Bulwark Takes - RFK Jr’s War on Vaccines Just Got Worse

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

RFK Jr., now in a powerful health role, is pushing anti-vax rhetoric, undermining science, and promoting fringe vaccine policies—fueling exactly the fears critics warned about.  The link for tonight's AMA at 8pm ET  HHS to require placebo testing of ‘all new vaccines,’ raising questions about approval of updated Covid-19 shots  RFK Jr and health agency falsely claim MMR vaccine includes ‘aborted fetus debris’ RFK Jr. Bets $500 Million on Universal Vaccines in Shift From Covid-19 Funding  Multimillion-dollar Biden-era COVID-19 vax project halted by Trump’s HHS 

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Visit theupsstore.com slash guarantee for full details. Most locations are independently owned. Product, services, prices, and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. The UPS store. Visit a store today. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullwark,

and I am joined by Jonathan Cohn, who writes our Breakdown newsletter, which everyone should be reading. If you're not already, subscribe to that. We are going to be talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What else? But in this case, he's made a series of, well, I don't want to call it perplexing because we all kind of predicted it, but it is still perplexing, announcements on vaccines that your Senator Bill Cassidy really should be probably ashamed at this point. But we'll get to that later. Before we do, subscribe to the feed. Really appreciate it. And it's helpful for us. Share the stuff. We're all prisoner to the algorithm. All right, Cone, let's talk.

There's been like four or five major RFK Jr. announcements. Not all of them are on vaccines, but the big ones are. And I just want to kind of go through this list and then you can give us the real rundown about how serious this is, how much it matters and why you think he's doing it. The biggest one is, in my estimation, that he is going to be requiring, or he says HHS is going to be requiring placebo testing for new vaccines. This has been something that he has talked about repeatedly prior to becoming HHS secretary, thinks that these vaccines are not necessarily safe or at a minimum, not properly tested. And so there's a lot of ethical concerns about this. What do you make of it? Yeah. Yeah. So I, first of all, I think we can say he doesn't think they're safe. I mean,

he has said that over his career as, you know, along the way as he has, you know, at various times needed to seem more acceptable, for example, and you were mentioning Senator Cassidy when he needed confirmation votes, he would say things like, well, I'm not anti-vax. I want to make sure they're properly tested. Yeah. Just, you know, we want transparency. I just, I want to give people, and in fact, just recently he says, I'm like, I want people to make their own decisions based on the best information. And that's all I'm here to do. So I mean, number one, let's be honest. I'm quite skeptical. I don't think that's true. I think he's lying. I think he's just spinning at least.

So just to get that out there. One of his claims is that the vaccines out there have not been adequately tested. And he says that's because not every vaccine has gone through placebo testing. So the things to realize here is actually most vaccines, you know, the new vaccines do, in fact, go through placebo testing. You know, that's part of the process. What we're talking about is different iterations of existing vaccines that they are trying to bring to market. Right, right. So, you know, the latest flu vaccine, a new iteration of the new COVID vaccine, a new variation on the MMR vaccine. And sometimes you don't do a placebo test on a vaccine that's been around and you've got the new iteration because, number one, you can be very confident and safe.

I mean, how many millions of Americans have gotten the MMR or by now the COVID vaccine? We have a vast amount of information. And, and, and by the way, you know, we have probably more information on adverse effects from vaccines than almost any other kind of medication precisely because we watch these so carefully, every adverse event gets right. So we've really studied these super carefully. Um, and you know, uh, if you want to do a placebo testing, you actually, then you run into some problems, some practical and philosophical problems in some of these cases. So first of all, you don't want to give a placebo test to measles, a new measles vaccine, if you don't have to, because you're giving a bunch of kids a non-vaccine. They're going to get the measles, you know, and, and, and this ought to

be obvious in this conversation. This ought to be the background for this conversation, but can we just remind people that people, measles is a really bad disease. People die from the measles. We don't want that to happen. It's happening right now. It's happening right now in West Texas. Yes.

You want to get them vaccinated. You don't want to say, hey, you might be getting vaccinated. You might not. And then have the parents have to deal with that. Yeah. Real ethical, moral considerations. There's an order.

When you, in addition to that, when you're talking about something like the flu, for example, let's say flu vaccines or COVID, which is a mutating virus. It's changing frequently, you know, year after year, every year there's a new flu virus and it's past. It's what you got in the past, plus some new variants. And the reason they updated every year is because the flu changes every year. Yeah. There's a flu season and you want to get that flu vaccine out in time so that people can get it. Now, you know, it's not a perfect science. Sometimes it works better than other times and whatever.

