Health and Human Service Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., left, speaks at an event in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, July 30, 2025, in Washington, as President Donald Trump, looks on. (AP Photo/John McDonnell) | AP
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he did not watch Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at-times tense testimony in Congress, but is confident he “means very well.”
The secretary faced withering criticism from Democrats and mild rebuke from a handful of Republicans who worried that his stance on vaccines threatens Americans’ safety.
But Trump, during a dinner with some of the nation’s leading tech CEOs Thursday evening, backed Kennedy, intimating his longstanding skepticism of vaccines was just another option to consider.
“He’s got some little different ideas,” Trump said. “He’s got a different take and we want to listen to all those things.”
Kennedy testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, when he faced a series of scathing questions from both Democrats and Republicans who expressed concern over Kennedy’s leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Three GOP senators on the committee — physicians Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), as well as Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — indicated reservations over Kennedy’s tenure, most specifically, on his wavering stance on funding and access to vaccines.
“In your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines,” Barrasso told Kennedy. “Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.”
Vice President JD Vance also came to Kennedy’s defense on X, saying that the senators who leveled the secretary “all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma” and that those critics are “full of shit and everyone knows it.”
Trump added that he heard Kennedy “did very well” and that his rhetoric is “not your standard talk” when it comes to medical and vaccine issues.
“If you look at what’s going on in the world with health and look at this country also in regard to health,” Trump said. “I like the fact that he’s different.”
