RFK Jr. hammered for stumbling on basic details of HHS institute: 'Named after your aunt!'
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stumbled over basic details surrounding a child health initiative housed within his own department – and named after his aunt.
The revealing moment came Wednesday as Kennedy appeared before Congress for a hearing to discuss President Donald Trump's budget. But when Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) pressed him on the Safe to Sleep campaign, a 30-year-old federal effort to reduce infant sleep-related deaths, the MAGA secretary appeared fuzzy on the particulars.
“Which campaign?” Kennedy replied when asked which office the initiative operates out of. After Kennedy guessed it might fall under the Health Resources Services Administration, or the Administration for Children and Families, Alsobrooks jumped in to correct him.
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“No, actually it's Health and Human Services,” she said before going on to reveal the institute that oversees the campaign was actually named after his own aunt.
“The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,” Alsobrooks said. “This is actually the one that your aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, is the person that this is named after.”
The Maryland senator went on to tell Kennedy that “although this is a very important agency [that] prevents babies from dying, this is the same one you fired every single person in this office as of April the 1st.”
In 2007, the institute was renamed the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in honor of her "dedication and for her contributions to the founding of the institute," according to the government website.