Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a controversial vaccine skeptic who President Donald Trump said could “run wild” with the agency, gave Senate testimony today in a rancorous session that saw Kennedy deliver numerous seemingly contradictory opinions.
None of these was as jarring, perhaps, as Kennedy’s assertions that mRNA vaccines cause “serious harm” especially in young people and that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for his first-term work on Operation Warp Speed, which catalyzed the speedy development and distribution of mRNA COVID vaccines during the pandemic.
Under questioning by Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO), Kennedy concurred with a statement from one of his new CDC vaccine panel member selections, Dr. Retsef Levi, whom Bennett quoted as saying “evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death especially among young people.”
Kennedy replied: “I wasn’t aware he said it but I think I agree with it.”
Bennet: Are you aware that one of the people you put on the panel, Dr. Robert Malone, claimed that the commonly used mrna vaccine, causes a form of AIDS… that statement is not true just as it wasn't true when you wrote that African AIDS is entirely different from western AIDS pic.twitter.com/PyzG7ih5dK
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 4, 2025
Under questioning by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — a medical doctor who has served in the Senate since 2015 — Kennedy affirmed his seemingly illogical conviction that Trump deserved the Nobel for a Warp Speed operation that distributed what Kennedy considers a dangerous drug.
Cassidy called out Kennedy on his logic, noting that the swift and broad distribution of a drug that Kennedy alleges causes harm to young children would hardly be reason for a humanitarian accolade.
Incredulous after Kennedy made his claim, Cassidy replied: “But you just said that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid.”
(NOTE: Hardly a Trump critic, Cassidy himself proposes that Trump does deserve the Nobel Prize, notably because the vaccines saved lives rather than, as Kennedy insists, imperiled them.)
Cassidy: Do you agree with me that the president that the president deserves a Nobel prize for operation warp speed?
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 4, 2025
RFK JR: Absolutely
Cassidy: But you just said that the covid vaccine killed more people than covid.
RFK JR: I did not say that. pic.twitter.com/kIeoTSW1CC
The apparent contradiction wasn’t lost on viewers, who — whatever their politics — understand they are reliant on credible medical and science information controlled by the HHS Secretary.
As one X user writes below, “You can’t say Trump deserves a Nobel for Warp Speed and then turn around and fearmonger about the vaccine’s safety. Either the vaccines were a historic achievement, or they weren’t.”
Cassidy caught RFK Jr. red-handed.
— Evaristus Odinikaeze (@odinikaeze) September 4, 2025
You can’t say Trump deserves a Nobel for Warp Speed and then turn around and fearmonger about the vaccine’s safety.
Either the vaccines were a historic achievement, or they weren’t. Pick a lane, Bobby. And also see a real doctor for your…
[NOTE: Some Kennedy defenders point out that Operation Warp Speed helped enable the production of multiple COVID vaccines, including the discontinued non-mRNA vaccine by Johnson & Johnson. But this contradiction defense is challenging to uphold because the two most used COVID vaccines — the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — both of which Warp Speed funded with billions of dollars, were mRNA vaccines.]
According to the Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet, it states that the goal of Operation Warp Speed was to “produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021, as part of a broader strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.”
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