This week, the Trump administration issued a new executive order on childhood vaccinations. It was bound to cause a stir among the Left, the acolytes of Big Pharma, and the media. Yet here, it’s a different animal. You will have hardcore liberals who might not like Trump but who doubly hate people telling them how to raise their kids. That is a no-no in politics. These aren’t orders; they’re new guidelines. That’s very different from the Left’s ‘you must get the shot’ ethos.
Yet, this has become another area where the Left tries to threaten new measles outbreaks to attack Trump for supposedly being anti-vaccine — he’s not. And these outbreaks are not what they seem. CNBC host Brian Sullivan had to get that off his chest when Scott Gottlieb was on Squawk Box on Wednesday. One outbreak occurred in the Amish community, another with a Slavic community — there are religious considerations here, because these folks have never vaccinated their kids:
It was pretty remarkable to watch this happen on CNBC.
— Overton (@overton_news) August 12, 2026
Host Brian Sullivan shut down former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb after Gottlieb tried to interrupt him while he was explaining why the media’s coverage of measles outbreaks has been far too simplistic.
Sullivan called… pic.twitter.com/MIASpD8oJm
SULLIVAN: “I want to push back a little bit, Doctor, and say this, that there’s a lot of lazy reporting out there about these measles outbreaks where it’s like, well, we hear that outbreaks are in Texas and in South Carolina, and it automatically defaults to some political thing.”
GOTTLIEB: “Yeah, I agree with that.”
SULLIVAN: “That’s lazy reporting. If you look at the data, the data is publicly available…”
That’s when Gottlieb tried to interrupt him.
GOTTLIEB: “Well, what I will say to that…”
Sullivan fired right back.
SULLIVAN: “No, no! Let me finish!”
“This is critical. This is not…it may be political, but it’s also very religious.”
“A lot of the outbreaks, the majority of the outbreaks in Texas were among basically an Amish community. They’re not going to take vaccines no matter what you do.”
“One of the South Carolina outbreaks, almost all of it was centered around a tight knit Slavic, very religious community in Spartanburg, South Carolina.”
“These are not people who are anti-vaxxers because of politics.”
“They just, their religion does not believe in it.”
“So what are we willing…and there’s a lot of just laziness out there reporting where it’s like, well, they’re Trumpers so they’re anti-vaccine.”
“I’m sure there’s some of that, but how much are we willing to tell a religious community that doesn’t believe in this and hasn’t for 100 years, and won’t 100 years from now that they are required to do something that their religion says they should not do?”
“And that’s the challenge!”
Also, can we stop acting like this is a new issue? Vaccination debates have been raging since forever, with liberals being the ones falling for the MMR vaccine causes autism, which has been debunked, and the lead doctor having his credentials stripped.
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