Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. derailed his Senate hearing with a bizarre story involving a dog, cancer, and artificial intelligence, baffling the hosts of The View.
In the second of two congressional hearings on Wednesday about his 15-month tenure as HHS secretary, Kennedy, 72, inexplicably steered the conversation towards AI. Kennedy declared that the technology would “revolutionize medicine” and may someday “make the FDA irrelevant.” Then, he added a bizarre anecdote.
“I was just reading about a dog that had cancer, and his owner used AI to develop a personalized treatment that cured the cancer,” he claimed.
“This is our expert,” The View co-host (and former Trump administration official) Alyssa Farah Griffin admonished on Thursday, pointing to the video of Kennedy, “somebody who does not have a medical degree, who does not have a background in science.”
Her co-hosts appeared equally bemused and concerned.
“You know, sometimes I feel like they’re trying to kill us,” Joy Behar added.
“You think?” Whoopi Goldberg retorted.
“Here you’ve got a guy who’s in charge of our health, who is a former heroin addict—he swam in sewage! Who does that? And that snorted cocaine off a toilet seat,“ Behar, 83, continued. ”This is who is in charge of your health, America. Do not put up with this!"
“We’re in a lot of trouble... don’t people see that?” she wondered aloud.
In two Capitol Hill hearings on Wednesday, Kennedy, a longtime vaccine conspiracy theorist, was grilled by senators on his checkered vaccine history—particularly relating to the current measles outbreaks—his outlandish videos with Kid Rock, and his refusal to corroborate CDC declarations.
Griffin, 36, explained that Kennedy’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research funding—the type of research that created the COVID vaccines—was not getting the condemnation it deserved.
“That has real-life consequences! Every day experts who spent their lives dedicated to science are working to save lives,” she said, adding that she lost a friend to pancreatic cancer, which requires mRNA research to combat.
“And these cuts to grants—that is not getting nearly enough attention, and we’re going to feel the consequences for decades to come,” she warned.
Speaking directly to the camera, Goldberg, 70, called out the senators who confirmed Kennedy’s HHS secretary nomination.
“You let him on there!” Goldberg said to Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, staring into the camera. “You did not say, ‘This is not a good idea.’ I’m really mad at you, too. I’m really mad.”
Cassidy, 68, who is a physician, cast the tie-breaking vote last year to confirm Kennedy’s nomination. During this week’s Senate hearings, the Republican senator spoke in support of Kennedy, despite Kennedy’s reneging on promises made during the confirmation hearings.
The closest he came to condemning the MAHA secretary’s controversial vaccine decisions was in stating that the “outbreaks numbering in the thousands and people dying once more from vaccine-preventable diseases” seemed “more than tragic.”
The View‘s co-hosts have hit Kennedy and his family hard over his controversial tenure as HHS Secretary. In October, the daytime TV hosts grilled his wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
“The problem, respectfully, is that your husband is the least qualified Department of Health and Human Services head that we’ve had in history,” Sunny Hostin chided. “I think that’s very dangerous.”
Even as Hines tried to respond to the hosts’ many questions, they frequently spoke over her, chastizing her husband and President Trump for spouting unfounded claims on vaccines, Tylenol’s link to autism, and COVID-19 vaccines.
“I think that we should have more Republicans on the show,” Behar said after Hines departed, “but they don’t want to come on. They’re scared of us.”
