The Governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, strongly criticized statements made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his Wednesday confirmation hearing, particularly about a measles outbreak in Samoa that occurred in 2019.
“He’s a deceiver, and it’s absolute nonsense,” Green remarked concerning RFK Jr. in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett on OutFront. Green, who is also a medical professional, organized a team that traveled to Samoa to carry out a vaccination initiative during the outbreak in 2019.
Kennedy, known for his anti-vaccine stance, had also traveled to the island nation in 2019, at the invitation of the Samoan prime minister and anti-vaccination activist Edwin Tamasese. At that time, vaccination rates among Samoans had significantly declined after two nurses erroneously mixed expired muscle relaxant with doses of the MMR vaccine in 2018, resulting in the deaths of two children and alarming parents.
In the past, Green has accused Kennedy Jr. of having “spread a vast amount of misinformation” regarding what he labeled as the risks of vaccines, causing the nation to halt vaccinations.
The following year, the measles outbreak among those who were unvaccinated led to 83 fatalities and over 5,000 infections. In response, Samoa enacted laws making vaccinations mandatory.
However, during his contentious confirmation hearing, President Donald Trump’s appointee for HHS Secretary asserted that his 2019 trip to Samoa had entirely coincidental motives.
“Vaccination rates had already fallen below any previous thresholds. I was there for reasons unrelated to vaccines. I went to implement a medical informatics system,” he stated. “You won’t find a single Samoan who claims, ‘I didn’t receive a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy.'”
(In a 2021 article on the Children’s Health Defense website, Kennedy Jr. noted that his visit to Samoa was to participate in an independence celebration and to discuss with governmental officials “the implementation of a medical informatics system to enable Samoa’s health authorities to evaluate the efficacy and safety of every medical intervention or medication regarding overall health in real time.”)
During his confirmation session, numerous Democratic senators confronted Kennedy regarding his dubious statements about his experiences in Samoa, as well as his general views on vaccines and health matters.
Governor Green joined the chorus of criticism Wednesday evening.
“He went there and met with the anti-vaccine leader… who was disseminating all of this false information, and that individual was arrested,” Green stated. (Tamasese was apprehended and charged with inciting against a governmental directive in 2019.)
Green once again charged Kennedy with creating doubt about vaccinations and complicating efforts to achieve herd immunity, which necessitates that 90% to 95% of a population gets vaccinated against a particular disease.
“He continuously tries to evade the truth, which is that he does not endorse vaccinations,” the governor remarked. “It might be acceptable if he were an unknown figure, but he is Robert Kennedy Jr.”
