“I think we have to be very careful,” President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office, discussing vaccines and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Senate testimony. “You have some vaccines that are so amazing. The polio vaccine, I happen to think is amazing. A lot of people think that COVID is amazing. You know there are many people who believe strongly in that.”
(NOTE: Some MAGA lawmakers like U.S. Senator and physician Bill Cassidy (R-LA) believe Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for his role in Operation Warp Speed, which catalyzed the swift development and distribution of COVID vaccines.)
Touching on anti-vaccine claims (and actions) made by Kennedy — and tangentially also on a movement afoot in Florida that would make vaccines optional — Trump said: “I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated. It’s a very, you know, it’s a very tough position…It’s a tough stance.”
Even President Trump gets it right once in awhile.
Vaccines are safe and effective. They have saved millions of lives.
Sadly, Sec. Kennedy disagrees.
We need an HHS Secretary who believes in science, not conspiracy theories.pic.twitter.com/14D0Gnet11
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 6, 2025
Trump’s support for vaccines — broadly in opposition to Kennedy’s “tough stance” — was received with gratitude by lawmakers on the left. Notably, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — who rarely finds common ground with Trump on any issue — praised the President for this moment of clarity on the science, writing begrudgingly that “even President Trump gets it right once in awhile. Vaccines are safe and effective. They have saved millions of lives.”
Then Sanders — who has called for Kennedy to be fired — urged Trump, without making a direct appeal, to cut Kennedy loose saying: “We need an HHS Secretary who believes in science, not conspiracy theories.”
Trump, stomping calmly on Kennedy’s assertions and singing the same song as Sanders, said: “Look, you have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They’re not controversial at all.”
Demonstrating that he believes the established science about how viruses and diseases spread, Trump then said: “I think those vaccines should be used. Otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people.”
Sanders’ expression of solidarity with Trump on the issue is largely refuted in the comments on X where vaccines are an enormous wedge issue, with distrust stirred by Big Pharma’s profits and freedom of individual choice pitted against the broad participation in immunization, which is the main way vaccines protect a community.
On X — at least among the most prominently featured comments — Kennedy is portrayed as a hero and iconoclast for his refusal to accept commonly held views of the majority of scientists and doctors on the issue. Sanders and, in this case Trump, are excoriated and accused of being pawns of Big Pharma. Kennedy’s defenders assert that he has not denigrated all vaccines, but has instead cast doubt on specific types, including fueling distrust and cutting funding to further the mRNA technology that powered most COVID vaccines.