In the latest round of CNN being unintentionally entertaining, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo got in a heated argument with CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview on Tapper’s show “State of the Union,” with Dr. Ladapo slamming Tapper for spewing “nonsense” and focusing on only one aspect of the matter at hand.
For reference, at issue in this fiery spat on CNN was the surgeon general’s plan to end vaccine mandates in Florida, a plan that has sparked predictable levels of outrage from the left and the Establishment. Dr. Ladapo’s point is that parents and their children should not be forced to engage in a type of medicine they think might be harmful, even if it puts them at risk of catching certain diseases. Tapper and those like him argue it is unconscionable because the diseases could return in force.
Tapper, for his part, led off by angrily stating, “I’m looking at this report from your department from April showing that more people in Florida are seeking religious exemptions for vaccines and at the same time Florida is seeing rising cases of hepatitis A, and whooping cough, and chicken pox.”
Continuing, Tapper pressed Dr. Ladapo on projections and analysis, asking, “This is in your own report, your own department’s report. Before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates for Florida — which include obviously public schools — did your department do any data analysis? Did you do any data projection of how many new cases of these diseases there will be in Florida once you remove vaccine mandates?”
Pushing back on that framing, Dr. Ladapo argued that this is a matter of rights, not sickness, saying, “ultimately, this is an issue, very clearly, of parents’ rights. So do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into the children’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”
Incredulous, Tapper snapped, “You’re trying to lift the vaccine mandate in Florida, and your department and you did not even do a projection as to how this could impact public health. So you have not prepared hospitals in the Florida counties, most at risk, with the best treatments for any outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio. And you have not looked into how many kids might now get these preventable diseases? That’s what you’re saying?!”
Pushing back yet again and calling out Tapper for his “nonsense,” Dr. Ladapo said, “Jake, just really briefly. One other thing, again, this whole, ‘Oh, Florida hasn’t done any analysis,’ that’s nonsense. You don’t need to do the way you’re portraying. It is nonsense. We don’t need to do any projections. We handle outbreaks all the time. So there’s nothing special that, that that we would need to do.”
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Continuing, he noted, “And secondly, again, there are countries that don’t have vaccine mandates, and the sky isn’t falling over there . . . The right position is that parents should control Absolutely. They should be the final say on what happens in terms of any vaccines that they choose to take or not take. It’s very simple.”
As could be expected, conservatives on X loved Dr. Ladapo’s fiery pushback to Tapper’s framing. The “Vigilant Fox” X account, for example, tweeted, “HOLY SMOKES: Florida’s Surgeon General just called out Jake Tapper for spewing ‘nonsense.’ Tapper tried to say Florida hadn’t done its homework on vaccine recommendations…but Joseph Ladapo shut him down instantly.”
Watch the fight here:
HOLY SMOKES: Florida’s Surgeon General just called out Jake Tapper for spewing “nonsense.”
Tapper tried to say Florida hadn’t done its homework on vaccine recommendations…but Joseph Ladapo shut him down instantly.
Ladapo: “Again, this whole oh, Florida hasn’t done any… pic.twitter.com/aMneYLOOFo
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 7, 2025
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video