'About to cut my mic': Frustrated CNN host told to end segment amid fight with GOP guest
CNN's Kate Bolduan clashed with a conservative commentator over the role of experts in government.
More than 75 past Nobel Prize winners sent an open letter Monday to the U.S. Senate opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, saying his lack of credentials and unconventional views on medical science "would put the public's health in jeopardy."
Bolduan asked conservative pundit Shermichael Singleton to comment.
"These aren't elites, though," Bolduan said. "I mean, these are world-renowned leaders in fields like medicine, chemistry, economics and physics. They include the men who were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of microRNA. My thing about this is, I get we we are all very clear on what it feels like to, you know, play politics with whatever, but when did we start to stop listening to people who are actual experts on things?"
Singleton disagreed with the premise of her question, saying those experts had elite pedigrees, and he argued that their assumptions should be challenged by others outside their areas of expertise.
"Sure, I have respect for people who spent a lot of time mastering something and moving the needle forward in terms of our understanding of sort of rare or complex disciplines," Singleton said. "I think that that matters for us as a nation and for the world.
"However, let's look at some of the facts as it pertains to our health care system – 40.3 percent of Americans, according to the CDC, are obese. That number has increased since 2011. The United States, according to the same data, ranks 34th in terms of our health care system."
Bolduan cut him off, saying that Kennedy and other vaccine skeptics were putting American children at risk, and Singleton argued that scientific experts got some things wrong during the coronavirus pandemic.
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"A lot of the rhetoric that we heard from many of the same experts during the Covid pandemic, where now you have millions of American kids who are significantly behind academically, they're going to struggle to catch up with the rest of the world, who are leaps and bounds ahead of us, and we listened to the experts," he said.
"Then we trusted the experts, then all I'm simply saying is, it's okay to ask questions. It's okay to have a healthy dose of skepticism."
Singleton continued to argue that Kennedy's promised challenges to assumptions about public health were valid because so many Americans were unhealthy, but Bolduan argued that many of the topics the Donald Trump nominee had promised to investigate were not considered to be controversial by scientists.
"You can ask lots of questions, and questioning Covid lockdowns is one thing," Bolduan said. "What is not in question is how many lives have actually been saved by things like the measles vaccine, the polio vaccine. What has happened, and that is what I'm getting at, because you're adding two things together.
"Lots of people can question how experts handled an unfolding pandemic in front of all of us. It's one thing to deny the data from decades of how many lives have been saved from vaccines that children do not suffer from, and what it would mean if that skepticism and the questions we're suggesting are out there, then start getting into the mindset of millions of Americans, once again, led by someone who has not only been a skeptic of vaccines, is a cynic of vaccines."
Singleton insisted that he was not personally denying the effectiveness of vaccines, but Bolduan seemed frustrated by his line of argument.
"These things, these are like apples and oranges, like questioning Covid lockdowns and saying, but, like, that's a good question to have," Bolduan said, as a producer urged her to end the segment for a commercial break. "But also maybe you should question vaccines because that's what's being added together. All right, clearly we've got to go because they're about to cut my mic. Guys, thank you so much."
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