Thursday's contentious Senate committee hearing featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shows "a whole class of people that just have not yet come to terms with the fact that the American public [has] lost trust with public health," National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya told Newsmax on Friday.
"I think the problem is that we have a health agency that essentially lost the trust of the American public during the pandemic," Bhattacharya said on "American Agenda."
"It embraced all kinds of things like toddler masking, vaccine mandates, made assertions about science that just weren't true, like there's evidence that COVID vaccine blocks transmission, things like that.
"And a lot of people suffered as a result. This is why Bobby Kennedy is still, I think, among the most popular politicians in the country. And what you're seeing in that hearing was that a whole class of people that just have not yet come to terms with the fact that the American public [has] lost trust with public health," he added.
Kennedy is the solution "because he's pointing to real facts," Bhattacharya said.
"The chronic disease crisis is a real problem. The huge numbers of kids are sicker than they ought to be. Huge numbers of adults. And the Health and Human Services agency ought to be focused on fixing that, rather than all these political fights."
Kennedy clashed with several Democrats in the hearing, which was initially called to examine changes affecting public health policies — particularly those concerning vaccine access and leadership disruptions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Specifically, the hearing was set to address issues such as the firing of the CDC director, the resignation of top agency officials, and Kennedy's shifts in vaccine policy.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.