Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr. was outraged when Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) asked him about how he suggested that antidepressants played a role in last week’s Minneapolis school shooting, where a shooter killed two children and injured 17 other people before killing themself. It is not known if the shooter was even taking antidepressants, and there is no research connecting them to mass violence.
“Just last week, in the days after the tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in my home state of Minnesota, you went on Fox News, blaming school shootings on antidepressants,” Smith said at a Senate Finance hearing today.
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“No…” Kennedy started to respond.
“Do you have evidence of that? Because you have no evidence of a connection-” she said.
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“You’re just saying something,” Kennedy said, interrupting. “You’re just making stuff up!”
“You know, this is what you say, right?” Smith responded. “When someone presents you with information that does not fit with your worldview-“
“I did not blame that shooting on- I have no idea whether- I have no idea, and I never said that, you’re making it up, you’re twisting! Yeah, you are!” Kennedy said, outraged that she would suggest he said what he said on camera just a week ago. “You are being dishonest right now! You’re being dishonest!”
Smith was referring to comments Kennedy made on Fox News last week, where he was asked whether he thinks that medications associated with gender-affirming care are responsible for school shootings. He responded by saying that his department is looking into antidepressants.
“We are doing those kinds of studies now,” he responded. “At [the National Institutes of Health], we’re launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence. You know, many of them have black box warnings that warn of suicidal ideation and homicidal ideation. So we need, we can’t exclude those as a culprit.”
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