CNN senior political commentator and possible future White House Press Secretary Scott Jennings entered into Thursday’s CNN NewsNight — which could easily be referred to as the Thunderdome — to do battle with liberal host Abby Phillip and a team of fellow progressives over the lack of trust in public health and President-Elect Trump’s choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
The opening segment largely centered around Kennedy’s controversial claims about vaccinations and autism (which the study often cited to support this having been debunked), including Georgia Republican-turned-Democrat Geoff Duncan huffing that “there’s really no good reason why” Kennedy “should be HHS secretary” given that he has “no managerial experience.”
Jennings triggered the first uproar with a simple question: “Why?”
Duncan began stammering and insisting he only wanted to discuss the position “looking forward,” so Jennings explained the reality that Biden-Harris HHS Secretary “Xavier Becerra was just a lawyer and a politician with no management experience.”
Jennings went back to the two women who served in the position under Barack Obama: “Sylvia Burwell was a Walmart lobbyist. Donna Shalala was a university person.”
Duncan didn’t have any response, so he blurted out none of that matters because “RFK Jr. is nut,” leaving the humorously opportunistic Jennings to school him that his opposition is first and foremost political before making a broader point about trust in health agencies:
You just said he doesn’t possess the requisite managerial experience, but then we get to the real issue here, which is you want to insult the man, which is your right to do because you opposed them in the election...[Y]ou are raising the issues that he has been raising and I think they’re appropriate questions to raise. I don’t know whether he can be confirmed or not. The vaccine stuff at the table is obviously going to be the flashpoint of this hearing. But I’ll tell you one thing, this whole issue of the CDC and these public health agencies, look, public trust in the health regime in this country is as low as it’s ever been.
Former CNNer-turned-failed Democratic congressional candidate John Avlon tried to interject and blame Kennedy and Trump for why so many people died from COVID-19, leaving Jennings to school him and an interrupting Phillip on how America “was drug through a bunch of condescending and heavy-handed mandates” during the pandemic “that all turned out to be garbage” (click “expand”):
AVLON: But why, Scott?
JENNINGS: It’s because of COVID —
AVLON: Right.
JENNINGS: — because of school closures, because of mask mandates —
PHILLIP: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, let me —
JENNINGS: — because this country was —
PHILLIP: — I’m going to let doctor — let the doctors get in on this.
JENNINGS: — because this — but let me just finish — because this country was drug through a bunch of condescending and heavy-handed mandates that all turned out to be garbage, and that’s why it’s low —
AVLON: Scott!
JENNINGS: — and the questions are valid.
AVLON: Scott! Scott!
DUNCAN: And RFK is the answer to all of that?
AVLON: Yeah, but, dude —
JENNINGS: Yeah, but, I don’t know if he’s going to confirmed.
AVLON: — RFK helped promote the — the assault on the CDC that lowered — the disinformation that led to —
JENNINGS: No. The CDC led to its own demise.
AVLON: — more than a million deaths, Scott, more than a million deaths in the United States, higher than any other industrialized nation per capita. That’s the result of failed policies and the demonization of the conspiracy theory that killed people.
JENNINGS: Whose policies?
PHILLIP: All right.
AVLON: Under the Trump administration.
Phillips played a Trust the Science card by tossing to Columbia University Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, who argued that yes, we should still have complete trust in public health agencies.
Notice how he even admitted the coronavirus vaccines weren’t as sturdy as they were billed, but refused to acknowledge that was a hit to their credibility (click “expand”):
PHILLIP: John, let me let Dr. Lipki in, because, again, we got experts at the table. Go ahead, Doctor.
LIPKIN: So, first of all, the vaccines we’re talking about have been tested. We know they have to go through safety testing. They have to go through efficacy testing, and it’s only when they get through that final step — that final hurdle that they’re produced and distributed. So, it’s not something that we need to revisit. I disagree. The other thing I wanted to refer to is the discussion about the NIH and the CDC. These agencies are jewels. They’re considered as such by the rest of the world. The National Institutes of Health has given drugs that I would venture to say everybody in this room has taken, and the FDA has approved those. So, if we lose those agencies, we’re going to have unproven drugs, we’re going to have a whole series of problems. You were talking about COVID. I was in China in January of 2020. I saw what it did to that country. I was in China in 2003 for SARS. I’ve seen outbreaks. I’ve seen thousands of people die. When we had a vaccine for COVID, the major advantage we hoped initially was that it was going to prevent transmission as long as well as reduce disease and morbidity — mortality. We found out that it wasn’t as effective in reducing transmission as we had hoped, but it definitely reduced morbidity and mortality —
PHILLIP: And one — when you hear —
LIPKIN: — and let me just finish one last thing. It saved people who otherwise couldn’t have gotten care for a heart attack or a stroke or anything else because the hospitals would have been completely overwhelmed.
Jennings made clear he hasn’t been “suggesting that agencies should be done away with,” but rather “reformed for the purpose of increasing public trust.”
The condescending Phillip lectured Jennings with what seemed as though was a demand to never question public health experts because it’s dangerous.
Thankfully, Jennings clapped back that “the doubts in the public health regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth” and the economic impacts of lockdowns were scarring for so many.
Despite Jennings saying he strongly supports vaccines, Phillip again demanded we Trust the Science and deemed questions about public health bad faith (click “expand”):
JENNINGS: We have to restore trust in them.
PHILLIP: — the issue about the public trust thing is that this is almost like election denialism. You screamed that the election was stolen and then when people believe you, then suddenly you’re saying, well, if only there weren’t these questions that I made up. You cannot just create doubts and then blame the doubts —
JENNINGS: Well, wait, the doubts —
PHILLIP: — that you created for the skepticism.
JENNINGS: — the doubts in the public health regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth.
PHILLIP: I guess, but — but —
JENNINGS: They are fully derivative of what happened to this country during COVID and the people and the families and the businesses who were devastated by these mandates.
PHILLIP: — right — there — there are economic impacts and then there are the health impacts that we are talking about here. RFK Jr. is trying to blame vaccines for health impacts based on no science, no science. We can talk about the economic impacts, but let’s talk about the health impacts and whether there is truth to that. I don’t think there’s that evidence.
JENNINGS: I’m also a supporter of vaccines. I believe vaccines work and I think his skepticism of vaccines and some of the statements that he has made are going to be the most problematic things in his nomination, but you cannot separate these — he has raised real concerns that real people have and, by the way, Trump’s not hiding the ball here. He campaigned with this guy virtually every day and the American people said, you know what, some of this sounds pretty good.
After New York University Dr. Debbie Nampiaparampil defended patients asking questions is usually a good thing and said other questions Kennedy raised are legitimate, Duncan injected more silliness: “And — and he has no experience...This is like sending a car salesman to go engineer a bridge, right?”
Jennings ended whether he began with Duncan: “Is the current HHS secretary a doctor?”
Duncan whined he recycled a previous argument and won’t acknowledge that “the clown car has arrived” to takeover the country.
Phillip would move on, but not before Jennings calmly told Duncan that “you’re still campaigning” even though his side lost.
Duncan’s hilarious retort? Despite having been a Harris-Walz surrogate, he argued he “actually call[s] balls and strikes.”
To see the relevant CNN transcript from November 14, click here.
