Cheryl Hines appeared as a guest on “The View” Tuesday, where the co-hosts asked her several questions about her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his role as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“When I met Bobby, he was living in New York, I was living in L.A., and I had just been in this entertainment sort of bubble,” said Hines, who was on the talk show to promote her new memoir “Unscripted.” “And then I meet him, and he’s an environmental attorney, and he’s fascinating, and he’s interesting, and he’s smart, and he’s funny — and completely different from anyone I’ve met in my life.”
“That’s for sure,” Joy Behar responded to Hines’ last remark about Kennedy.
Following Behar’s quip, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor addressed the co-hosts’ past criticisms of her husband, including their repeated concerns about his qualifications for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services position.
“I know you ladies — I know you love to talk about him,” Hines said.
Co-host Sunny Hostin later pressed Hines about Kennedy’s presidential campaign and his eventual decision to endorse now-President Donald Trump, despite their earlier clashes on the campaign trail.
“By the way, that happens in a political campaign all the time,” Hines said. She then responded to Hostin’s question about whether she had expressed any concerns to her husband regarding his support for Trump.
“I always share all of my concerns with my husband. I have not been a political person. I haven’t posted anything on social media other than go out and vote. I never told people who they should vote for,” Hines said. “With Bobby, that was a very difficult decision to make with President Trump. It was a crazy year-and-a-half with Bobby running.”
Hines added, “It was complicated, because it’s a big change politically. He starts out as a Democrat. When I first registered to vote, I registered as an independent, through the years, I changed to Democrat, now I’m back to independent. So, for Bobby, in the course of a year-and-a-half, two years, to go from a Democrat to now working with President Trump, that’s a long, that’s a leap.”
Behar jumped back into the conversation by bringing up how Kennedy and Trump are “casting doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine, which makes Americans very nervous. So that’s the problem we’re having.”
“So my question is, can we do better? Yes, to vaccines, yes they are important and an important part of our healthcare,” Hines said. “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, stopped developing the way they were developing?”
Whoopi Goldberg then expressed her concerns about Kennedy’s qualifications to lead a government agency on health issues, saying on “The View,” “I do want to say, you know he’s not a doctor and he’s not a professional? And oftentimes, when he’s speaking, he’s speaking not with the best information.”
Goldberg added, “And some of the things he suggested take it out of the hands of my doctor and me or my OB-GYN and me. And I wonder, does it give you pause?”
Hines claimed that “90 percent of secretaries of HHS have not been doctors,” though she did not specify the source of that information.
“But they’ve had a science background,” Hostin argued.
In response, Hines noted that “one of Obama’s secretaries was an economist.”
“The problem, respectfully, is that your husband is the least-qualified Department of Health and Human Services head that we’ve had in history,” Hostin said to Hines. “I think that’s very dangerous.”
“Less qualified than an economist?,” Hines replied.
Hostin then claimed that RFK Jr. has “spread a lot of misinformation, a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion.” As Hines began to respond, Hostin interrupted, pointing out, “He’s connecting circumcisions to autism,” prompting Hines to reply, “May I? May I finish?”
“When people, Fauci, were saying when you get the vaccine, you cannot transmit COVID, it will stop COVID, that was disinformation,” Hines claimed. Alyssa Farah Griffin — who worked under the Trump administration during the pandemic — responded, “We were also still learning about it, it was a novel virus we’d never encountered before. Because now the doctors will acknowledge.”
After some more tense back-and-forth between Hines and “The View” co-hosts, Behar wrapped up the interview by asking one final question about Kennedy: “Does he or does he not have a brain worm?” (Kennedy has admitted in the past that doctors found a brain worm in his body.)
“It ate just a little bit of his brain and died, so don’t worry!” Hines joked.
Following Hines’ interview, “The View” co-hosts addressed the tone of the conversation.
“We want people to come and give their views, and everyone who comes here we try to be respectful to — and we ask tough questions because otherwise, we’d be speculating, so we can ask,” Goldberg said.
“We should have more Republicans on the show, but they don’t want to come on. They’re scared of us,” Behar said, while Hostin added, “I do think it’s important that Robert F. Kennedy come on this show.”
Watch a segment of Hines’ interview on “The View” below.
