RFK Jr. Angrily Accuses Senator of ‘Twisting’ His Comments in Battle Over Antidepressants and School Shootings
Health and Human Services honcho Robert Kennedy Jr. angrily pushed back on claims he blamed antidepressants for the Minnesota church shooting on Fox News last week — although he strongly suggested a possible link between the two.
The confrontation came as Kennedy was grilled by Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) on Capitol Hill Thursday.
During a tense exchange, Smith claimed Kennedy had gone on Fox News and claimed that antidepressants were to blame for the bloodbath at the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis, where two children were killed and more than a dozen others were injured.
“Just last week, in the days after the tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in my home state of Minnesota, you went on Fox News blaming school shootings on antidepressants,” she said. “You have no evidence of that because you have no evidence of a connection, and you want to talk about-”
“You’re just making stuff up,” Kennedy shot back.
“I did not blame that shooting- I have no idea, whether, I have no idea,” Kennedy added. “I never said that. You’re making it up. You’re twisting- you’re being dishonest right now. You are being dishonest.”
But a day after the shooting, Kennedy did appear on Fox News, where he announced he was directing studies into the use of antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).
Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy, “Are you going to be examining it all, some of the drugs that are used in order to make that transition happening, to see if it plays a role? Because we also know there was a trans shooter in the Tennessee situation.”
“We are doing those kind of studies now at NIH. We’re launching studies on potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence,” Kennedy replied.
“There are black box warnings on some of these psychiatric drugs that warn about in clinical trials that they saw suicidal and homicidal ideation,” Kennedy said. “We are going into that with an open mind. We’re looking, a lot of these studies have not been done in the past because of HPPA regulations to protect the privacy of patients. It is something we’re looking at. We need to explain why violence is happening and we need to look at every possibility.”
Let’s go to the tape:
The Fox News interview came after Fox & Friends weekend host Rachel Campos-Duffy called on Kennedy by name to look into “SSRIs” and other “kinds of medications” prescribed to kids.
“You talked about how do we protect these schools?” she said during an appearance on Outnumbered. “I think of two things. SSRIs and the kinds of medication so many young kids are on since such a young age. I hope Bobby Kennedy looks into that, our Secretary of Health and Human Services.”
Smith was one of many senators ripping into Kennedy over previous claims about vaccines and his policy decisions, including the recent ouster of CDC Director Susan Monarez, firing the entire CDC vaccine board in June.
Watch above via CNN.
