Most Republicans' privately would say RFK Jr. 'is a disaster': Ex-GOP lawmaker

Joining us now, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Mel Zinona, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Amish Adalja, and former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, who represented the state of Pennsylvania. Dr. Adalja, first to you, there is a lot of confusion, as Marissa Parra was reporting around the COVID vaccine. As a doctor, please straighten it out for us. This is the absolute worst case scenario, because no one knows who should get a vaccine, no one knows who to trust. What I would say is that if anybody has any high risk condition, they should be getting the new vaccine when it's available. If you are a parent of a child, and that child is less than two years of age, and they have no risk factors for severe disease, even without any risk factors for severe disease, as you just heard, there is a high rate of hospitalizations, those children should get vaccinated. And lastly, I would say pregnant women all need to be vaccinated with each pregnancy. There will be better guidance coming out from the professional societies, but the CDC guidance is likely to be very, very muddled and more confusing, leading to what's going on with these drug stores not actually offering vaccines. So we're going to see RFK Jr. Mel in front of Congress this week, and he's going to be sitting in front of a Senate panel that approved him, including Bill Cassidy, who said yes to his nomination and said yes to installing him as HHS director, but was very critical of him on vaccines and believed that he got an assurance from him on vaccines. Do we have an idea of how Bill Cassidy feels about the HHS director right now, and whether he will have any interesting or tough questions for him later this week? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's going to be a testy hearing. It's going to be a timely hearing. We should point out that it had already been in the works prior to the CDC shakeup. Supposedly, the secretary is going to come in and testify on Trump's health agenda, but no doubt the senators are going to use this as an opportunity to grill him, the secretary, on the firings of the CDC, the resignations, what precipitated that, as well as his own views on vaccines. And I am particularly interested in what Republicans like Cassidy have to say, whether they self-confidence in the secretary and whether they regret voting for him, because Kennedy did renege on a number of promises that he specifically made to Cassidy in order to get that vote, that critical vote from Cassidy for his nomination. Kristen Welker did press another senator on that committee, James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, about that very question. Here's what he had to say. Do you have 100 percent confidence in Secretary Kennedy, Senator? I could go through several of those things. I don't think he's limiting access to the COVID vaccine. It's still widely accepted. The challenge is, is it right for children to be able to have the COVID vaccine? Do you have 100 percent confidence in Secretary Kennedy? I believe he is true. The president has picked. I don't think he's gone a wrong direction on this. And so I think what you heard a little bit there was that Lankford, like many other Republicans, is really wary of getting on Trump's bad side. And Cassidy is in a difficult position because he is facing a primary challenge from the right. He's up for reelection next year. But over the week, he has said that he's going to use his committee, another committee that he sits on, to conduct aggressive oversight. He's also been on social media pushing back on the secretary, pushing back on some of this anti-vaccine rhetoric. So he's going to be definitely one to watch as Congress comes back this week, Katie. Let me, Charlie, show you what Bill Cassidy reposted on social media. He was reposting a Caroline Leavitt post discussing Trump and RFK Jr.'s commitment to restoring trust and transparency and credibility to the CDC. Then he added this. The president and secretary are right. We need radical transparency. We need to protect the health of our children. The two go together. I'm committed to the president's vision, which is why the health committee will conduct oversight. So are you, what is your expectation for, not the Democrats, I know where the Democrats are going to go, but where the Republicans are going to go, given that tweet and given what you just heard from James Lankford? Well, it strikes me that most Republicans, if you were to talk to them privately, would tell you that RFK Jr. is a disaster. Most Republicans that I know support vaccines for polio, for measles, for COVID and for the flu. We have an HHS secretary who doesn't seem to support those things or is very half-hearted in his support, which is troubling because the American people want to trust what they're hearing from the CDC and HHS, which has been the gold standard for a very long time. It's not just people in the United States who look to us for guidance on matters of health. It's people throughout the world who don't have CDCs, who need this type of expertise. And the fact that there's this assault on all these folks at the CDC who have doctor behind their names suggests that we are moving away from science and data and evidence and towards something that's much more troubling and unscientific. Help me understand the motivation. When you're talking about not just this COVID vaccine, you're talking more broadly about vaccines, vaccines that have saved people's kids' lives. Vaccines that have saved kids from horrible, not deformities, what's the word I'm looking for? Diseases, et cetera, from horribly painful lives, polio, et cetera. What is the thinking of Republicans who will tell you privately they think this is a bad idea, but publicly they'll say okay to it and then continue to put these kids' lives in danger? I don't understand that. Well, I think a lot of them would love to see RFK Jr. fired. I just have to believe that. I mean, and by the way, just talk to Mitch McConnell. Why wouldn't they not come out and grill him on Capitol Hill and demand that? I hope they do this week. Kennedy has certainly provided them an opening. But talk to Mitch McConnell about polio vaccinations. He experienced polio as a child. He's been, I think, pretty outspoken. And there have been some others. I mean, George Washington, for heaven's sake, was trying to immunize his soldiers during the Revolutionary War from smallpox. I mean, so this is, you know, the science of vaccinations, I thought, was settled. And I'm saying this as a non-scientist. My daughter is a physician, by the way. But I just like to say that I am just, as a Republican, I am just disturbed that we are somehow ignoring experts and we are ignoring real data and science in exchange for a guy who's been a Democrat his whole life and who's been pushing, you know, quackery and, frankly, a trial lawyer agenda. It's not just, as I said, Dr. Adalja, the COVID vaccine. It's vaccines more broadly. What are we seeing across the spectrum? Well, basically, this is a wholesale assault on vaccines. Secretary Kennedy doesn't even believe in the germ theory of disease. So he does not believe that there's any value to vaccines. And what he's doing is basically dismantling the entire vaccine ecosystem with the tremendous power he has as HHS secretary. And he's doing it very deliberately and tactically. He's taking it apart piece by piece to make it really hostile for vaccine developers or anybody that wants to get a vaccine. And I think what we're going to see is this coming back to haunt us. We already have record-breaking measles cases already, with three deaths in the United States. We will see increases in other vaccine-preventable diseases as people don't get vaccines or turn away from vaccines. And he's dismantling the CDC and making it probably what will be an organ for anti-vaccine disinformation when he installs his cronies there. So this is a really, really horrible time when it comes to infectious disease preparedness. If we are to get another infectious disease outbreak, epidemic, pandemic, we're not going to see anything like Operation Warp Speed. It's going to be a disaster with RFK Jr. at the helm. And it's amazing because Operation Warp Speed was spearheaded by President Trump. It was a signature achievement by him. And instead of touting it and saying, look what I did, I got this vaccine out there. I rushed it through, and it saved lives. It was effective. He's now done a complete 180 on it and claims that it's dangerous and wants to see the data that, again, everyone has already seen. I'm Mel Zinona, Dr. Adaljah and Charlie Dent. Thank you, Charlie. Don't go anymore.