Outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) launched his most aggressive public attack on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an interview broadcast Sunday, accusing him of running America’s public health system “upon a foundation of lies” and breaking promises he made to secure Cassidy’s vote for confirmation.
“If you build public health upon a foundation of lies, then you’re going to have the absence of adequate public health,” Cassidy, a gastroenterologist and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”
“You need to build everything in life on truth. I go back to being a doctor. You got to search for the truth and use the truth for your solutions.”
“Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan had asked Cassidy about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website about vaccines, which includes the header “Vaccines do not cause autism” with an asterisked footnote claiming the statement only remained online due to an agreement with Cassidy.
“This is not truth, and there’ll be a consequence of it, and that consequence, unfortunately, will be borne by those who actually are influenced by it,” Cassidy told Brennan. “I will say, except for news anchors, very few people read the CDC website. And so I’m not sure how much influence that has, how much negative influence that has.”
The senator, who lost his bid for a third term in the Republican primary last month, also told Brennan that RFK Jr. “has not restored trust in public health, and you can see the administration, if you believe the press accounts, are trying to limit his range of activity. Polling shows that the American people understand that vaccines are important, and for someone to be out there saying that they’re not goes against their experience … So I think you can see the administration responding to the American people’s awareness that folks should be vaccinated.”
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