In four days of congressional testimony, the health secretary sought to please the White House and his MAHA base at the same time.
He was combative, defensive and occasionally contrite. He vehemently denied, then halfheartedly apologized for suggesting in 2024 that Black children would benefit from being “re-parented.” He shouted at Democratic senators, accusing them of “grandstanding” and “selective indignation.” He insisted he had delivered “historic wins” for the health of the American people.
In the end, after four days of testimony during seven separate congressional hearings on President Trump’s budget, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walked a fine line, trying to please both his base and the White House at the same time.
If there was any takeaway from Mr. Kennedy’s Capitol Hill marathon, it was that vaccination — the topic that drove Mr. Kennedy for more than a decade and catapulted him to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic — remains the defining issue of his tenure, even as the White House, for political reasons, tries to get him to deflect attention from it.
The measles epidemic, which began last year in Texas and has killed three Americans — the first deaths from the disease in a decade — dominated the discussion. Mr. Kennedy repeatedly defended his handling of it, but appeared to back further and further away from his past criticism of the measles vaccine.
On Wednesday, under persistent questioning, he made his strongest statement yet, saying that his department “has advised every child” to get the shot. (Notably, he did not attribute that advice to himself.)
“On the whole vaccine thing, he’s trying to backpedal and hide and duck,” said Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a vice provost and public health professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who advised Democratic presidents, including Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama, and met with Mr. Trump.