Billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman joined the fracas over a COVID-19 vaccine debate that’s engulfed podcaster Joe Rogan, tech billionaire Elon Musk, vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. and vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez.
Ackman jumped in late Saturday, offering to add $150,000 to Rogan’s $100,000 pledge to charity if Hotez, a professor who has criticized vaccine misinformation, would debate Kennedy on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
“You have previously complained about the lack of air time devoted to this discussion,” the Pershing Square Capital Management CEO said in a follow-up tweet. “You have been offered $250k toward your favorite charity for a few hours of your time. How can you say no? Refusing to debate your antagonist in a public forum discredits your previously stated and published views while handing an uncontested victory in the debate to @RobertKennedyJr.”
“If you are truly interested in saving lives, you need to further the public’s understanding of the truth about vaccines,” he continued. “This is a debate that you cannot walk away from. It will be watched by millions. I write from the perspective of three jabs and my fully vaccinated children.”
On Monday night, Ackman walked back his support of a debate between Hotez and Kennedy Jr., claiming that the doctor wasn’t a “credible advocate for vaccine policy” compared to Kennedy, who was described by Ackman as an “excellent choice for an antagonist in the vaccine discussion.”
The brouhaha began on Thursday after Rogan released his interview with Kennedy, who is a long-shot for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy shared his thoughts on vaccines and suggested that large pharmaceutical companies were suppressing his views.
Then Rogan set his sights on Hotez, who serves as the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, after he shared an article that criticized the interview with RFK Jr.
“Peter, if you claim what RFK Jr. is saying is “misinformation” I am offering you $100,000.00 to the charity of your choice if you’re willing to debate him on my show with no time limit,” Rogan tweeted.
Soon other well-heeled Twitter users piled on, including Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who backed Rogan up and claimed Hotez is “afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.”
On Sunday, Ackman explained why he stirred the pot and tried to provoke a debate on vaccines, saying that he has “learned from experience that the experts, the government, and conventional wisdom are often wrong.”
Citing “transitory” inflation, the prediction that Ukraine would fall “in less than a week” and the theory that COVID-19 “did not escape from the Wuhan lab,” as examples of things that were proven wrong, the hedge fund investor said, “It is often the outlier with no experience in a field that challenges the status quo, that makes the important discovery, that has the unique insight, or creates the transformational innovation.”
“In an effort to get to the truth, I try to keep my mind open to alternative possibilities and weigh them against each other,” he continued. “I often find that truth can emerge when two or more articulate and intelligent individuals in an open forum discuss and debate a controversial subject and are required to address unscripted questions from a knowledgeable audience or moderator.”
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