'That's not how this works': CNN host gives Republican mega-donor on-air smackdown

A CNN panel discussion on vaccine mandates took an abrupt turn Monday when the host paused the conversation to immediately push back on a Republican guest’s assertions about vaccine safety.

The moment came during CNN’s “NewsNight” when host Abby Phillip took issue with GOP mega-donor Hal Lambert making connections between vaccines and autism while defending Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on the subject.

“We keep saying science and data,” Lambert said. “There’s autism up over the last 25 years. All of these things, our kids are less healthy, but we have a lot more vaccines. And so, I think his point is both on the food side — which is obviously a problem on the obesity side — on the vaccine side is, are we more healthy than we were 25 years ago or 30 years ago when we had far fewer vaccines that were going around for kids that were mandated?”

Lambert said he agreed with Kennedy and believed he was "arguing that we should go look for that."

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That’s when Phillip jumped in.

“I mean, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on,” Phillip said. “I’m going to stop right now because like, you're doing exactly the thing that doesn't actually — when we talk about following the science, what you're doing is saying — ‘well, people are getting more vaccines and all these other things are happening, so those things are related.’ That's not how this works. Vaccines don't cause autism."

But the host wasn’t done dressing Lambert down on the subject. She asked Lambert what proof he based his conclusion on that vaccines cause obesity and make people unhealthy.

“Well…what Robert Kennedy said was that cancer rates are higher...specific cancer rates are higher. That’s what he's talking about,” Lambert responded.

Phillip noted that Kennedy “has no proof of that," before adding: “Well, before you decide to tell people that cancer is related to vaccines, don't you think you should have evidence of that first?”

Watch the clip below or at this link.