One of the most amazing interviews of 2025 aired in early April, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with CBS News, which asked some questions that the Cabinet secretary probably should’ve seen coming. CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, for example, asked Kennedy whether he approved the HHS cuts that helped states address infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination.
“No, I’m not familiar with those cuts,” Kennedy said.
When LaPook provided Kennedy with an example of a $750,000 University of Michigan grant focused on adolescent diabetes, which was eliminated, RFK Jr. again said, “I didn’t know that,” though he vowed to look into the cuts his department had already approved.
It was a humiliating interview, which raised questions, not only about Kennedy’s obvious incompetence, but also about whether the HHS secretary is fully aware of what was happening in the agency he ostensibly leads.
The on-air debacle came to mind anew watching Kennedy struggle badly during back-to-back appearances before House and Senate committees on Capitol Hill. The New York Times reported:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a defiant defense on Wednesday of his drastic overhaul of federal health agencies, insisting to members of Congress that he had “not fired any working scientists” and was “not withholding money for lifesaving research” despite evidence to the contrary.
I’ve written a handful of pieces lately about Donald Trump’s transformation into President Bystander and the degree to which Trump has been blissfully unaware of important developments unfolding around him. But if Trump is President Bystander, then Kennedy is Secretary Bystander, whose ignorance seems increasingly unavoidable.
At one point during Kennedy’s Senate testimony, for example, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut reminded the health secretary, “You canceled $12 billion in grants to the states, including my state, that are used to administer and track vaccines.” Kennedy replied, “When did I do that?”
When Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey asked about funding cuts to the World Health Center Health Program. “I don’t know about that,” Kennedy answered.
The health secretary didn’t know about cuts to the clinical center at the National Institutes of Health. He didn’t know about the firing of scientists. He didn’t know about the National Firefighter Cancer Registry. He didn’t know about cuts to the Special Olympics. He didn’t know about cuts that threaten domestic violence-prevention programs. In one especially memorable exchange, Kennedy also struggled with a question about a program that’s housed in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — an office named after his own aunt. ALSOBROOKS: Can you name which office the Safe to Sleep campaign operates out of?RFK Jr: Which campaign?ALSOBROOKS: The one the senator asked you about just two minutes agoRFK Jr: It's ACFALSOBROOKS: No, actually it's Health and Human Services In the House hearing, Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey asked the secretary about cuts to home heating programs. After a tense exchange, Kennedy, noting the clock, told the congresswoman, “My time has expired.” Watson Coleman responded, “Well, then so has your legitimacy.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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