Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Part II

 

Anti-vaccine advocacy and conspiracy theories on public health

Kennedy is a prominent voice in the anti-vaccine movement, spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. The infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm has said that Kennedy's "anti-vaccine disinformation" is effective "because it's portrayed to the public with graphs and figures and what appears to be scientific data. He has perfected the art of illusion of fact." Osterholm added:

This is about people's lives. And the consequences of promoting this kind of disinformation, as credible as it may seem, is simply dangerous.

Kennedy has said that he is not against vaccines but wants them to be more thoroughly tested and investigated. In Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak (2015), he writes that he does not see himself as anti-vaccine: "People who advocate for safer vaccines should not be marginalized or denounced as anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible." But in July 2023, Kennedy said, "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective."

In January 2024, Kennedy published a podcast about Lyme disease in which he said it is "highly likely to have been a military weapon" developed at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Multiple experts and authoritative sources have debunked the charge and called it "absurd".

Vaccines and autism claims

From 2015 to 2023, Kennedy chaired the Children's Health Defense, formerly known as the World Mercury Project, an anti-vaccine advocacy group he joined in 2015. In its early years, the group focused on mercury in industry and medicine, especially the ethylmercury used in thimerosal in vaccines.

The group alleges that exposure to certain chemicals and radiation has caused a wide range of conditions in many American children, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), food allergies, cancer, and autoimmune diseases. Children's Health Defense has blamed and campaigned against vaccines, fluoridation of drinking water, paracetamol (acetaminophen), aluminum, and wireless communication, among other things. The group has been identified as one of two major buyers of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in late 2018 and early 2019. Members of his family have criticized Kennedy and his organization, saying he spreads "dangerous misinformation" and that his work has "heartbreaking" consequences.

Kennedy and Children's Health Defense have falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism. Kennedy focused on the subset of vaccines that contained thimerosal, a mercury-based anti-microbial that has been falsely claimed to cause autism. Thimerosal has never been used in MMR, chickenpox, pneumococcal conjugate, or inactivated polio vaccines. In 2001, thimerosal was removed from all other childhood (under 6 years old) vaccines except for a few versions of flu and hepatitis vaccines. No childhood vaccine now contains more than traces (1 microgram or less) of thimerosal, except for flu, which is also available without thimerosal in the U.S. For those 6 years and older, including pregnant women, all vaccines are now available in versions with only trace amounts of thimerosal.

In April 2015, Kennedy participated in a Speakers' Forum to promote the film Trace Amounts, which promotes the discredited claim of a link between autism and mercury in vaccinations. At a screening, he called the increased cases of autism (which he calls an "autism epidemic") a "holocaust".

In 2020, the Center for Countering Digital Hate said that Kennedy uses his status as an environmental activist to bolster the anti-vaccination movement, regularly appearing in online conversations with the discredited British former doctor Andrew Wakefield, the anti-vaccination activist Del Bigtree, and the conspiracy theorist Rashid Buttar. Kennedy is listed as executive producer of Vaxxed II: The People's Truth, the 2019 sequel to Wakefield's and Bigtree's anti-vaccination propaganda film Vaxxed.

In February 2021, Kennedy's Instagram account was deleted "for repeatedly sharing debunked claims" about COVID-19 vaccines. In March 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of 12 people responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter.

Kennedy has said that governments and the media are conspiring to deny that vaccines cause autism.

Writings and speeches promoting anti-vaccine theories

In June 2005, Kennedy wrote an article, "Deadly Immunity”, which appeared in both Rolling Stone and Salon.com and alleged a government conspiracy to conceal a connection between thimerosal and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. The article contained factual errors, leading Salon to issue five corrections. Joan Walsh, Salon.com's editor-in-chief at the time and the sole Salon editor of the piece, said she had mistakenly relied on Rolling Stone's fact-checking; a process she later learned was "less than arduous". As soon as the piece was up, she said, "We were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data ... It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired."

In 2011, Salon.com retracted the article in its entirety. It said the retraction was motivated by accumulating evidence of alleged errors and scientific fraud underlying the vaccine-autism claim. A corrected version of the original article was published on Rolling Stone's website. Kennedy said on The Joe Rogan Experience—and was paraphrased in The New York Times as saying—that "Salon caved to pressure from government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry." Walsh responded: "That's just another lie. We caved to pressure from the incontrovertible truth and our journalistic consciences."

In May 2013, Kennedy delivered the keynote address at the anti-vaccination AutismOne / Generation Rescue conference.

In 2014, Kennedy's book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: The Evidence Supporting the Immediate Removal of Mercury – a Known Neurotoxin – from Vaccines, was published. While methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin, thimerosal is not. According to the CDC, there is "no convincing evidence of harm caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines". The book's preface is by Mark Hyman, a proponent of the alternative medical treatment called functional medicine. Kennedy has published many articles on the inclusion of thimerosal in vaccines.

Meeting with Donald Trump

On January 10, 2017, incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that Kennedy and President-elect Donald Trump met to discuss a position in the Trump administration. Kennedy said afterward that he had accepted an offer from Trump to chair the Vaccine Safety Task Force, but a spokeswoman for Trump's transition said that no final decision had been made. In an August 2017 interview with STAT News reporter Helen Branswell, Kennedy said that he had been meeting with federal public health regulators at the White House's request to discuss defects in vaccine safety science.

