Live stream | Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies to Senate Finance Committee
What this video covers
The full Senate Finance Committee hearing of September 4, 2025 (streamed by 11Alive), held days after Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez and most of the CDC’s senior leadership resigned. Chairman Mike Crapo frames the hearing around President Trump’s 2026 health care agenda, but ranking member Ron Wyden and other Democrats turn it into a referendum on Kennedy’s tenure — including an unsuccessful demand that he be sworn in and repeated calls for his resignation — while Kennedy defends his record across more than three hours of testimony.
Key points
- Crapo opens by praising the MAHA agenda, citing CMS’s finding that 2.8 million Americans were simultaneously enrolled in multiple Medicaid or ACA exchange plans — duplicate coverage he says could save taxpayers $14 billion a year if stopped — along with the One Big Beautiful Bill and its Rural Health Transformation Program.
- Wyden calls Kennedy’s tenure a “health care calamity” marked by chaos and corruption, releases a staff report on what he calls the disaster of Kennedy’s 203 days in office, and accuses him of elevating “conspiracy theorists, crackpots, and grifters” to make life-or-death decisions. Wyden asks that Kennedy be formally sworn in, saying Kennedy lied to the committee in written answers when he promised to do nothing that discourages vaccination; Crapo rejects the request.
- Kennedy begins his statement with condolences to the family of DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, who was killed stopping the August 8 gunfire attack on CDC headquarters, and frames his mission as “a once in a generation shift from a sick care system to a true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease.”
- Another Democratic senator, citing HHS’s handling of immigrant children put on planes to Guatemala, says it is in the country’s best interest that Kennedy step down and that President Trump should fire him if he does not.
- In a heated exchange, Sen. Elizabeth Warren presses Kennedy on Monarez. Kennedy says he told the CDC director she had to resign because, when he asked her “Are you a trustworthy person?”, she answered “No” — and, asked directly whether Monarez is lying about being fired for refusing to pre-approve vaccine schedule changes, Kennedy answers “Yes,” calling her account “not accurate.” Warren replies that he is “putting America’s babies’ health at risk” and “should resign.”
- Sen. Bernie Sanders follows up on Warren’s exchange, pressing Kennedy on calling Monarez a liar a month after praising her as unimpeachable, and argues the administration’s big beautiful bill will throw 15 million Americans off health care.
- Sen. Bill Cassidy says President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed, and Kennedy agrees: “Absolutely.” Cassidy then challenges the consistency of that position — pointing to Kennedy’s past lawsuits, as lead attorney for Children’s Health Defense, seeking to restrict COVID vaccine access, and to HHS’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts — while Kennedy defends Warp Speed itself as “genius.”
- Cassidy also says Kennedy had told Sen. Michael Bennet that the COVID vaccine killed more people than COVID itself. Kennedy denies it: “I did not say that.”