RFK Jr. targets Fauci and pushes medical misinformation in fiery CNN interview

# RFK Jr. targets Fauci and pushes medical misinformation in fiery CNN interview

In attempting to rewrite the history of the US Covid-19 response, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday pinned the blame for pandemic lockdowns on Dr. Anthony Fauci, while simultaneously reviving a string of debunked assertions about vaccines, RSV and measles.

Kennedy's appearance came in the wake of a congressional hearing with Fauci last week, when the infections disease expert invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 100 times, as Republicans lambasted him for his role in handling the pandemic.

Kennedy joined the chorus of criticism on CNN's "State of the Union with Dana Bash," saying President Donald Trump, who was in office at the beginning of the pandemic and notably downplayed the virus, was not to blame for the government's response.

"Trump, as you recall, wanted to end the lockdowns. I think the thing that did the most damage to our country was the lockdowns," he said.

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as the White House Covid-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2023, pushed back on Kennedy's claims, saying, "accountability has to be with our political leaders," while condemning his false claims on the inefficacy of vaccines.

"The accountability has to be with our political leaders, not with scientists who are giving advice. Second issue that i just want to quickly reflect on. There was a lot of information that Secretary Kennedy said that just isn't true. It's just factually not true," Jha told Bash in an interview following Kennedy's appearance.

His efforts to reframe the pandemic's legacy come as the US battles its worst measles resurgence in more than three decades -- a crisis experts warn is fueled directly by the type of vaccine misinformation and institutional distrust Kennedy amplified during the broadcast.

## Measles

"The communities that are suffering from measles are almost all religious communities that just don't vaccinate," Kennedy told Bash.

There have been dozens more outbreaks in 2026, leading to the highest case count in 35 years, and more than 90% of them have been in people who aren't vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.

Kennedy, who has frequently expressed skepticism about vaccines, told Bash that his agency's websites recommend that "parents should get their children vaccinated for measles."

"I've never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine," he said.

But in March 2025, as the outbreak in Texas spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, he told Fox News' Sean Hannity that measles outbreaks could be driven in part by people who have waning immunity from the vaccine.

"When you and I were kids, everybody got measles, and measles gave you ... lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn't do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people, it wanes," Kennedy told Hannity.

## RSV

Kennedy claimed that gain-of-function research was responsible not just for the virus that causes Covid-19 but for other diseases, as well.

"The RSV epidemic that we have, that is the biggest killer of kids in this country today, came from these kind of experiments," he said.

## Covid vaccines

Kennedy and Bash butted heads on whether Covid-19 vaccines had protected children, with the secretary asking her to cite research showing that the vaccine "did more good than harm."

More than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the US since they became available in late 2020, according to the World Health Organization.