RFK Jr. Just Embarrassed Himself Publicly On CNN

from the 99-out-of-100-doctors-say dept

This post is going to come with something of a warning label. RFK Jr. went on CNN this past weekend for an interview with Dana Bash. I’m going to post the entirety of that interview immediately below. Before you watch it, get yourself a bib, or some paper towels, or wrap yourself in one of those plastic ponchos they hand out to keep the rain off of you. You’re quite likely to spit out whatever is in your mouth, vomit, or perhaps even have your brains leak out of your ears. You’ve been warned.

Whether you’ve watched that entire thing or chosen not to, potentially for your own health, the interview is completely bonkers. It’s honestly pretty tough to pull out the lowlights to comment upon, it’s so bad. The themes of the 20-plus minute interview, however, are easy to outline: RFK Jr. takes no responsibility for what he’s done past or present, he spends the entire time attacking Dana Bash as though she personally is responsible for everything he hated about the COVID response, he pretends that Donald Trump had no agency over that response despite being president at that time, and he insists that only he is listening to the science and doctors when it comes to health outcomes.

Let’s get into some of those. When talking about the COVID response and specifically what we need to do better for the next pandemic, Kennedy predictably went into a minutes long diatribe about how the most important thing is our constitutional rights and how the entire constitution was thrown out by Anthony Fauci (and not Donald Trump, somehow). When Bash pointed out that wasn’t really what she was asking about, Kennedy snarled and attacked her.

“Forgive me, but you’re just talking about rights and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis that is coming,” Bash said after Kennedy launched into a lengthy defense of constitutional rights that he claimed were “dismantled” during COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I really want to move on,” Bash added as Kennedy repeatedly interrupted to continue his argument. That appeared to set him off.

“Of course you do, because you were part of the problem!” Kennedy shot back, pointing at the host.

“No, I wasn’t part of the problem,” Bash replied.

“Yes! There was absolute press malpractice,” Kennedy continued. “You weren’t allowing—”

As Bash tried to interject, he kept going: “Your job is fierce skepticism toward authority. And you weren’t doing that. You were beating up the people who were dissenting.”

Somehow both predictably and unbelievably, this exchange ended with Kennedy stating that he wasn’t attacking Bash at all and instead insisted that she attacked him. She really didn’t. Go ahead and watch the interview if you haven’t. To that point, she hadn’t done anything that could even be misconstrued reasonably as “attacking” Kennedy.

Bash then pivoted to the measles outbreaks of the last 20 months, pointing out that the messaging from Kennedy on getting vaccinated hasn’t been clear and asking for his stance on it. Kennedy then did what he always does. First, he affirmed that everyone should be getting vaccinated for measles… and then launched into his conspiracy-laden and well-worn diatribe explaining all the reasons parents shouldn’t necessarily get their children or themselves vaccinated, and that vaccines haven’t been proven to be safe.

“Do you want people to get the MMR vaccine?” Bash later asked.

“Yeah, I said that already,” Kennedy replied with a smirk before pointing at the host. “I know you’re flustered now, and it’s frustrating.”

Bash quickly pushed back.

“I’m not flustered at all. I am frustrated,” she said. “The reason I’m frustrated is because you are the HHS secretary and you are talking about things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country. And it is something that causes problems for people when there is not anything—”

Kennedy cut her off again.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy, or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?”

Bash replied, “I see my job as telling the truth, and the truth is that there is study after study after study. It‘s one of the most studied things out there in science—”

“You’re repeating it like a parrot,” Kennedy snarled as he lunged forward over the table. “You‘re repeating it like a parrot. I’ve actually read the science.”

The conversation again devolved into raised, overlapping voices, before Bash proclaimed: “I’m not debating nonsense.”

“All you know how to do is repeat what people told you and say ‘trust in the experts,’” a red-faced, wildly gesticulating Kennedy replied, blaming trust in Fauci for poor public health.

Now, one thing that was cut off from my transcription of the COVID response portion of the interview was this. Pay close attention to who Kennedy indicates we should listen to in crafting public policy, because on this I believe he’s right:

Got it? In that clip he says we should listen to “frontline doctors.” Now, while there’s no official poll of national physicians to rely on, we can certainly look to the groups that those same frontline doctors choose to represent them. Many of those groups have directly called on RFK Jr. to resign.

So, Kennedy can do something principled and brave after this absolute meltdown of an interview. He can listen to frontline doctors. And he can resign.

But he won’t. Because it’s not actually frontline doctors he wants to listen to at all. He’s carefully choosing his language. When he says “frontline doctors” he doesn’t mean any of the actual frontline doctors represented by any of those trusted groups mentioned above. Instead, he means the propaganda/conspiracy organization known as “America’s Frontline Doctors,” the same group that focused most of its attention on selling bogus COVID treatments, and whose founder went to prison for her role in the January 6th insurrection. Not surprisingly, that group (which these days appears to consist of just a random Substack) repeatedly supports all of RFK Jr.’s totally unsubstantiated claims. How surprising.

Filed Under: dana bash, health & human services, measles, responsibility, rfk jr., science, vaccines

Companies: america’s frontline doctors