In a bizarre and infuriating moment out of the Senate back in early September, a Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner (D-VA) went berserk and screamed at Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for minutes on end, declaring the HHS Secretary to be “ignorant.”
Naturally, the incident raised a great many eyebrows, particularly amongst conservatives online, as Sen. Warner had not only behaved in utterly abominable fashion when yelling at Mr. Kennedy, but did so right before then calling for both sides to “lower the [political] temperature,” an absurd comment given his behavior mere moments before.
Commenting on the matter, Townhall’s X account said, “This might be the most INFURIATING clip to come out of the RFK Jr. hearing. After spending three whole minutes SCREAMING at the HHS Secretary and REFUSING to let him speak, Democrat Senator Warner says he wants to ‘lower the temperature.’ You first, Senator!”
The spat began with Senator Warner coming out swinging against RFK Jr for having commented before on the potential ill health effects of additives like a certain red food dye, snapping, “I would say this. That seems where your emphasis is.” Continuing, and getting close to yelling as he said it, Warner snapped, “I want to go back to just again some basic facts. Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?”
RFK Jr told him that he didn’t know how many Americans died from the pandemic, leading to Sen. Warner angrily declaring, his voice again reaching a yell, “You’re the Secretary of Health and Human Services!” He then angrily asked, “You don’t have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?!”
Sauvely responding in a cool and collected manner despite the senator’s berserk yelling, RFK Jr. exposed why the senator’s question was so ridiculous, telling him, “I don’t think anybody knows that, because the it was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC, and these are models…”
The senator then went on another angry tirade, yelling about everything under the sun and eventually ending up on the matter of “community health centers,” declaring, “How can you be that ignorant?! Like you know, I remember when we went to the hearing with you, I asked you about community health centers . . . I tell you what I hear in community health centers, they are terrified . . . of the Big, Awful Bill, because they are going to lose health care across the board. They already live in food deserts!”
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Continuing with his yelling about “community health centers,” Sen. Warner declared rambling about the complaints of a select few people to argue the taxpayer should subsidize seeing nutritionists, “They can’t get to a nutritionist because Medicaid doesn’t do enough reimbursement if you’re going to want Americans to get healthier. Should they have access to nutritionist? Should they have access to good science about healthy food?”
RFK Jr., obviously unimpressed with the senator’s performative display, told him, “Absolutely.” That led to Sen. Warner angrily snapping, “Well, then how is that going to happen with the Medicaid cuts that are taking place?” HHS Secretary Kennedy told him, “There are no cuts to Medicaid, sir.” That response led to another booming tirade from the angry senator, who declared, shouting, ‘That is absurd!”
Watch their angry back and forth here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video