Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss was having none of his MAGA Rep. Buddy Carter’s nonsense during a panel discussion about Sen. Bill Cassidy’s primary loss in Louisiana on CNN’s State of the Union this Sunday.
Host Dana Bash asked Carter for his thoughts on why Cassidy lost, and after Carter responded by saying Cassidy should not have voted to impeach Trump, Auchincloss laid into both Carter and Cassidy for their dangerous fealty to Trump and for their support of anti-vaxxer whackaloon Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has absolutely no business being HHS Secretary.
AUCHINCLOSS: It’s Donald Trump’s party. As you just heard from my colleague from Georgia, even an insurrection is apparently to the Republican Party not cause for impeachment.
So it’s not a surprise to anybody that Senator Cassidy lost. What’s disappointing is that, even though he knew that, he still was the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr. as HHS secretary. RFK Jr. is now launching an anti-vax crusade, quietly now that the White House has told him to muzzle it, but still effectively. And we have measles and whooping cough outbreaks throughout this country. Buddy, you and I are on the Health Subcommittee in Congress. We have to do oversight and investigations before more kids get these preventable infectious diseases.
CARTER: I agree. We do need to do more investigations. And, certainly we don’t want any. I have got grandchildren. I have got children, grandchildren…
(CROSSTALK)
AUCHINCLOSS: So, do you agree that RFK Jr. should resign?
CARTER: No, I do not agree, absolutely not. RFK Jr. is doing his job and I applaud him for doing his job. He’s making sure…
AUCHINCLOSS: Doing his job, even though measles is spreading throughout the country right now?
CARTER: No, no, no, measles is not spreading through the country right now. We are getting — he’s going to get it under control. This is something that we have got.
(CROSSTALK)
AUCHINCLOSS: We had it under control in the year 2000, and then this guy came back with his pro-measles campaign for public health.
You’re a pharmacist, Buddy. You know better than this. Let’s bring him to Congress, put the facts on the table and tell him to prevent more children from dying from what we can prevent.
CARTER: No, let’s let him do his job. Let’s let him do his job.
AUCHINCLOSS: That’s what the last 18 months has looked like, and we have kids with whooping cough.
CARTER: I mean, we experienced this through — we experienced this through the virus, the COVID virus, where we were forcing people to have vaccines who did not want to have vaccines. And we…
AUCHINCLOSS: So you don’t think the MMR vaccine is effective?
CARTER: Look, look, the point is…
AUCHINCLOSS: Is the MMR vaccine effective?
CARTER: The point, Jake, is the fact that we cannot force people into doing things. We have to give them a choice based on education and based on it.
AUCHINCLOSS: You’re a pharmacist. Will you actually say that the MMR vaccine is not safe and effective?
CARTER: I am not. Obviously, it’s safe and effective.
AUCHINCLOSS: Good. I would love to hear the secretary of health and human services say that unequivocally and tell parents to get their kids vaccinated.
Kids are dying in this country from a disease that was eradicated 25 years ago.
CARTER: You know, this is the kind of rhetoric that we hear from the Democratic Party that causes people to be upset about it.
AUCHINCLOSS: So we don’t have a measles outbreak?
CARTER: We have a measles outbreak. It is going to be under control.
AUCHINCLOSS: Going to be under control. That should hearten every American who is seeing the resurgence of measles.
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: You know what? All I have to say is that this is the kind of debate I used to see when I came to Washington, to have, like, actual policy debates. And it’s really nice.
This is what Dana Bash thinks passes for a “policy debate.” One side defending the indefensible, and the other sounding like a sane, rational human being. What’s pathetic is that a Democratic congressman is the one doing this sort of grilling and we don’t see it from the likes of Bash and others in our corporate media.
