‘I Didn’t Ask Your Opinion’: Sanders and Mullin Throw Down In Tense Hearing Spat

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) got into a little spat on Wednesday during a confirmation hearing for U.S. Surgeon General nominee Casey Means.

“The ranking member wants to talk about all the death that is supposedly going to be happening because of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, because how dare they look at a health care system that is broken and unaffordable and try to make changes,” began Mullin in a lengthy rant slamming Sanders – the Senate Health Committee’s ranking member.

“Yet the definition of insanity is what? Doing the same thing, expecting different results. So we should just sit here and accept it? And how dare we look into vaccines?” Mullin fumed, adding:

To just simply look to see if maybe vaccines may be a partial cause to autism when it’s rising at a rate faster than any country in the nation. How dare us look at science? My goodness, science is supposed to be perfect? I thought science was always supposed to be studied. I’m for looking into it. As a father of six kids, yeah, I wanna look into it, I wanna know what’s causing it, and I will turn over every stone.

And so Dr. Means, thank you for saying you wanna turn over every stone. Good on you. I’m not a doctor. I’m no senator trying to say we shouldn’t do something. I’m saying let’s go after it, let’s look at it, let’s question what we’re doing, let’s look at the health care system. We can agree on that one. I just don’t want to socialize it, but we can agree that it is absolutely not affordable. 100% not affordable, yet it was supposed to be affordable. That’s what we were sold by Obamacare.

So how about we work together and say, hey, let’s scrap ACA, admit it doesn’t work, admit you guys made a mistake, and let’s work on something with President Trump to make health care affordable for everybody. But there’s zero chance you guys could do that. Zero chance. Yet everybody we bring up here, you guys chastise for trying to make changes. God forbid we change and go after and try to fix our broken system. Anyways, I ranted too long. Let’s talk about some—

“Yes, you did,” clapped back Sanders.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your opinion on that. And if I cared about your opinion, I would ask you, but I don’t care about your opinion,” Mullin replied.

“Well,” replied an annoyed Sanders as Mullin fumed:

You’re part of the system, you’re part of the problem. You’ve been sitting here longer than I’ve even been alive. This is your problem. You should have fixed this a long time ago. You’ve relied on it so long. What have you been doing?

“I decided not to run for Surgeon General. You’re the nominee. I’ve decided not to accept that nominee,” Sanders quipped.

“That is definitely something we would never accept,” Mullin replied.

Sanders and Mullin have long sparred in the Senate Health Committee, providing several headline-grabbing moments over the years.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!