‘He’s Relitigating Settled Science!’ Senator Fights Back Tears at RFK Hearing As She Talks About Vaccines And Her Son with Cerebral Palsy
Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) fought back tears at a Thursday Senate hearing as she discussed her son’s struggles with Cerebral palsy (CP) and accusations that “partisanship” was to blame for Democrats’ “intense questioning” of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, faced his second confirmation round before a Senate committee on Thursday where Democratic lawmakers continued to hammer him on past controversial statements and where exactly he does stand on vaccines.
Hassan ripped into Republican colleagues who dismissed “concerns” about Kennedy and his views as simply “partisanship.” She said her own experience with her son leaves her unsettled on Kennedy, especially over positions like on Thursday when he refused to disconnect autism and certain vaccines. Kennedy said he would publicly say vaccines do not cause autism if he’s presented with the right data.
Hassan went after Kennedy at Wednesday’s hearing, asking him at one point if he’d “sold out” to Trump due to his positions on issues like abortion.
On Thursday, Hassan got more personal and fought back tears as she discussed her struggles and accused Kennedy of trying to relitigate “settled science” by citing debunked or small studies.
Hassan said:
One of the things that was most disturbing to me about yesterday’s hearing was the suggestion from some of my friends on the other side of the dais that our intense questioning and concerns about Mr. Kennedy were driven by partisanship. I have voted for five of President Trump’s nominees to date in the last couple of weeks. One of them, the new secretary of transportation, was on the scene last night at DCA. Like all of us, I take really seriously our obligation for advice and consent. And I am concerned, as Sen. Mullen expressed his concern, about the need for science to help us move forward on critical, critical issues. Now, some of you are new to this committee and new to the Senate, so you may not know that I am the proud mother of a 36 year old young man with severe Cerebral Palsy. And a day does not go by when I don’t think about what did I do when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the Hydrocephalus that is so impacted his life. So please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is. Do you know how many friends I have with children who have autism? The problem with this witnesses’s response on the autism cause and the relationship to vaccines is because he’s relitigating and churning settled science so we can’t go forward and find out what the cause of autism is and treat these kids and help these families. Mr. Kennedy, that first autism study rocked my world. And like every mother, I worried about whether, in fact, the vaccine had done something to my son. And you know what? It was a tiny study of about 12 kids. And over time, the scientific community studied and studied and studied and found that it was wrong. And the Journal retracted the study because sometimes science is wrong. We make progress. We build on the work and we become more successful. And when you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward. So that’s what the problem is here. It’s the relitigating and rehashing and continuing to sow doubt. So we can’t move forward and it freezes us in place.
Watch above via CSPAN.