Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, faced grilling from Democrats and at least one Republican on day two of his Senate confirmation hearing. One Democrat declared RFK Jr.’s views on vaccinations and immunity “dangerous” after he claimed Black people have stronger immune systems than White people.

“You said the following, and I quote: ‘We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to Whites, because their immune system is better than ours.’ Can you please explain what you meant?” U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) asked (video below), after quoting Kennedy’s remarks about Black people and vaccines back to him.

“There’s a series of studies, I think most of them by [Andrew] Pollard that the particular antigens that show that Blacks have a much stronger reaction. There’s differences in reaction to different products by different races,” Kennedy responded, a claim he has made before.

“So what different vaccine schedule would you say, I should have received?” Senator Alsobrooks asked.

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“Well, I mean, the Pollard article suggests that Blacks need fewer antigens —”

“This is so dangerous,” the Maryland Democrat Senator replied. “Mr. Kennedy with all due respect, that is so dangerous.”

“Your voice would be a voice that parents would listen to, that is so dangerous,” Alsobrooks continued. “I will be voting against your nomination because your views are dangerous to our state and to our country.”

On the website for his anti-vaccine non-profit’s website, Kennedy made that and other similar statements.

“As it turns out, blacks have a much more robust immune system than whites,” the website’s exact transcript of Kennedy’s remarks during an interview reads. “We now know this because there was a guy called Andrew Pollard who is on their side, and he works for the Mayo Clinic, and he’s done these studies. And what he’s found out is that blacks only need half of the antigen that whites do. So if you’re trying to immunize black for measles, if you’re trying to immunize a white person, you need to give a certain amount of the measles virus to them, the dead virus or the live virus. For a black, they’ll get the same immune response if they get half that now.”

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The Washington Post this week reported that Kennedy “has repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years.”

The Post, highlighting Kennedy’s remarks that Black people’s immune systems are better than White people’s, reported: “Several experts said no scientific basis exists to support that claim.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

ALSOBROOKS: You said 'we should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that is given to whites.' Can you please explain what you meant?

RFK Jr: There's a series of studies …

ALSOBROOKS: What different schedule would you say I should've recevied? pic.twitter.com/rlTmsCo48j

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2025

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As first responders work to recover bodies from the freezing waters of the Potomac, President Donald Trump, without evidence, suggested that diversity hiring and Democrats were at least partly responsible for Wednesday night’s mid-air collision that claimed over 60 lives. His politicized remarks from the podium on Thursday have sparked widespread outrage, compounding the grief of many Americans grappling with the nation’s first fatal aviation disaster since 2009. In addition to “DEI,” Trump also baselessly pointed fingers at former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

The NTSB has only just begun its investigation, which could take years to determine the cause of the deadly collision.

“Minutes after saying the airport collision shouldn’t be politicized, and that it should bring Americans together in common cause, Trump blames Democrats and DEI for the deadly incident,” The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Ward reported, which is in line with the paper’s reporting.

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“I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office,” CNN reported Trump said, at a press conference to address the horrific disaster that has shaken many Americans. “And here’s one, the FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce said ‘they want them in, and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so. This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program,” Trump said.

Q: Are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring?

Pres. Trump: It just could have been…you have to go by brain power. You have to go by psychological quality…these are very powerful tests that we put to use and they were terminated by Biden. pic.twitter.com/IpaxJ12IBm

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 30, 2025

Trump claimed that during his first administration, “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.” He also claimed that when he “left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.”

“I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level,” Trump alleged, NBC News reported, adding, “their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.”

The President also lashed out at former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling him “a disaster,”

“He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit,” Trump announced live in-air, before alleging Secretary Buttigieg ran the Transportation Department “right into the ground with his diversity.”

President Donald Trump puts blame for the Reagan International Airport tragedy on Pete Buttigieg, who is not in office.

“He was a disaster of a mayor, he ran his city into the ground and he’s a disaster now. He’s just got a good line of bullshit.” pic.twitter.com/tflJhppjoY

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) January 30, 2025

Buttigieg quickly responded.

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“Despicable,” the former Transportation Secretary wrote on social media. “As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

The New York Times’ Peter Baker observed, “Trump’s move to blame the crash on diversity reflects his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political lens whether facts fit or not. After the terrorist attack in New Orleans, he blamed immigration even though the attacker was a US citizen born in Texas.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis remarked, “The commander-in-chief should be offering condolences and competent solutions rather blaming women and people of color for everything that goes wrong. Racism and misogyny in response to a national tragedy.”

