NEED TO KNOW
Cheryl Hines took questions about her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump on The View.
The Curb Your Enthusiasm star, 60, appeared on the daytime talk show to promote her upcoming book Unscripted on Tuesday, Oct. 14. Co-host Sunny Hostin asked her about Kennedy’s 2024 turn from running an independent campaign for president to becoming Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Hines explained that when Kennedy told her he was considering ending his 2024 campaign for President and endorsing Trump, she shared all of her concerns with him.
“I have not been a political person,” she said. “I haven’t posted anything on social media, other than to go out and vote. I never told people who they should vote for. I just said, ‘This is important, you should vote.’ ”
“So with Bobby, that was a very difficult decision to make with President Trump,” she said. “At the end of the day, President Trump and Bobby sat down and talked, and yes, they did have a lot of common goals.”
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Hostin, 56, then asked about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance. Kennedy has previously promoted a scientifically debunked claim that autism is caused by vaccines.
Hines rebutted Hostin, saying Trump and Kennedy “both want access to vaccines.”
However, Hostin followed up with her original question about whether or not Hines was supportive of Kennedy’s decision to support Trump.
“I was guarded about it,” she said. “It was complicated, right? Because that is a big change politically.”
When she first met Kennedy in 2006, he was a Democrat, Hines said, adding, “So for Bobby to go in the course of a year and a half, two years, from a Democrat to now working with President Trump, that’s a long leap.”
“But it was always a leap of faith,” Hines added. “Because Bobby has a lot of supporters. He has a lot of supporters that are Republicans, Independents, Democrats.”
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Co-host Joy Behar chimed in to acknowledge that the group was putting Hines “on the spot about him.” However, she wanted to learn more about Hines’ claim that Kennedy and Trump are pro-vaccine. “It seems as though Bobby and Trump are casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes Americans very nervous. So that’s the problem that we’re having,” Behar, 83, said.
Hines then turned the conversation, saying she has questions and apprehensions about all vaccines. She cited the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, noting that the program has paid out $5.4 billion to individuals who have suffered vaccine injuries.
“Yes to vaccines. Yes, they are important. They are an important part of our health care,” she acknowledged before asking, “Can we do better? Can we make them safer? Can we listen to parents who say, My child got the vaccine and changed and stopped hitting markers? Can we listen to people when they say that?”
“I agree with that,” Behar said. “But you want to listen to scientists.”
Throughout their marriage and in recent years, the actress has been asked about her husband’s myriad scandals, including his suggestion that Holocaust victim Anne Frank had more freedom than Americans facing vaccine mandates. At the time, Hines challenged her husband and called his remarks “reprehensible and insensitive.”
In an August interview with The Wall Street Journal, Hines shared more about her thoughts on vaccines, asking, “Is science ever settled?”
“Everything’s changing. Technology changes. Everything changes,” she continued.
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She also commended her husband for his work on “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA), saying she feels “very connected to MAHA.”
“I feel like everything they’re doing is to be more mindful of what is going into all of it, into food, into drinks, and educating people,” she added. “So there’s nothing that I can think of that I would have been against.”
