NewsNation Announces Live Presidential Town Hall With RFK Jr. Amid Joe Rogan-Instigated Vaccine Feud

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NewsNation will host a live town hall with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, the cable news network announced Tuesday.

The 90-minute town hall, which will be hosted by NewsNation anchor Elizabeth Vargas, will air Wednesday June 28 at 9 p.m. The live audience will be made up of a group of voters selected by NewsNation and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

Vargas, a veteran journalist, joined NewsNation in January to host the 6 p.m. hour on the network. She previously served as a co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight and host of 20/20. (Disclosure: Dan Abrams, the founder of Mediaite, is also a host at NewsNation).

Kennedy has drawn considerable media attention in part thanks to his polling numbers, which peaked at 20% Democratic support in a May CNN survey. Prominent figures like former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey have since expressed their support for Kennedy and desire to see him debate the 80-year-old president — who drew 60% in the same CNN poll.

Vargas has her work cut out for her with the upcoming town hall — a format that recently created headaches for another cable news network.

Last week, Kennedy appeared for a lengthy interview with Joe Rogan, during which he spewed conspiracy theories about vaccines — a lifelong habit for the scion. (Back in 2005, Kennedy wrote an explosive report for Rolling Stone linking autism to vaccines. The piece, riddled with errors, was corrected five times before being retracted.)

During the Rogan interview, Kennedy also claimed that Wifi is “causing cancer” and opening “your blood brain barrier” to create “leaky brain.” There is no evidence

After Kennedy’s claims were contested on Twitter by Peter Hotez, a Houston-based vaccine scientist who appeared regularly on cable news during the Covid pandemic, Rogan demanded Hotez debate Kennedy on his show, offering $100,000 to charity in exchange for the event. The demand led to a pile-on in which Twitter chief Elon Musk sided with Kennedy, accusing Hotez of being wrong in his criticism of the conspiracy theorist.

“He’s afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong,” Musk wrote of Hotez. Musk did not say what he believes Hotez is wrong about, but he later conceded in a Twitter thread that he supports vaccines.

“I am generally pro vaccine,” Musk wrote. “I have been vaccinated against pretty much everything, as have my kids.”

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