Over two days of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Robert F Kennedy Jr repeated the same answer. He said the closely scrutinized trip he took to Samoa in 2019, which came ahead of a devastating measles outbreak, had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
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Emails sent by staff at the US embassy and the United Nations provide, for the first time, an inside look at how Kennedy’s trip came about and include contemporaneous accounts suggesting his concerns about vaccine safety motivated the visit.
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In addition to meeting with anti-vaccine activists, Kennedy met with Samoan officials, including the health minister at the time, who told NBC News that Kennedy shared his view that vaccines were not safe. Kennedy has said he went there to introduce a medical data system.
These disclosures come at a time when Kennedy, as Donald Trump’s health secretary, has used his power and enormous public influence to overhaul federal immunization guidance and raise suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines, including the measles vaccine. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks in multiple US states have rolled back decades of success in eliminating the highly contagious disease, putting the country on the verge of losing its elimination status. The latest figures show over 875 people in South Carolina have been infected.
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Kennedy addressed questions about his trip to Samoa during two Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment as health secretary.
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“My purpose in going down there had nothing to do with vaccines,” he said under questioning by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts in his 30 January 2025 hearing.
“Did the trip have nothing to do with vaccines as you told my colleagues in Senate finance yesterday?” Markey asked later.
“Nothing to do with vaccines,” Kennedy replied.
One of the senators who questioned Kennedy about Samoa during his confirmation hearings, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, responded to the new records by saying “Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda is directly responsible for the deaths of innocent children.
“Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only underscores the danger he now poses to families across America,” Wyden said in an email. “He and his allies will be held responsible.”
