RFK Jr. Accuses Dem senator of ‘making things up’ in heated exchange

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday accused Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan of being dishonest during a tense exchange.

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Hassan said Kennedy secretly made scientists limit the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine for children. Kennedy said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was responsible, but Hassan claimed Kennedy had “unilaterally changed the parameters for giving vaccines, making it possible now … that they’re going to have to go off label to prescribe a vaccine for children.”

WATCH:

“This is crazy talk. You’re making stuff up … It’s not behind closed doors,” Kennedy said. “The industry makes the studies and they could not provide a study that said that it is effective for healthy kids.”

Children lacking high-risk ailments must receive the COVID-19 vaccine off label under the FDA’s new rules, The New York Times reported in August.

“So when have you produced the data that you relied on and that this FDA relied on to change those parameters?” Hassan asked.

“The data is all public. You’re just making stuff up, senator,” Kennedy said.

Hassan insinuated Kennedy’s allegation against her may actually be “kind of a confession.” She asserted that Americans are unable to get the vaccine.

“Everybody can get the vaccine … You’re making things up to scare people and it’s a lie … You are lying right now,” Kennedy said.

Hassan suggested Kennedy was actually “the one making things up.”

The FDA revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in May that it would require additional evidence for what top officials described as the uniquely American “repeat-boosters-in-perpetuity strategy,” the recommendation that even healthy adults get an annual COVID-19 vaccine. The policy marked a change from the Biden administration’s universal recommendation for a yearly COVID-19 booster shot akin to an annual flu shot.

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