‘Lets Get To The Real Issue Here’: CNN’s Scott Jennings Shuts Down Panelists’ Attacks On RFK Jr

CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings shut down his fellow panelists’ attacks on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. late Thursday by pointing to the historic public distrust in health agencies.

Trump announced in a Thursday statement that he nominated Kennedy to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in his upcoming administration, sparking many liberal politicians and media pundits to allege that he is a danger to public health. Jennings argued that bureaucracies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), caused widespread mistrust in the handling of public health due to the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You, doctor [Devi Nampiaparampil] are raising the issues that [Kennedy] has been raising and I think they are appropriate questions to raise. I don’t know if he can be confirmed or not, the vaccine stuff at the table is obviously going to be the flashpoint of this hearing. But I will 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,” Jennings said, leading to pushback from Democratic congressional candidate John Avlon. “Because of COVID, because of school closures, because of mask mandates, because this country was drugged through a bunch of condescending and heavy handed mandates that all turned out to be garbage and that’s why it’s low and the questions are valid.”

Avlon alleged that Kennedy took part in spreading “disinformation” about the CDC that “led to more than a million deaths,” to which Jennings replied the CDC “led to its own demise.” Kennedy said during a 2021 hearing on Louisiana Department of Health proposal on vaccinating schoolchildren that the COVID-19 vaccine is the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and accused government employees, including those at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), of “mass poisoning the American public,” according to The Washington Post.

The CDC, along with federal and state governments, enforced lockdowns, school closures, social distancing and mask mandates throughout the pandemic. Elementary school students fell behind in math by over half a year while they engaged through virtual learning throughout the pandemic, while children who were babies and toddlers during that time have shown delays in developmental and academic skills, including holding pencils.

Jennings said the agencies need to be reformed to “restore trust” in public health following the COVID-19 policies that hurt American families. CNN host Abby Phillip argued that Kennedy is threatening the wellbeing of Americans by standing against vaccines, though a spokeswoman told The Washington Post that he is not “anti-vaccine.”

“I also think that, Scott, the issue about the public trust thing, is this, is almost like election denialism,” Phillip said. “You scream 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 that you created for the skepticism.”

“The doubts in the public regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth. 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,” Jennings replied. “I’m also a supporter of vaccines, I believe vaccines work and I believe his skepticism of vaccines and some of the statements he has made are going to be the most problematic things for him in his nomination, but you cannot separate, he has raised real concerns that real people have.”

Kennedy, who has repeatedly run on the slogan “Make America Healthy Again,” has promised to address the rise in chronic diseases and obesity rates, improve Americans’ intakes of nutritious diets and cut “entire departments” of the FDA.