GOP Sen. Cassidy seeks to explains RFK Jr. confirmation vote for Health and Human Services

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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a Sunday interview sought to explain his controversial vote to confirm Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he said Kennedy is dug in on his views toward vaccinations despite public opinion.

Cassidy, the first physician to serve as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that Kennedy “has not restored trust in public health.”

“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,” said Cassidy, who was defeted in a GOP primary earlier this year by a Trump-backed rival.

“And again, if you look at the measles outbreak, in which thousands of kids got measles, with the consequences of that, clearly the American people understand immunization is important,” Cassidy said.

Cassidy insisted that the White House “has seen” polling that underscores the importance of vaccines to Americans, adding that the administration “clearly has gotten off the anti-vaccine message into something more positive” in the face of a measles outbreak.

But he signaled Trump may not break with Kennedy, who he repeatedly said “serves at the president’s pleasure.”

Cassidy told Brennan that it was “easy to surmise” that Kennedy made promises to win the senator’s confirmation vote for, as Brennan said, “political expediency.”

Cassidy, asked to explain his vote, said he backed Kennedy because he was “going to have the ear of the president.”

“The president seems to be fascinated with the Kennedys, so either he was going to be in a position where there were guardrails, and I did have commitments made as to what kind of guardrails, or he was going to be appointed White House health czar, in which case he would have the president’s ear without the guardrails,” the senator said, adding that he determined to vote “to have the one with the guardrails.”

“You can criticize that,” he later said, “but I think, again, as I’m searching for, kind of, the right diagnosis and the right cure –– you can criticize me –– but I’m not sure it’s quite as, kind of, black and white as people like to say.”

Cassidy said there was a “broken agreement” between him and Kennedy over the CDC’s autism and vaccines page, which contains an asterisk indicating that the page “has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

“So, once you lose trust in somebody, you’re not quite sure what to trust going forward,” the senator told Brennan. “In fact, you don’t trust anything. It should go away, because the evidence is that that is not the case. That is a prejudice being brought.”

Cassidy would not say if he sees Kennedy being impeached if Democrats reclaim Congress in November and after the senator leaves Capitol Hill in January. The CBS News anchor asked if Kennedy should remain in his role.

“At this point, the commitments that were made to me have been violated,” he said. “When commitments are made, trust is destroyed. It’s difficult to have effectiveness.”

The Hill has reached out to HHS for comment.

The Louisiana Republican said there are “wider” problems at HHS with several leaders in acting roles, no surgeon general and no director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He said he was “impressed” by the candidates for the latter two positions, “but I imagine they will be approved, and so progress is being made.”

The HELP committee’s ranking member, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), previously called on Cassidy to open investigations into Kennedy’s recent firings of a key vaccine advisory committee and on the secretary’s claims about vaccines.

Sanders released a cache of HHS and CDC emails last week indicating Kennedy’s direction in several key vaccination decisions. This included the cancellation of flu vaccine campaigns, restricting access to vaccines, allowing researchers to access “confidential data” to indicate the disproven claim that vaccines cause autism and changing recommendations for the public to receive COVID-19 shots without input from the CDC.

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Bernie Sanders

Bill Cassidy

Margaret Brennan

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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