Rfk Jr. Shouts At Dana Bash In Raging Covid Vaccine Debate: ‘you Were Scaring People. That Was The Job Of Cnn’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got into a shouting debate with CNN anchor Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday when challenged on the Trump administration’s preparation for a future pandemic and his position as one of the country’s most prominent vaccine skeptics.

The interview got off to a rocky start. Kennedy — a long-time critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the onset of the COVID pandemic — was asked by Bash if President Trump deserved “some of the blame” regarding his criticism of the U.S.’s response to the pandemic, given Fauci worked under Trump at the time.

“The thing that did the most damage to our country was the lockdowns — the lockdown that shut down 3.5 million businesses in our country with no due process, no just compensation,” Kennedy said. “And yet we had the worst outcome of any country. We have the highest death rate from COVID of any nation on Earth.”

Bash fact-checked Kennedy on the data point. Per John Hopkins University School of Medicine data, the U.S. did not suffer the most COVID-related deaths when measured against both confirmed cases and total population.

“You just said what I said was inaccurate,” Kennedy doubled-down. “What I said was accurate. We had the highest death rate from COVID of any place.”

When asked how he is “preparing for the next pandemic,” Kennedy said the U.S. did “virtually everything wrong” in its COVID response and should’ve listened to”therapeutics out there” and “doctors that were having no deaths from COVID.” He also asserted that, “We need to protect our constitutional rights. That is our primary obligation. During COVID, we completely dismantled our constitutional rights. We began censoring people in violation of the First Amendment.”

Bash challenged his lack of clarity on how the U.S. is preparing for a pandemic. Kennedy kept the conversation focused on COVID, accusing Bash and CNN of being “part of the problem” and “absolute press malpractice.”

“Your job is a fierce skepticism of authority. You weren’t doing that,” Kennedy said.

“Are you going to want to sit here and attack me or do you want to have conversations about public health?” Bash asked. “I don’t want to use this interview to allow you to say things that aren’t entirely true.”

“You think the COVID vaccine protected children? Can you show me one study that shows that children were protected by the COVID vaccine?” Kennedy responded. “That it did more good than harm to children?”

“I can tell you that, when it comes to the vaccine, there have been studies that show that because of vaccine disinformation there could’ve been 100,000 to 200,000 lives in the U.S. saved.”

“You are saying nonsense. You are saying something that you cannot show me,” Kennedy said.

After some cross-talk, Bash said, “Let me just say for the record that I am not saying that the entire way that the COVID reaction (was handled) was accurate. It was a scary time. People made mistakes.”

“You were scaring people,” Kennedy interrupted. “That was the job of CNN.”

“We were listening to the leaders in this country, including the president who had a daily press conference,” Bash said.

The conversation reached another breaking point when Bash asked Kennedy about a Wall Street Journal report claiming Trump wants Kennedy to “probe the link” between autism and vaccines. Bash cited the American Academy of Pediatrics statement that “more than 40 studies involving 5.6 million people … conclude there is no link between vaccines and autism.”

“Are you also trying to find out how it interacts with people’s DNA, what’s predisposed to have an autistic child?” Bash said. “Are you doing both?

“Yes,” Kennedy responded. “Dana, you probably don’t understand this because you’re not a scientist.”

“You’re not either!” Bash said, before another bout of crosstalk transpired.

“Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy, or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?” Kennedy said.

“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,” Bash said.

“You’re repeating it like a parrot. You’re repeating it like a parrot,” Kennedy said, before re-introducing the topic of Fauci and accusing him of lying about the origins and transmission of COVID.

“What we were doing in COVID and still, with regard to these vaccines, is getting the best information, the best science that we can and putting it out there,” Bash said. And, sir, you what you are doing is causing information to be out there that is not accurate.”

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