A member of the press didn’t back down on Thursday when an aide for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to shut down his question.
Kennedy joined Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Va.) in Virginia Beach for a roundtable on addressing shortages in the healthcare workforce, and at the tail end of the presser, the reporter asked him about recent measles deaths in Pennsylvania.
“Do you believe that five deaths, potentially six, from measles in the state of Pennsylvania ―” the journalist began to ask.
“We’re also not going to talk about measles,” the aide interjected, cutting off the reporter.
The journalist fired back by pointing out one simple fact: “He’s the highest-ranking health official in the country! He can answer that question! He’s a cabinet secretary!”
Kennedy then began to answer, but not before he did a bunch of finger-pointing first.
“We’ve done better. We’re having a global measles outbreak right now,” Kennedy said. “It’s all over the world, and the measles outbreak is occurring because so many people went unvaccinated during the COVID pandemic, and this is something that Anthony Fauci, in fact, predicted.”
He continued, “[Fauci] said, ‘We’re gonna kill more people from measles than we save from COVID’ as we’re shutting down measles vaccination programs.”
Kennedy’s remarks refer to a private journal entry written by Fauci on May 6, 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The entry was later discussed during a congressional hearing over the summer.
“Greater than one million children worldwide have missed their measles vaccination because of the shutdown,” Fauci wrote. “This is terrible and needs to be addressed, since on that basis alone there would be far, far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children.”
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during an announcement at the Health and Human Services (HHS) headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Oct. 5, 2026.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Kennedy went on to claim that the U.S. has “done better, and particularly my administration, has done better at controlling the outbreak than any other country in the world.”
After rattling off a few stats, he then decided to place the blame on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) for the state’s outbreak, accusing him of refusing CDC Epi-Aid because “they didn’t want help from the Trump administration.”
Kennedy claimed that the state has finally asked for help from the federal government and he expects he’ll be able to “bring that outbreak to a quick close.”
Last month, both Trump and Kennedy blamed the outbreak in Pennsylvania squarely on Shapiro.
“They’ve got a bad governor in Pennsylvania. People just don’t know it. He’s very, he’s close to incompetent,” Trump said at the time, with Kennedy in agreement.
Shapiro responded by blasting the president and Kennedy in a post on X.
“Incompetence is letting measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in 2000, reemerge,” Shapiro wrote.
“Incompetence is spending your time promoting outright lies instead of urging people to get a vaccination that would protect them against this deadly disease,” the Democratic lawmaker added.
“Incompetence is denying the tragedy of four measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro continued. “Incompetence is standing right behind you, Mr. President.”
Incompetence is letting measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in 2000, reemerge.
Incompetence is spending your time promoting outright lies instead of urging people to get a vaccination that would protect them against this deadly disease.
Incompetence is denying the… https://t.co/1Wu12FCl5C
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) September 18, 2026