President Trump said he’s supportive of vaccines on Friday, breaking with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy has faced widespread criticism for his new vaccine mandates and staffing shake-up at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Trump was asked Friday during an Oval Office meeting about Kennedy’s vaccine mandate changes, which include limiting which children are eligible for vaccines.
- “I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated,” Trump said of Kennedy’s vaccine mandates for children.
- “They’re just, pure and simple — they work,” he added. “They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used.”
Trump has a history of changing his tune on vaccines, initially expressing skepticism about them in the early days of Operation Warp Speed — launched in 2020 to fast-track development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
- He later called the vaccine a “medical miracle” that could “save millions of lives.” Recently, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.
- For years, Trump shared debunked theories about vaccines causing autism, including during his first presidential campaign in 2015, per The New York Times.
- Trump has said he opposes vaccine mandates and signed a presidential action earlier this year that eliminated federal funding for COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools, pointing to “the incredibly low risk of serious COVID-19 illness for children and young adults.”
- The big picture: Trump’s break from RFK Jr. comes as the health secretary was lambasted at a Senate hearing over his rattling of the CDC staff, alterations to vaccine recommendations and massive changes that have upended years of vaccine policy and research.
- “I think Secretary Kennedy is dead set on making it harder for children to get vaccines and that kids are going to die because of it,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said at the hearing.
- Kennedy’s nephew, former U.S. congressman Joe Kennedy III, called on the health secretary to resign Friday, saying he was “a threat to the health and well-being of every American.”
- AXIOS