If you wanted to convince someone to skip their COVID vaccine, how would you do it? You would first insult them, emphasizing how stupid their political opinions are. After that, you’d tell them there are lots of stupid people who share their views. Wrapping up your sales pitch, you’d finally stress that everyone they disagree with got the vaccine, and the only reason they haven’t is because their favorite talk show hosts have duped them.

“Nobody would be so partisan as to commit such ridiculous mistakes while promoting vaccines,” you may say to yourself. But you’d be incorrect. Last week, neoconservative political commentator Max Boot participated in a CNN panel on lagging immunization rates, during which he made literally every mistake described above as he chastised Republicans for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.

CNN is a partisan cable news network, so it’s not surprising that it would air a segment like this. Of course, they’re not alone; Fox News does the same thing in the opposite direction, blaming all America’s problems on Democrats. But on the tail end of a pandemic, CNN was unwise to allow a conservative-turned-liberal political commentator to lecture half the country about vaccines. Let’s examine a few of Boot’s points in detail so you can see what I mean.