But the point is, you got to move quickly. If you're spending six months on a placebo test of the flu virus. You might miss the season. Yes. What's the point? Right. Yeah. Thanks.

You know, now it's a new flu virus out there. It's not any good anymore. And so you run into problems. It's just, it's not practical. It's not necessary. And again, I think to me, the backdrop for this is as much as anything else, it's one more way, one more add to the list of ways he is just contributing to doubts about vaccines and making people think, oh, are these safe? Should I take them? And this brings us to the second thing that he did, which was yesterday. Now, there are populations in our country like the Mennonites in Texas were most afflicted and they have religious objections to the vaccination because the Because the MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles. So they don't want to take it. So we ought to be able to take care of those populations when they get sick.

All right, so there he is. And he's saying, like, look, there's fetal tissue parts. And he's speaking about it as if, if like this is a weird sort of foreign disgusting object that people shouldn't be putting into their bodies there's two things here one is uh unpacking the actual substance of this but two is it wasn't that long ago where he was down in texas and he was kind of forced in a weird way to say people should get the mmr vaccine that it's you know it is useful to uh fighting this measles outbreak It's clear that he didn't mean it. It's clear that it was just that his heart is in spreading skepticism and criticism of this vaccine.

So that's been obviously exposed, but talk a little bit about, I mean, you and I were talking prior to this, are fetal tissues actually in the vaccine? Does it matter? Like, what is the actual substance? Sorry. Sorry. I have to ask. It's important. You know, it's just, these are not serious arguments.

Right. I mean, let me say, as with all of them, you'll see in a second. It's like a kernel. There's a kernel of seriousness here and a real issue. But it's, you know, so the deal is, MMR vaccine is derived from cell lines. And if you go back and they've been reproduced, the original cell lines for some of them, and this is true for some other vaccines as well, were taken from aborted fetuses. I can't remember.

I think one was in Denmark. I don't remember the details. But the cells reproduced and reproduced and reproduced and reproduced and reproduced and and and and so yeah you know technically speaking there's like dna you know and there's pieces you know that that go trace all the way back to that original you know in the same way you know i mean you know sorry he just makes it seem like they're the way he describes it's like there's an aborted fetus and they're scraping parts off of it and putting it into a vial and then give it. That's not the case.

No, no, no. And the analogy, this is not quite a perfect analogy, but it's kind of close. I think it sort of works. It's like, you know, you go in the ocean, right? And you like swallow some water. You know, you're swallowing some pee, right? Because fish urinate uh whales that's why i go that's why i go in the ocean okay well i didn't i mean you know what you know i mean

you gotta go back on the beach going to the bathroom and then it is kind of you get the sand in your toes it's a whole thing i get it i get it yeah you know um so uh but you know it's a tiny little piece because you know these you know it breaks down there's a little bit of molecules in there you know we all are breathing the little piece because, you know, these, you know, it breaks down. There's a little bit of molecules in there. You know, we all are breathing in the air molecules that Julius Caesar breathed when he was, you know, stabbed in the Roman form. Is that where he was stabbed? I think so. Yeah. Something like that.

So, you know, that is what he is saying. But this gets to your broader point, which is that, you know, he did make it sound like there were scraping pieces, which I guess some people might think is real. But, you know, it is another way to sort of convey his doubts and his skepticism. And, you know, we wrote about this and talked about this at the time. But, you know, there was a big deal. Like he gave the CBS interview. We're like, you know, vaccines are the best way to prevent measles. And it got a lot of news, right?

There's headlines. Oh, you know, RFK comes out for vaccines. Yeah, it was a weird – he had flipped finally. He had seen the light. Yeah, yeah. And it got a lot of news, right? It was headlines. Oh, you know, RFK comes out for vaccine. Yeah. It was a weird, it was, he had flipped finally. He'd seen the left. Yeah. Yeah. And then you watch the interview and first of all, like he said it in the most grudging way possible only after being asked five times and was surrounded by misinformation. And you know, it is very clear. He is not, he does not believe this and he's conveying that in every possible way. And, you know, again, to what you were saying before, we're in the middle of a measles outbreak.

Two children have died. There's no children have died of measles in, you know, in years. And we're shaping the biggest outbreak in decades because people aren't taking the vaccine. And the highest ranking health official in the United States is out there giving people, you know, validating skepticism of a vaccine that is safe. And there's, I'm going to go through the checklist and then, you know, because not just the measles, I mean, he pushed out Peter Marks, who was the chief vaccine specialist at the FDA.

