WASHINGTON – Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent decades spreading dangerous disinformation about the safety of vaccines, insisted Tuesday that he’s played no role in the resurgence of measles cases in the United States.

“I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” Kennedy repeatedly claimed during testimony to a House committee about President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget request.

That’s not true, of course. This HHS secretary is easily the most famous critic of vaccines in the country. But he made nonsensical claims like this throughout the hearing, and what they all served to do — whether true or not — was help him avoid taking responsibility for the damage he’s caused to public health with his vaccine skepticism.

For hours, Democrats went after Kennedy for fueling distrust of vaccines as measles cases have exploded around the country. In his role as the nation’s top public health official, he has minimized the seriousness of measles outbreaks in Texas, emphasized the importance of personal choice over science, baselessly claimed the measles vaccine leads to “deaths every year” and misleadingly suggested the vaccine “causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”

On top of that, last year, Kennedy dismantled HHS’s advisory committee on immunization practices and replaced its members with anti-science vaccine skeptics, who have since stripped several recommendations for universal vaccines for children.

“I had seven cases just in the last couple of weeks in my county,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) fumed at Kennedy. “I’ve met with the family of one of them. I said, ‘Why didn’t you get immunized?’ They said, ‘We’re listening to our government. Our government tells us not to.’”

Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, and the vaccine has long been safe and effective. But thousands of cases have cropped up in the past couple of years, with the vast majority of people infected not being vaccinated. The U.S. is now at risk of losing its elimination status. A highly contagious disease, measles can lead to severe illness, hospitalization and even death.

Kennedy suggested his anti-vaccine rhetoric has played no role in the U.S. potentially losing its measles elimination status, noting that countries in Europe have lost their elimination status.

“It has nothing to do with me,” said the health and human services secretary. “It has to do [with the fact] that we have a global epidemic.”

The real reason some Americans have stopped getting vaccinated, he continued, is “because the government lied to them during COVID.”

Amesh Adalja, a doctor specializing in infectious disease at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said there is no evidence the government lied to the public about vaccine safety during the COVID pandemic. What there is evidence for is anti-vaccine proponents like Kennedy trying to capitalize on anger over COVID-era public health measures to drive people to their cause.

“He is evading his decades of rhetoric undermining the [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine — he wants to construct a statue to Andrew Wakefield, the person who fraudulently linked the MMR vaccine with autism,” Adalja told HuffPost.

“The erosion of vaccine uptake in the U.S. has a lot to do with RFK Jr.’s and his affiliated organizations’ rhetoric,” he said. “He is brazenly evading.”

Later in the hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), a pediatrician, brought up an alarming new trend in parents being reluctant to give their babies vitamin K shots at birth, leaving them more vulnerable to life-threatening bleeding. She told Kennedy that new parents look to him for guidance, and asked him to state in that moment, on camera, that parents should get these shots for their babies. He wouldn’t.

“I literally never said anything about it,” Kennedy said of vitamin K shots.

“That’s exactly the point,” Schrier said. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”

She reminded the HHS secretary that the last time they spoke, she told him she would hold him personally accountable for every vaccine-preventable illness and death in the country.

“Now I have to add newborns bleeding out because these same parents who are listening to you are not giving their babies a vitamin K shot,” said the Washington Democrat. “This is going to be your legacy. The HHS secretary that caused kids to die.”

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), whose state has been hit hard by measles outbreaks, said he noticed Kennedy didn’t mention vaccines at all in his 13-page written testimony. He ran through several instances where the HHS secretary has publicly aired his skepticism of vaccines.

“Why has such a vocal vaccine skeptic gone silent on these issues?” Veasey asked, wondering aloud if White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told him to stop talking about his vaccine skepticism as polling shows it could hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.

“Do you agree that the majority of people oppose your anti-vaccine actions?” he pressed.

“I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” Kennedy snapped. “Everything you’ve said is a lie.”

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