Top 7 moments from RFK Jr.'s contentious Capitol Hill hearing

2. 'How can you be that ignorant?': Sen. Mark Warner grills over COVID deaths

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., ripped into Kennedy over COVID-19 deaths and vaccines, prompting Kennedy to claim that the COVID-19 data maintained by the Biden administration was "absolutely dismal" and leaves him unsure of the exact death toll.

Mark Warner lashes out at RFK Jr after he says the Biden administration politicized COVID vaccine data.

"They didn't have the data... They fired all the people who questioned the orthodoxy." pic.twitter.com/Zo3rMkd6va

— Media Research Center (@theMRC) September 4, 2025

"Just again, some basic facts," Warner said. "Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?"

"I don't know how many died," Kennedy said.

"You're the Secretary of Health and Human Services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?" Warner asked.

"I don't think anybody knows that because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC, and there were so many perverse incentives," Kennedy replied.

After Warner grilled him about the efficacy of the COVID-19 injections, Kennedy said the data on that issue is also inadequate.

“No, and that's the problem — they didn't have the data. The data from the Biden administration was absolutely dismal, which is data chaos," he said, adding that people who questioned the prevailing narrative about the topic were fired.

Kennedy later said the demand that he confess certain facts about COVID-19 and injections is almost religious in nature.

I refuse to sign onto something unless I can stand behind it with scientific certainty. That doesn’t make me ‘anti-vax’ – it makes me pro-science. pic.twitter.com/8IHLK7Jt76

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) September 4, 2025

"We have to acknowledge that there was a cause, we acknowledge that there was a benefit," he said. "We can't quantify either one, because of the data chaos at CDC, and that's all I'm saying."

"And they think I'm being evasive because I won't make a kind of a statement that's almost religious in nature," he said of the Democrats. "Did it save a million lives? Well, there's no data to support that. ... There's no study; there's modeling studies, there's faulty data."

"I'm not going to sign on to something unless I can stand behind it with scientific certainty. That doesn’t make me 'anti-vax'  — it makes me pro-science," he said.