‘Unbelievable!’ CNN Anchors Stunned By Daniel Dale Fact-Check of Wild RFK Jr. Hearing

CNN’s Daniel Dale stunned anchors Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez with a thorough debunking of claims Robert Kennedy Jr. made at a congressional hearing.

Kennedy was the star witness at a House hearing this week on the heels of the New York Post bombshell video of Kennedy floating stunning insinuations about the COVID virus “targeting” Black people and Caucasians and sparing Jews and Chinese people.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Dale knocked down RFK Jr.’s claims while they were still fresh:

KEILAR: Daniel, we should note that, before that exchange we just saw, RFK Jr. said he has — quote — “never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic.”

You have looked into this. What have you found?

DANIEL DALE: Yes, of course, I’m not the boss of deciding what is racist or anti-Semitic. But can tell you with certainly that Mr. Kennedy has made comments that Jewish and Asian groups have described as such.

He recently claimed, as you went over, that Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people and people who are most immune are actually Jews and Chinese.

Here’s how the CEO of the American Jewish Committee responded. He said, “Robert Kennedy Jr’s assertion that Covid was genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people is deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous.

“Every aspect of his comments reflect some of those abhorrent anti- Semitic conspiracy theories throughout history and contributes to today’s dangerous rise of anti-Semitism.”

And groups fighting anti-Asian hate also described this nonsense as hateful and offensive.

And Kennedy was previously denounced by Jewish groups for the other comment you heard here, the one about Anne Frank. It’s a truly ludicrous comparison.

It was last year. He was attacking vaccine mandates. He said that, quote, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

Anne Frank, of course, was murdered by the Nazis. More than six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

Kennedy was denounced by both the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial and the U.S. Holocaust Museum for this. And he eventually apologized. So I’m not sure what he’s denying now. He admitted he made the comments and he apologized for them.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: There’s another moment during his testimony that he’s now seeming to change previous statements over, and that is his view of vaccines. He denied today that he ever spoke out against vaccines.

Let’s listen to that moment.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’ve never been an anti-vaxx. I have never told anybody, I’ve never told the public to avoid vaccination.

SANCHEZ: Dale, that’s not true.

DALE: It’s not true at all. In two ways. A two-part statement. First of all, this is one of America’s most prominent anti-vaxxers. He’s an anti-vaxxer. There’s no doubt about it.

Second of all, he’s on record saying to avoid vaccinations. In fact, an NBC News reporter found a comment and tweeted about it today where he, Kennedy, in 2021, said that he even encounters strangers on hiking trails and tells them not to vaccinate their babies.

Listen to that clip.

KENNEDY: Our job is to resist and to talk about it with everybody. If you’re walking down the street — and I do this now myself, which is I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to them, don’t get them vaccinated.

He heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it. Maybe he will save that child.

DALE: Pretty clearly, anti-vaxx. Of course, this isn’t his only anti- vax comment. He has relentlessly promoted the baseless notion of a link between childhood vaccines and autism. He’s attacked Covid-19 vaccines as unsafe. They are safe.

He’s even asserted in recent comments that the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 wasn’t a flu at all but was caused by vaccine research. It was not.

He asserted there’s strong evidence that HIV was caused by vaccine research. It wasn’t.

This is a vehement anti-vaxxer pretending today that he’s not anti- vax.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Really unbelievable!

SANCHEZ: Yes. Clearly —

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: A lot of stuff there.

Watch the clip above CNN News Central.