‘Do You Not Vaccinate Your Kids?’: MSNBC Contributor Tries To Corner Byron Donalds On Vaccinations

Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds refused to take the bait when a fellow panelist pressed him on whether he vaccinates his own children.

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The exchange happened during the Friday, Aug. 28 episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO. Donalds, the Republican congressman representing Florida’s 19th district and his party’s nominee for governor, appeared alongside journalist and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast.

Jong-Fast opened by referencing his recent appearance on CBS, then put the question to him directly. “I have three kids. You have three kids. Do you not vaccinate your kids?” she asked on the program. (RELATED: As Questions Pile Up, Democrat Governor Won’t Clarify Whether Patients Died From Measles Or ‘With Measles’)

Donalds answered by describing how the schedule had changed over time. “My oldest son is 23 years old. The vaccination schedule for him was less intense than the vaccination schedule for my 15-year-old son,” he said. He argued that many parents hold real concerns about how often infants receive shots, and he defended a recent White House order that spaces doses out and preserves informed consent. Maher agreed. “I don’t either,” the host said after Donalds asserted nothing was wrong with that approach.

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President Donald Trump signed the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” order on Aug. 10, according to the White House. The order directs that childhood shots be administered at separate visits and supports maximal parental choice grounded in informed consent, according to the White House.

Jong-Fast countered by pointing to fatalities. “We had two people in Ohio die of measles,” she said on the program. Donalds shifted the focus to the southern border, citing more than 10 million illegal entries under the prior administration and outbreaks he tied to detention facilities in El Paso and a migrant facility in Chicago.

The congressman had made a similar case days earlier on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” where he blamed the measles outbreak on illegal immigration during a tense exchange with host Margaret Brennan, according to Mediaite. Maher closed the segment with a joke about his own childhood bout with the disease.

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