OAN Staff Blake Wolf
10:02 AM – Monday, September 8, 2025
President Donald Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert Kennedy Jr. after his intense Thursday hearing before a bipartisan Senate Finance Committee, in which senators challenged the top Trump health official over his handling of vaccines and other issues.
On Sunday, President Trump praised Kennedy for his unique perspective, describing him as “a different kind of guy. He’s got a lot of good ideas, but he’s got a lot of ideas.”
“You know, normally, they don’t have any ideas and that’s why we have problems with autism and so many other things, because we’re coming up with the answers for autism, you watch,” the president continued. “We’re coming up with the answers for other things that normal people, regular people, easy-to-get-along-with people wouldn’t be able to do.”
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Kennedy was subjected to intense criticism in Thursday’s hearing over his decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.
The president went on to endorse tested vaccines, as Kennedy has been labeled “anti-vaccine” despite repeatedly stating that he is “pro-vaccine… But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible.”
“You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work,” Trump stated. “They’re not controversial at all, and I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it, and they endanger other people. And when you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it.”
After Thursday’s hearing, President Trump issued support for his HHS secretary, saying that he’s “got a different take, and we want to listen to all of those takes.”
“But it’s not your standard talk, I would say. And that has to do with medical and vaccines. But if you look at what’s going on in the world with health, and look at this country also with regard to health, I like the fact that he’s different.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Kennedy for removing the COVID-19 recommendations for children and pregnant women, stating that during his confirmation hearing, Kennedy “promised that you would not take away vaccines from anyone who wanted them.”
Kennedy quickly responded, explaining that the vaccine recommendations have to be based on clinical science, stating that there is “no clinical data for that indication.”
Kennedy also defended the firing of individuals working at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for failing to perform their jobs adequately during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclaiming, “We were lied to about everything.”
“We were lied to about everything. We were lied to about natural immunity. We were lied to — we were told again and again the vaccines would prevent transmission, they prevent infection — it wasn’t true. They knew it from the start it wasn’t true because that’s what the animal studies and the clinical trials showed,” Kennedy stated at the hearing.
Kennedy added that the United States is the “sickest country in the world,” while pointing towards the latest CDC statistics revealing that 76% of Americans are now burdened with a chronic disease.
“If we don’t end this chronic disease — we are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at the CDC. They did not do their job. This was their job to keep us healthy, and I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
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