Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. displayed his decades of litigation experience during three grueling hours of Senate Finance Committee interrogation on September 4. Kennedy was well prepared to counter the anticipated barrage as he fought off Democrats who clutched at slender straws in a failed effort to discredit him.

Democrat senators gathered like Cincinnati street hoodlums to thrash Kennedy for his alleged transgressions in firing the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and CDC director Susan Monarez. Yet the soft-shelled bullies got more than they anticipated, as the veteran attorney and longtime children’s health advocate took their baloney on the chin and countered repeatedly with pointed jabs of his own.

At the root of the controversy is the cult-like worship of mRNA vaccines by Democrats, pitted against the “real science” that shows that the vaunted technology didn’t work as advertised, that masks and social distancing were conjured fictions, that school closings were counterproductive, and that vaccine injuries including pericarditis and myocarditis were covered up by the regulatory agencies charged with protecting Americans’ health. Kennedy’s would-be assailants were repeatedly rebuffed, often visibly shaken that the victim they thought was an easy target responded more like an annoyed lion.

The whole kerfuffle is revealing not of Kennedy’s failures, but of the dubious motives of faux-indignant Democrats.