‘He’s Lying’: Conservatives and Liberals Torch RFK Jr. For Baseless Assault on Vaccines
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sparked a rare moment of unity between conservatives and liberals who torched him Wednesday for canceling nearly half a billion dollars in federal contracts for the development of mRNA vaccines.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced it was terminating 22 projects backed by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a key agency in the country’s biodefense infrastructure, the agency said in a statement Tuesday. The decision follows the administration’s earlier revocation of a $600 million deal with Moderna for a bird flu vaccine and marks the administration’s most abrupt retreat yet from the technology.
The move was met with widespread backlash from commentators on both sides of the political aisle, who raged that the move was “madness” and called Kennedy’s rationale nonsense.
Trump critic and Commentary magazine’s senior editor Seth Mandel blasted the decision as a “disgrace” and anti-scientific:
Eric Columbus, who served as an Obama-era special litigation counsel, also weighed in, replying:
I remain amazed that every GOP senator who is not a polio survivor voted to confirm RFK Jr. Not just a lunatic, but a lunatic who was a liberal Democrat until 15 minutes ago!
— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) August 6, 2025
Mandel responded, flatly casting Kennedy as the “worst cabinet pick.”
Elsewhere, Kennedy was lambasted by MSNBC military analyst Barry McCaffrey:
He was joined by many others:
Critics in the medical industry have also sounded the alarm over what they see as a politically charged dismantling of national preparedness.
Dr. Pradheep J. Shanker, who writes for the National Review, mused that mRNA vaccines were key to the intent behind President Donald Trump’s first-term pandemic-era vaccination drive and that there appeared to be “no logic” to the new decision other than Kennedy’s bias:
He accused Kennedy of “lying.”
Notably he was joined by Trump’s former Surgeon General, Jerome Adams:
Kennedy, however, a longtime vaccine skeptic, defended the cuts in a social media video posted Tuesday.
“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” he said, making assertions experts say are false and dangerous.