He, what was he? He held up the approval for the Novavax COVID vaccine. He paused working on a new COVID vaccine in pill form. So it's across the board. Now, that brings us to today. And this just hit the inbox this morning. There's this $500 million new initiative that he announced with the NIH to develop a universal vaccine. But I didn't quite understand the specifics of it. I

know you've been asking around. What is the actual details here? So there's sort of two pieces to it. So there has been this idea kicking around for a long time of a universal vaccine. You get it, and it's like it can- One shot to cure it all? Not all, but a lot of different variants. And it's something, in theory, if you could do it, sure, that would be great. There's a lot of ideas we're out there pursuing. There is, separately but connected, there has been interest at various points in vaccines that use what are called whole proteins, a whole virus vaccine, which is basically, you know, the vaccines at the mRNA vaccines we get now, a lot of the most of the vaccines we get now, they use like a piece of a pathogen. And then that's like tricks, you know, that basically keys off your, your, your immune

response. You know, the theory, you have a whole germ, you know, vaccine is that it will, it could be more effective. It could last longer, maybe, maybe not. It's all very theoretical. It's not that particular idea as far as I know. And I'll be honest, this is not something I spend a lot of time on because it hasn't gotten a lot of attention, at least in the circles I pay attention to. I don't think it's thought to be one of the great hopes for the future of vaccines. There was a big National Academ report on, you know, next generation vaccines that looked at a lot of different areas. And this was, I don't think, I don't want to, I would like to go back and double check because I don't think they talked about whole virus

vaccines. Anyway, so here, you know, they're announcing now this sort of $500 million investment in these kinds of vaccines, which happened to be something that are promoted by one of the new HHS officials just appointed. And I assume that's where this came from, or partly at least. You know, $500 million, it's a lot of money for an effort like this, especially at a time when they're cutting so much that they say, well, we can't afford this. You know, they're cutting, you know, we've cut out injury prevention as CDC and, you know, we're cutting disease doctors, or I guess they brought those back. So why do it?

So, so here's the thing. When you're trying to analyze, this is true Trump administration wide, but I think especially here, the hard, the tricky part is like, you can never assume there's like a coherent plan per se. Yeah. This is what i'm getting at like what is the actual thinking here like um in the past when the government does things it moves slowly which can be frustrating but that means they explain everything every step

along where you know we're getting tweets we're getting announcements from hhs you know so it my guess i don't know i'm piecing this together. A plausible theory that fits the facts here is that there's a few things going on. You know, they are on the one hand, Kennedy's doing all this stuff and it's but it's getting some bad publicity. They want to look like they're they're doing something on vaccines. Right. They have this guy at FDA now who I think is FDA. Maybe it's HHS. I have to go back and check that who has been a proponent of the sort of whole you know whatever it's like anything in science you find people who you know everyone you know it's not like a crazy crazy thing it sounds it sounds like it's you know you want to yeah you

want to look into it maybe even invest invest some serious money into it but 500 million is not much but i think i think i think the overlap here, I think the missing link here is that so much of what – so much of Kennedy's thinking and the sort of anti-vax thinking is tied up with pharma is bad and mRNA is bad. And so here the theory is that they're not just going to sort of develop this kind of mechanism. They also have a lot of skepticism over the number of shots that are administered. Yes. And if you can put it into one large dose. This is one large dose. It's not mRNA.

And by the way, part of this is not just to have to develop, but to actually produce this thing inside the government itself. So you're not doing it with pharma, which, you know, can we just pause and say, I thought these were like the small government conservatives. They want to have. Horseshoe politics, man. It's all, it's all connecting into here. Good health with the gut, good healthy eating by the government for the government from the government.

All right. So what's, let's just close here quickly. The big picture takeaway from Kennedy over the past couple of months, starting with just sort not getting, which is he's using the platform in various ways to undermine our sort of programs to promote vaccines, to research vaccines, to develop vaccines. And this is in the context of a broader reorientation of HHS, you know, away from, you know, this is a slight exaggeration, but not that slight away from science. I mean, I had a way, you know, and more towards things he cares about some of which are fine. Some of which might be good. You know, I'm all for getting the food dyes.

You know, I don't care if my fruit loops are kind of a dimmer shade of purple. No, I want, I want the, I want the pure red fruit. Okay. You know what? I'll be honest i i like them that color too if they're bad take them out that's fine but like i like the bright colors i actually fruit looks are one of my favorite airplane snacks actually so there you go well so but back to back to the point it's it is it is about as bad as you could have thought yeah yeah i think so all right well that will Senator Cassie will have to live with that one. Cone, thanks, man. I appreciate this.

Everyone should be subscribed or reading, I should say, your newsletter. It's essential. And we'll obviously be covering a lot more of RFK Jr. as these things progress. Thank you for tuning in. Thanks, buddy. Really appreciate it. Subscribe to the feed. Talk later.

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