{"id":23748,"date":"2025-01-30T01:10:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T08:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bennet-confronts-robert-f-kennedy-jr-about-history-of-conspiracy-theory-claims\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:42:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:42:05","slug":"bennet-confronts-robert-f-kennedy-jr-about-history-of-conspiracy-theory-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bennet-confronts-robert-f-kennedy-jr-about-history-of-conspiracy-theory-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Bennet confronts Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about history of conspiracy theory claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., talks to reporters after questioning Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his changing position on abortion and his history of \u201cpeddling half-truths.\u201d (Kathryn Squyres\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet joined fellow Democrats on Wednesday morning in hammering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his changing position on abortion and his history of platforming conspiracy theories and advocating against childhood vaccines.<\/p>\n

If confirmed, Kennedy would lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare, Medicaid and the Food and Drug Administration, among other agencies. The FDA approves new vaccines and the CDC issues further guidance on who should receive them.<\/p>\n

Kennedy repeatedly stressed throughout the hearing that he supports vaccines, despite his history of questioning vaccine efficacy. He also founded the anti-vaccine group The Children\u2019s Health Defense but resigned his role as chairman in December.<\/p>\n

Bennet acknowledged that he agreed with Kennedy about concerns over chronic illness and its connection to the American diet, but he swiftly moved to criticize Kennedy for \u201cpeddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that create doubt about whether or not things that we know are safe are unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennet read from transcripts and writings from Kennedy with a raised voice, questioning him on a series of his controversial statements over the years. Bennet asked about Kennedy\u2019s claims that COVID-19 was a \u201cgenetically engineered bioweapon that targets Black and white people while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people,\u201d to which Kennedy responded saying he did not say the virus was \u201cdeliberately\u201d targeted at those groups.<\/p>\n

When Bennet asked about his claim that Lyme disease was \u201chighly likely a militarily engineered bioweapon,\u201d Kennedy responded that he \u201cprobably did say that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy did not support either claim with evidence.<\/p>\n

\"Robert
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's choice to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, appears before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday. (J. Scott Applewhite\/Associated Press)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Kennedy denied that he had suggested pesticides cause children to become transgender, but in a June 2022 episode on the \u201cRFK Jr. Podcast,\u201d he linked phthalates \u2013 a class of chemicals that disrupt the body\u2019s hormone levels \u2013 to \u201csexual identification and sexual confusion among children,\u201d saying that they induced \u201cprofound sexual changes\u201d in children.<\/p>\n

While those chemicals are present in many everyday products and in pesticides, Kennedy did not provide any scientific evidence to link them to being gay or transgender on the podcast.<\/p>\n

Kennedy also fielded questions from several Democratic senators, including Bennet, about his changing position on abortion. Bennet asked about Kennedy\u2019s previous statement that decisions about abortion should be left to women and not the government.<\/p>\n

Kennedy dodged the question, saying \u201cI believe every abortion is a tragedy,\u201d a line he fell back on multiple times throughout the hearing.<\/p>\n

Bennet was not convinced by Kennedy\u2019s responses and raised his voice to remand him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a job where it is life and death for the kids \u2026 and for families all over this country that are suffering from living in the richest country in the world that can\u2019t deliver basic health care\u201d Bennet said.<\/p>\n

On mifepristone, an abortion pill, Kennedy said Trump had asked him to investigate the safety of the pill. Mifepristone was first approved in 2000 and has since been loosely linked to 36 deaths<\/a>, in which it could not be determined to be the cause of death. Trump in November 2024 committed <\/a>to keeping the pills available.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWhatever he does, I will implement those policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Robert
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump's choice to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, appears before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing, at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday.\u00a0(Ben Curtis\/Associated Press)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Ben Curtis)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Kennedy faced questions about Medicare and Medicaid, two federal programs that he seemed unprepared to discuss. He referenced high deductibles and premiums for Medicaid, but most Medicaid patients do not pay deductibles or premiums. He also said the federal government covers the full cost of Medicaid, when states actually provide about 30% of the funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most Republicans on the panel seemed to support Kennedy, focusing on his aims to combat chronic illness and improve the American diet. Notably, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Kennedy that his plans to reduce processed foods available in school lunches would fall under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and that he should leave those programs to the USDA.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Sen. John Hickenlooper will question RFK at a courtesy hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, but Kennedy will face a vote only in the Finance Committee before the full chamber votes on his nomination. If the committee, in which Republicans hold a one-seat majority, approves him, he will then need 51 votes to be confirmed by the full Senate chamber.<\/p>\n

After the hearing, Bennet told reporters he didn\u2019t believe Kennedy had actually changed his positions on vaccines and abortion, saying \u201cthere\u2019s a long record here\u201d that Kennedy\u2019s trying to \u201ccover up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he has said, over and over and over again, that \u2026 you\u2019re better off not having vaccines than having vaccines,\u201d Bennet said. \u201cAnd he comes in here and says that he\u2019s pro vaccine. I mean, that\u2019s all politics. \u2026 It is not, as he says, about science.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cI think we\u2019d be a lot better off with somebody in that job who has to hold the science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathryn Squyres is an intern for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and a student at American University in Washington, D.C. She can be reached at ksquyres@durangoherald.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018We’d be a lot better off with somebody in that job who has to hold the science\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2612,685,28,61,2512,1369,315,25,1566],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-abortion","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-medicaid","tag-medicare","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet","tag-u-s-senate"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78244,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748\/revisions\/78244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23748"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}