetts, they're saying we're going to be giving the vaccine to everybody who wants it, but it's caused a big mess nationally as the COVID season is upon us, right, Steve, how popular is this as a as a position among the Republican base.

More popular than it was 10 years ago.

Um, I think the reason that RFK Junior has the position he has is because he has decades of experience being anti-vaccine.

This is what gave him a following, gave him a constituency and ultimately led to this deal with RFK Junior and Donald Trump.

It's why he is where he is today.

There's polling that shows Republicans, and this is increasingly partisan, of course polarized because everything is.

shows Republicans are increasingly skeptical of vaccines as these arguments are made publicly.

More than just the COVID vaccine, more than just the COVID vaccine, yeah, we saw Rona Santos.

We saw a movement in Florida this week to end the mandates for vaccines for kids in schools.

Um, I think there's growing skepticism among Republicans, but not as much as you might think.

I mean, still 3 quarter of Republican s according to most polling, support widespread vaccines, so the, the skepticism that we've seen hasn't gotten to the point where Republicans are running away from all vaccines, right?

Leanne, let me ask you this question.

Tell him I'll call him back.

Um, the, um, uh, this is the strange thing to me.

Uh arguably the greatest achievement of Donald Trump's first term was Operation Warp Speed.

which brought about the vaccines that allowed us to exit the pandemic.

What interests does Trump have here in putting forward RFK and his rather radical views of vaccines.

Yeah, it's really complicated for Donald Trump, as Stephen said.

RFK Jr. is a big reason why Donald Trump was elected this coalition of the Maha Maga base really propelled him to win this election.

but then he has this this major success with Operation Warp Speed, which it was reported this week that Donald Trump has privately told supporters that he wishes he could talk about it more, and you're also seeing a little bit of angst and anxiety from the president when he speaks about things publicly.

He had a true social this week where he said, What is happening at the CDC if uh if what if what these vacc if these vaccines are good, these pharmaceutical companies need to come forward and show us they're not, they're not tell ing the American public that things are safe.

And then also just tonight he was asked by reporters in the Oval about the Florida mandate, about stripping the mandate for vaccines in schools, and he said that that could actually be quite problematic because some vaccines are actually quite helpful.

He pointed to polio specifically.

So, but with all that said, while Trump seems to be torn.

RFK Junior's job does not seem to be in jeopardy by any stretch of the imagination.

I want to come back to that question and but let's talk about the Senate hearings.

I want you all to watch the one of the many heated exchanges between a Democratic senator and and and RFK.

Do you, do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID.

I don't know how many died You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?

I don't think anybody knows, because the there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC and there were incentives and these are modeling you don't know the answer of how many Americans from COVID.

This is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Do you think the vaccine did anything to prevent additional deaths.

Again, I would like to see the day and talk about the data.

I'm not had this job for 8 months, and you don't know the data about whether the vaccine and that's the problem is that they didn't have the data, the data by the Biden administration absolutely dismal.

So when I Vivien, how would you grade his performance.

Uh, it is exactly what I mean, I, I'm not going to give him a grade, but I, I would say it wasn't surprising that this, these were his answers because he has repeatedly justified the massive cuts to the Health and Human Services department because of claims like this that he says the data was not reliable.

The people who were comprised compiling the data were not reliable or uh or or qualified enough to do so.

And so this is something that we heard repeatedly on Thursday while he was testifying is that the data was not reliable.

You don't know how many people died of COVID because none of the data was, was reliable, but also the people who were running the CDC and HHS were not qualified people.

He, he even called the now former CDC director, a liar at some points because she claimed and she wrote in The Wall Street Journal in an editorial that they were she was being pushed to empower the views, the recommendations of anti-vaxxers and this essentially politicized the department.

This was a problem that they saw Steve, is this, does he have any foundation?

to stand on when he talks about the unreliability of the data, or are we just an Alice in Wonderland?

Well, look, I mean, I think you can say, you know, was it 1.2, was it 1.24?

It, of course, we don't know probably to the exact person.

But no, I mean, this is well established.

It's on the CDC and the HHS websites.

The government's estimates of how many people died and the effectiveness of vaccines.

Now this is something that RFK Junior does all the time.

He did it in his free government life as he's making the case against vaccines as he pretends that there's no data.

you know, there could be dozens of peer reviews studied, peer reviewed studies on topic X, and he would say, well, we really don't know.

We need to wait for the data.

The data is often there.

He just doesn't want to accept it, and he uses this, he, he sort of injects confusion into the debate, I think, to muddy the waters about the efficacy of things like that, right?

Elizabeth Vivian wouldn't give him a grade, but maybe you will.

Not, not a great.

Don't give a grade.

Just, it seemed like he was very, uh, I think the word would be lippy with the Democratic senators, yes, he was that plays well, I guess, among MAGA people, uh, people who don't like the Democrats.

Uh, it does seem like a bit of a distraction for Trump, who has other things that he cares about more than vaccine fighting.

Well, that's what's so interesting.

Trump has not come out and given him a big defense at all, not, you know, he says he hasn't said he's doing a great job.

He did a great job in the hearing.

He's been very silent, notably, and that ' s not, that's that's interesting.

And as we talked about before, you know, Operation Warp Speed was one of the, you know, a triumph of the Trump administration and also the Biden administration later, but you know, here he has this, you know, he's very pleased to have a Kennedy in this cabinet, you know, we had a Democrat in his cabinet, a big name like like uh Robert F. Kenney Jr.

He, uh, uh, but this was, this was not a good performance.

I think Trump is very into television.

