TAPPER: “Senator, good to see you. Today, you pressed RFK Jr... On whether he viewed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, which is in your state, as a critical agency for public health. Here‘s part of what he said.

[Clip starts]
Kennedy JR.: “I support the CDC. My job is not to dismantle or harm the CDC. My job is to empower the scientists, if I‘m privileged to be confirmed.”
[Clip ends]

TAPPER: “Do you believe him? What did you take from his answer?”
WARNOCK: “Well, you know, he doesn‘t serve in the Senate, but he‘s pretty good at the filibuster. I — the problem that he has is that he‘s made some very provocative and extreme statements about the CDC. He compared it to a Nazi death camp and its work, compared it to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church. When I asked him about it, he said he didn‘t say it. The problem is, I had a transcript which shows that that‘s what he said. So I think that the people of Georgia and the American public who count on the CDC to keep all of us safe deserve to know what RFK really believes about their health care.”
TAPPER: “So, you‘re not going to vote for RFK Jr..., you just announced that. Some of your Democratic colleagues in the Senate have, at least in the past, expressed an openness to supporting him, talking about his focus on chronic health, talking about his focus on processed food. Do you think any of your Democratic colleagues will vote to confirm him?”
WARNOCK: “Well, I won‘t try to speak for them, but I don‘t see much evidence that he‘ll have support. And look, let me be really clear. This is not a political issue. This is not a partisan issue. If there‘s any nomination where politics should be sidelined, it is in the nomination of the HHS secretary. The problem with Robert Kennedy is he has spent the last 20 years or more chasing after conspiracy theories, and the ways in which he is focused on that has actually had life-and-death consequences for the people of Samoa and in other places. And I‘m deeply troubled about what he thinks about the work of the CDC and the 10,000 Georgians who work there, and how important their work is to keeping all of us safe. We are dealing right now with bird flu, and we need someone who‘s going to be focused on the science, who actually believes in science and will do everything that they can do to support the important work of the CDC. It‘s something that that all of us need. And when these pandemics show up, they don‘t ask are you a Democrat or a Republican.”