“This isn’t about making America great again,” commented Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “It makes me profoundly sad that an American tragedy, which requires investigation to assess the cause and prevent future accidents has been politicized & shoehorned into Trump’s anti-inclusion policy for anyone who isn’t a sis [sic] white christian nationalist male or supporter. It makes me sadder that so many people still don’t understand that he’s trying to drive wedges in between us to accumulate more power for himself.”

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison added, “Words can’t express my disgust. In a moment in which you should lead the nation in mourning and navigating a tragedy this heartless imbecile finds ways to divide.”

“It’s one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it’s another for the president of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered and families still being notified,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, as CBS News reported. “It just turns your stomach.”

Others pointed to a memo posted to the White House’s website, titled (in all-caps), “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ends DEI Madness And Restores Excellence And Safety Within The Federal Aviation Administration.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘This Job Is Life and Death for Kids!’: RFK Jr. Blasted in Heated Conformation Hearing

As the nation begins to grapple with and mourn what reportedly are more than 60 deaths from a late Wednesday night mid-air collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, some are also grappling with the response from President Donald Trump.

“No one is believed to have survived the midair collision between an American Airlines jet plane and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter last night in the Washington, DC, area, the fire chief said Thursday. President Donald Trump is expected to address the tragedy this morning at the White House Briefing Room,” CNN reported.

The White House put out a statement from President Trump just before 11 PM Wednesday that read: “I have been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport. May God Bless their souls. Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders. I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.”

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But just after midnight, on his Truth Social website, Donald Trump shared this message.

“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”

Critics are blasting Trump for his Truth Social post.

HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte posted screenshots of both statements and commented: “What people in the WH want you to think the president thinks,” and, “What the president actually thinks.”

What people in the WH want you to think the president thinks:

What the president actually thinks: pic.twitter.com/rD7h05g8fR

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 30, 2025

“One of the paradoxes of Trump’s conception of the presidency: he somehow requires absolute and unchecked power, but also seems to think of himself as a passive, tut-tutting observer when the government over which he has that absolute power fails in any way,” observed New York Times opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen, in response to Trump’s social media post. Polgreen is a co-author of the recent Times piece, “Trump Is at His Absolute Worst in a Crisis.”

Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot and former Democratic political candidate responded to Trump’s remarks: “This is not what our president should be doing or saying right now.”

READ MORE: ‘This Job Is Life and Death for Kids!’: RFK Jr. Blasted in Heated Conformation Hearing

“The President is asking rhetorical questions about what federal gov’t aircraft was doing, as if someone else should have the answers. This is his responsibility. If he doesn’t know the answers, it’s because he and his unqualified DoD & DoT appointees are incompetent,” declared attorney Max Kennerly.

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias added: “One of Trump’s weirdest bits from Covid was constantly acting like someone else was the president and he’s just a prominent guy raising questions about what the government is doing.”

Others pointed to Trump’s recent actions.

“First aviation disaster in US since 2009 and if it had been under Biden,” Moe Davis, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, educator, politician, and former administrative law judge wrote. He add that Trump “would yell incompetence and say wouldn’t happen if he was President.”

Davis also noted that the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was “pushed out” by Elon Musk, and that “Trump killed” the Aviation Safety Committee, “fired” the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and “froze air traffic control hiring.”

On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported, “The Federal Aviation Administration’s leader stepped down on Jan. 20, months after Elon Musk demanded that he quit,” and noted that the “move by Michael Whitaker means the FAA has no Senate-confirmed leader for one of the biggest crises in its history because he quit before Donald Trump took office.”

Back in September, Musk tweeted that Whitaker “needs to resign.”

According to the Associated Press, last week “President Donald Trump moved quickly to remake the Department of Homeland Security Tuesday, firing the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard before their terms are up and eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group.”

The AP explained that the “aviation security committee, which was mandated by Congress after the 1988 PanAm 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, will technically continue to exist but it won’t have any members to carry out the work of examining safety issues at airlines and airports. Before Tuesday, the group included representatives of all the key groups in the industry — including the airlines and major unions — as well as members of a group associated with the victims of the PanAm 103 bombing. The vast majority of the group’s recommendations were adopted over the years.”

Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband was killed in the bombing and served on the committee, told the AP, “I naively thought, ‘oh they’re not going to do anything in the new administration, to put security at risk — aviation security at risk.’ But I’m not so sure.”

Shannon Watts, a speaker, organizer, and anti-gun violence activist wrote: “Dems should call for immediate hearings on what caused tonight’s plane crash, including the impact of the removal of FAA safety protocols and personnel.”

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