I can't believe he watched this and thought this was, this was good for him.

Jeff, is that what this is about I mean, having a Kennedy in the cabinet?

There's a lot of that, and Trump has not made a secret of that.

He's repeatedly said that he loves having a Kennedy, but it has to be said just to echo, Elizabeth, it's very interesting to see that Trump has allowed him to sort of carve out a piece of the pie.

Trump has really owned the MAGA movement, but this Maha movement Make America Healthy again, that now is really owned by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is something that has gotten Trump's blessing, but he's sort of telling him, you do you, you do your own thing.

We'll stay over here as MAGA people and, and he allows him to kind of operate adjacent but separate from what MAGA is doing, and that is really telling, right, Leanne, I want, I want to show uh the panel, uh, Senator Barrasso, the #2 Republican in the Senate.

This is not Mark Warner, a Democrat, talking about Maja talking about um having a fight over vaccines.

This is a very high ranking Republican who also happens to be a physician.

Let's just listen to him for one minute.

In your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines.

Since then, I've grown deeply concerned.

The public has seen measles outbreaks, leadership of the National Institute of Health questioning the use of mRNA vaccines.

The recently confirmed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fired.

Americans don't know who to rely on.

If we're going to make America healthy again, we can't allow public health to be undermined.

Does this put RFK Junior's position in danger?

I don't think so.

I think that this hearing was an opportunity for these senators to express their concerns and their discontent with RFK Jr, especially, you know, Brasso is a doctor, so he needed to be on the record for that and perhaps he's having private conversations with the Trump administration or with the president about RFK Jr. but I don't think that this is going to be the thing right now yet that senators are going to go to bat for.

to break with the present and to really pressure him to get rid of his HHS secretary.

One thing that is going to be important to watch is which Barrasso said in his hearing is in a couple weeks.

The CDC advisory vaccine advisory board is going to meet about children vaccines, and there's going to be a lot of senators who are going to pay a lot of attention to that, but RFK Juniors, like I said, I don't think his job is in jeopardy right now, right?

Let's talk about the CDC for a minute on not the political level, but the actual practical level.

It had been many, many people fired in across divisions.

Many people who many people have quit in, in disgust or in in protest.

Give us a sense of the CDC and it's to borrow a term, efficacy as the world's leading preventer of disease.

Well, it's it's, it's in shambles right now.

There, there's all the experts, all the 4 or 5 top scientists have left.

Uh, it, it, um, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has just completely undermined it to a large portion of the American public by saying it can't be trusted, it's corrupt.

Those words matter to to a lot of people in the United States and so it is it is, it is, we're in, you know, I have heard so many health experts say in the last couple of weeks, we are in terrible trouble in the United States in terms of our public health.

They say this is the worst situation they've seen in 100 years.

On top of um RFK Junior, you know, polling half a billion dollars for MRNA research, which is not just about vaccines, it's about fighting a lot of other diseases.

That's been stopped so and then he's also, you know, questioning the efficacy of the measles vaccine, uh, which, so this is, this is a dangerous time, right Steve.

Is this a bill that's just going to come due in some terrible way?

I mean, it's hard to imagine that it that it isn't.

I mean, I think some of it is what negative consequences are we likely to see from this?

I think the CDC is much less effective today than it was 8 months ago because of the departures that we've seen more than 2000 people have either been fired or have left on their own accord.

The other question is what progress aren't we making?

Elizabeth mentions that it was $500 million in mRNA research that was pulled back in August That was funding research in very promising research into cancer.

Um, mRNA, one of the benefits of it is it's quick and it's adaptive.

So you can make progress quickly.

This is one of the reasons that the COVID vaccine was as successful as it was.

You can make progress very quickly to fight any of a number of things.

We're not doing the research that we once were doing.

So what are, what progress are we not making at this point, right?

And I also think that what could happen is we're going to have red states and blue states with completely different vaccine policies as we've talked about already tonight, Florida is the first state to move forward with stopping the requirement of vaccines in schools.

You have Washington, Oregon, and California who are coalescing around what they say is science and going to move forward and continue to study and offer vaccine vaccines but diseases also don't, uh, don't, um, adhere to state lines.

And so this is a broader public health issue, but again it's going to be completely more divi, another thing that divides this country into what state you live in.

And when that happens, you, you have rode the public's trust in public in public health.

I mean, and that's the big issue here.

Do I get my child vaccinated?

Will my elderly relative have access to chronic disease care.

All of these things now could be thrown into jeopardy, just even to trust that you know what to do or who to believe.

That's what experts are saying could really take a hit the most.

and I have to say, I mean, some of that is earned, right?

I mean, if you look back on COVID, some of the things that we heard from public health experts who we were told to trust.

They didn't adapt to new data.

They did, they, they did say things that were untrue, including Anthony Fauci early about the efficacy of masks because he wanted to preserve pee pee.

So some of that I think is earned and certainly among the right there's this growing skepticism, but it's also the case, I think that this is the goal of RFK Junior here.

He wants to sell this mistrust because he doesn't trust them himself.

But what is this is an impossible question, probably to answer, but what is his vision of a future in which we don't have a CDC or an FDA or an effective NIH.

we're all going to get healthy because we're not eating food dyes anymore.

I, I asked this seriously, what's the, he says we were lied to by everybody about everything during COVID.

Now that's of course not true, but he doesn't trust any of those people.

So I think to answer your question directly, he would think it's a better world if we don't have to listen to the experts who occupy those.

He's aiming to reinvent it absolutely.

He wants to remake American healthcare, American public health.

Obviously a subject we'll come back to.