There were fireworks on Capitol Hill today as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., made the case that he is the man to run the Department of Health and Human Services and implement President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
His opponents on the left didn’t seem to get it. Even some of the Republicans didn’t get it. But, for the most part, the Republican senators did well, while the Democrats once again made fools out of themselves.
The Vibe
Like Pete Hegseth’s hearing earlier this month, I was in the room. I was seated right behind his wife Cheryl Hines, and I was totally struck by the amount of enthusiasm in the crowd for him. He is a rock star.
It stood in contrast to the Hegseth hearing because – as much as people love Pete – the room was mostly filled with military guys. They follow the rules. They were told not to clap and not to make a sound, so they didn’t. The RFKJ/MAHA crew, meanwhile, was like, ‘Bring it.’ They were booing people like Elizabeth Warren. Whenever the hecklers got loud, they were yelling ‘We love you, Bobby!’ And the woman who is a seated couple down from me was awesome. When Bobby got on a roll, she was like, ‘Tell it!’ It was so much better with her here.
Today was probably not fun for Bobby Kennedy, but today was kind of fun for people like me just to see, once again, that these Democrats have nothing. They just want to inflame and throw arrows – mostly about him being a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine. That is really where they went with it.
The Tactics
In the same way the left keeps looking at Donald Trump and saying, ‘Hitler,’ ‘Nazi,’ ‘fascist,’ ‘convicted felon,’ and everybody’s like, ‘Screw you. We have a country to save,’ they felt similarly out of touch going after RFKJ today. They don’t get it.
That audience was filled with parents – moms with little kids with them – trying to send a message to these senators that they are done playing these ridiculous games. Half these senators are on the take with Big Pharma and Big Ag and were doing their bidding live in the hearing. They don’t want somebody who has been suing Big Pharma his entire career heading up HHS. That is who pays their re-election bills, and it was very obvious as you watched them.
I will say this, they did not go hard on his personal life and history like they did with Pete Hegseth. They could have brought up that Bobby Kennedy is a recovering heroin addict. He says he has been sober for 42 years. They could have brought up the personal behavior with women that is not exactly stellar. They steered clear of that, too.
But they are obsessed with his stance on vaccines and are either unwilling or unable to see how he really feels about them. I mean, look, he is not a huge proponent. I think that is fair to say, but they just want to paint him as somebody who wants to ban all vaccines. He doesn’t talk about banning at all. He is against vaccine mandates, and, in some cases, he wants more research done before we push these vaccines on kids. He has joined – as a lawyer – in some lawsuits against the manufacturers.
The Lowlights
One of the lowlights of the day was actually pretty funny. Admittedly, I enjoyed the moment. Instead of talking about what he is going to do to try to get the chemicals out of our food supply, or to work with farmers and ranchers to help them avoid toxic pesticides, or how he plans to minimize the ultra-processed foods on the grocery store shelves and in school lunches, the Democrats wanted to talk about baby clothes.
Bernie Sanders
Take Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who decided to bring up onesies that say “Unvaxed Unafraid” and “No Vax. No Problem.” and are sold by the non-profit RFKJ founded, Children’s Health Defense. He has since left the organization because of this nomination, but Bernie Sanders was really upset about it. We spent actual time on baby onesies in today’s HHS confirmation hearing.
Mark Warner
The two absolute worst in the room though were Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Warner (D-VA). Warner was the governor of Virginia and is now a senator. He was dripping with disdain for Bobby. I mean, you could feel the negative vibration all the way across the room where I was seated. His cross-examination just felt really disrespectful, and you could sense his hatred in all of his snide remarks.
I understand these senators are trying to score points, but they need to get something substantive and ride it on the substance. What they kept doing was just making these little snarky comments at the end of RFKJ’s responses – if they even let him answer at all.
Ron Wyden
Wyden, meanwhile, is the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Finance. How much has he taken from pharmaceutical and healthcare companies? $1.2 million over the course of his career. To be fair, that didn’t happen just yesterday. But that is still a lot of change in Washington, D.C. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was very, very concerned about what Bobby Kennedy has said about vaccines.
Elizabeth Warren
And he isn’t the only one who, in my opinion, has been compromised by the amount of money they have taken from Big Pharma. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) – Pocahontas – is also big on the Big Pharma money. She and Bernie Sanders were the two Democratic presidential hopefuls who received the most pharmaceutical or health product donations in the 2020 election cycle. She received $822,000.
And what did she do when she got her chance to question RFKJ, who spent his whole life suing these Big Pharma companies and environmental toxin producers? She went after him on that very topic. She wanted him to say that he wouldn’t sue vaccine or drug companies for four years after he left office (should he be confirmed). What is the incentive for something like that? It doesn’t make sense, to me, to put that prohibition on somebody after they’ve left the office.
Gettable Dems?
I think it is safe to say those are ‘no’ votes, but there are some Democrats who have been rumored to be gettable.
A big moment in the hearing came when Kennedy was questioned by Democratic Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. Her state is getting redder by the second, and it tends to be true that the further west the state is, the more MAHA is popular. My California friends who have been voting Democrat their whole lives love MAHA, and I guarantee you that Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has a lot of them in her state too. I would tread carefully if I were her.
And yet she decided it would be super fun to frame RFKJ as just a loser stooge for the Trump administration. Now, there were some who believed that Cortez Masto could potentially be a ‘yes’ vote for Kennedy because of the reasons I just stated. I didn’t sense that today in the room. That doesn’t mean she won’t eventually get on board, but the general wisdom was that none of these Dems who might be open to the idea of RFKJ want to be the deciding vote. If he loses four Republican votes, then he is going to need one Dem and the wisdom is that will not be Cortez Masto.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is another interesting case. He is a life-long friend of RFKJ and some thought he could potentially be that Democrat vote. They went to law school together, and I am pretty sure they were both in each other’s weddings. You wouldn’t have known that today, but he didn’t beat up on RFKJ the way the others did. He used his five minutes to go off on the issues in Rhode Island about caregivers – a lot of which I actually agreed with. He is a possible ‘yes,’ but we don’t know.
Republican Holdouts?
On the Republican side, I have my eye on Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. He is seen as a question mark. He is a doctor, and, to hear him question RFKJ, you might think he was a Democrat. He seemed to be laying traps for him with these little knowledge tests about obscure programs. It almost seemed like he was trying to embarrass him or maybe create a case for Republicans that Bobby is not qualified for this job.
That was my feeling. I don’t know if it is the correct read. But we need Cassidy to be a ‘yes,’ or he needs to be hearing from Elon Musk’s Super PAC. You’ve already got Scott Pressler, who got all those Republicans registered in Pennsylvania, saying he will personally make sure anybody on the Republican side who doesn’t vote for Kennedy suffers electorally. RFKJ’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is out with a similar message. Donald Trump, Jr. has a whole wrangling group of money people who know how to scare these Republican senators.
These people mean business. They are not trying to scare the Democrats. They are trying to scare the Republicans who are trying to stop Trump from getting his nominees. So, if I were Cassidy or any squishy GOPer, I would be careful.
You can check out Megyn’s full analysis by tuning in to episode 994 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.