Actress Cheryl Hines appeared on The View Tuesday to promote her new memoir Unscripted, but the visit quickly turned into a fiery debate as the hosts grilled her about her husband Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s position as Health and Human Services Secretary in the Trump administration.
What began as friendly banter about Hines’s Curb Your Enthusiasm career soon shifted when co-host Sunny Hostin and others pressed her on Kennedy’s qualifications, vaccine comments, and health policies, prompting tense exchanges and scattered applause from the audience.
“Your husband is the least qualified Department of Health and Human Services head we’ve had in history,” Hostin said, noting his lack of a medical or scientific background.
Hines immediately pushed back.
“Why is he less qualified than an economist? One of Obama’s HHS secretaries was an economist,” she said, defending her husband’s decadeslong work as an environmental lawyer who sued major corporations over toxic pollution. “He’s dedicated his career to fighting companies like Monsanto and DuPont for exposing people to dangerous chemicals.”
Hostin argued Kennedy had “spread a lot of misinformation and confusion,” prompting Hines to cut in: “May I finish?” Hines’s line has quickly caught traction online.
The back-and-forth intensified as the hosts questioned Kennedy’s past statements about vaccine safety.
“When people like Dr. Fauci said [with] the vaccine you cannot transmit COVID, that turned out not to be true,” Hines countered. “They were censoring Bobby because he asked where was the science and there wasn’t science.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin interjected that COVID-19 was “a novel virus” and that experts were still learning in real time, while Hostin emphasized, “Dr. Fauci has a medical degree.”
Hines acknowledged that vaccines are an essential part of public health but called for greater transparency and responsiveness to parents’ concerns.
“So the question is yes to vaccines,” she said. “Yes, they are important and an important part of our healthcare. Can we do better? Can we make them safer? Can we listen to parents who say, ‘My child got the vaccine and changed’… Can we listen to people when they say that instead of saying you’re crazy?”
Moderator Whoopi Goldberg stepped in, acknowledging the tension.
“He is not a doctor,” Goldberg said, “and oftentimes when he’s speaking, he’s not speaking with the best information we can get.”
“Just to be clear, 90% of secretaries of HHS have not been doctors,” Hines countered.
Hines maintained her composure, defending Kennedy’s career and calling for more open discussion rather than censorship.
Later in the interview, co-host Sara Haines steered the conversation toward safer ground, asking Hines about Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, which focuses on cleaning up food ingredients and children’s products.
“You’ve praised your husband’s campaign to make food and baby formula safer, which I think everybody can get on board with,” Haines said.
Hines replied: “Thank you. I’m very proud of Bobby. He’s worked really hard to get petroleum-based dyes out of our food. And even with baby formula, we’re finding out there’s arsenic and lead.”
She turned pointedly toward Hostin as she asked, “Who was running HHS when they allowed lead and arsenic in baby formula?”
Behar interjected: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
The remark drew nervous laughter, but Hines’s response, highlighting Kennedy’s consumer-safety efforts, earned a round of applause from the audience.
“Bobby is the one getting us out of that,” Hines said. “He’s trying to fix what others ignored.”
Hines reminded the panel that, despite her husband’s positions, she has kept her own public stance neutral as an Independent.
“I have not been a political person,” she said. “I haven’t posted anything on social media other than ‘go out and vote.’ I never told people who they should vote for — I just said it’s important, you should vote.”
She explained that her husband’s decision to support President Trump after suspending his own campaign was “a complicated one” but reflected shared goals on health policy and consumer protection.
After Hines left the stage, the hosts reflected on the segment, insisting they welcomed opposing viewpoints despite the heated exchange.
“That was interesting,” Goldberg said. “We want people to come and give their views…. We ask tough questions because we’re, otherwise, just speculating.”
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Behar added, “We should have more Republicans on the show. They’re scared of us.”
Hostin agreed that RFK Jr. should appear on the show to explain his health policies directly.
