Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted during a televised interview that he was not aware of the impacts of sweeping cuts implemented on U.S. healthcare that he helped facilitate.
RFK Jr. was interviewed by CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook on Wednesday, marking his first network TV interview since assuming his role in President Donald Trump's cabinet.
After touring a native health center in Mesa, Arizona, Kennedy sat down for an interview with LaPook, where he was asked about the proposed $11 billion in cuts to programs aiming to address a variety of public health issues.
"You proposed more than $11 billion in cuts to local and state programs addressing things like infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination. Did you personally approve those cuts?" LaPook asked.
"I'm not familiar with those cuts," Kennedy began. "Those were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered."
"I'll give you an example. About $750,000 of a University of Michigan grant into adolescent diabetes was cut. Did you know that?" LaPook questioned.
"I didn't know that, and that's something that we'll look at," RFK Jr. responded.
Q: Did you personally approve the over $11B in cuts to local and state programs?
— FactPost (@factpostnews) April 9, 2025
RFK Jr.: I'm not familiar with those cuts, they were mainly DEI.
Q: Did you know that $750K of a grant studying adolescent diabetes was cut?
RFK Jr.: I didn't know that pic.twitter.com/z77LyPuMP6
"I just, I'm not familiar with that particular study. But there's a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstated them. Our purpose is not to reduce any level of scientific research that's important," he continued
Kennedy has been restructuring the Department of Health and Human Services in collaboration with the Musk-led DOGE, with 10,000 employees having been laid off already.
"HHS's job is to make America healthy, and we're spending $1.9 trillion a year, and people are not getting healthy. ... What Elon said is that, when you do a disruption of this, a lot of times, 80% of the people that get cut ... You may make mistakes, as much as 20[%], and then you go back and remedy that," said Kennedy.
"The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Tuesday when announcing the cuts.
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