Opinion | 'Why Would You Repeat Those Damn Lies?': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by MedPage Today's reporters

July 19, 2026

• 2 min read

"Why would you repeat those damn lies? That destroys trust." -- Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), grilling President Trump's nominee for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response over a since-deleted social media post about the hepatitis B vaccine.

"It's working now to try to zero in and find basically two grains of sand on a whole football field." -- Sean Murphy, MD, PhD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, on how the U.S. public health system works to trace the origins of foodborne outbreaks such as cyclosporiasis.