Controversy with Robert De Niro

On February 15, 2017, Kennedy and the actor Robert De Niro gave a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in which they said the press was working for the vaccination industry and did not allow debates on vaccination science. They offered a $100,000 reward to any journalist or citizen who could point to a study showing that it is safe to inject mercury into babies and pregnant women at levels currently contained in flu vaccines. Craig Foster, a psychology professor who studies pseudoscience, deemed the challenge "not science", calling it a "carefully constructed 'contest' that allows its creators to generate the misleading outcome they presumably want to see". Foster added, "Proving that something is safe is importantly different than proving that something is harmful."

Samoa measles outbreak

On June 4, 2019, during a visit to Samoa, coinciding with its 57th annual independence celebration, Kennedy appeared in an Instagram photo with Australian-Samoan anti-vaccine activist Taylor Winterstein. Kennedy's charity and Winterstein have both perpetuated the allegation that the MMR vaccine played a role in the 2018 deaths of two Samoan infants, despite the subsequent revelation that the infants had mistakenly received a muscle relaxant along with the vaccine. Kennedy has drawn criticism for fueling vaccine hesitancy amid a social climate, which gave rise to the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak, which killed over 70 people, and the 2019 Tonga measles outbreak.

COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy promoted multiple conspiracy theories related to COVID, including false claims that Anthony Fauci and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to profit off a vaccine, and suggesting that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, allowing them to starve. In August 2020, Kennedy appeared in an hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram and touted a number of incorrect and misleading claims about vaccines and public health measures related to the pandemic. Public health officials and scientists criticized Baldwin for letting Kennedy's claims go unchallenged.

In May 2021, Kennedy petitioned the FDA to rescind authorization for all current and future COVID vaccines. The vaccines had saved about 140,000 lives in the United States. John Moore, a professor of immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, called Kennedy's request "an appalling error of judgment".

Kennedy has promoted misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, falsely suggesting that it contributed to the death of Hank Aaron and others. In February 2021, his Instagram account was blocked for "repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines". The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of the main propagators of conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and 5G phone technology. His conspiracy theory activities considerably increased his social media impact. Between the spring and fall of 2020, his Instagram account grew from 121,000 followers to 454,000.

Kennedy has expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 pandemic, contending that it served to benefit billionaires. According to Kennedy, the pandemic resulted in a "$4.4 trillion shift in wealth from the American middle class to this new oligarchy that we created—500 new billionaires with the lockdowns, and the billionaires that we already had increased their wealth by 30%".

In November 2021, Kennedy's book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health was published. In it, Kennedy alleges that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies such as Facebook to suppress information about COVID-19 cures, to leave vaccines as the only option to fight the pandemic. In the book, Kennedy calls Fauci a "powerful technocrat who helped orchestrate and execute 2020's historic coup d'état against Western democracy". He claims without proof that Fauci and Gates had schemed to prolong the pandemic and exaggerate its effects, promoting expensive vaccinations for the benefit of "a powerful vaccine cartel".

The book repeats several discredited myths about the COVID-19 pandemic, notably about the effectiveness of ivermectin. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that in the book "polemics alternate with chapters that pedantically seek to substantiate Kennedy's accusations with numerous quotations and studies". Kennedy also released a video depicting Fauci with a Hitler mustache. In response to the book, Fauci called Kennedy "a very disturbed individual" and has publicly said that, having met with Kennedy to discuss vaccines early during his tenure in the Trump administration, he "[doesn't] know what's going on in [Kennedy's] head, but it's not good".

Kennedy wrote the foreword to Plague of Corruption, a 2020 book by the former research scientist and the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits.

In August 2020, Kennedy appeared as a speaker at a partially violent demonstration in Berlin where populist groups called for an end to restrictions caused by COVID-19. His YouTube account was removed in late September 2021 for breaking the company's new policies on vaccine misinformation.

In January 2022, during a speech at an anti-vaccination rally on the National Mall in Washington D.C., Kennedy said: "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide." The Auschwitz Memorial responded on Twitter: "Exploiting of the tragedy of people, who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay." Kennedy's wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, also condemned his comments, tweeting that the reference to Frank was "reprehensible and insensitive". Two days later, Kennedy apologized for his comment. In June 2023, Instagram reinstated his account.

In July 2023, at a private dinner, Kennedy was recorded saying, "There is an argument that [COVID-19] is ethnically targeted", adding, "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are the most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese ... we don't know whether it's deliberately targeted or not." The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League immediately condemned his remarks, with the latter saying that Kennedy's statement "feeds into sinophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories".

Kennedy responded that he "never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews" and that he does not "believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered". He explained his remarks by citing a 2021 study that he said showed that "COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races" due to racial differences in the effectiveness of COVID-19's furin cleave docking site, thus serving "as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons".

Experts roundly criticized these further claims, pointing out that the study said nothing about Chinese people or bioweapons and that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews contract COVID-19 at rates similar to other ethnic groups and nationalities. The virologist Angela Rasmussen said, "Jewish or Chinese protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, but they are in racism and antisemitism."

Medical racism conspiracy theory

Kennedy targets Black Americans with anti-vaccine propaganda and conspiracy theories, linking vaccination with instances of medical racism such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Echoing others in the anti-vaccination movement, Children's Health Defense claimed that the U.S. government seeks to harm ethnic minorities by prioritizing them for COVID-19 vaccines. In March 2021, Children's Health Defense released an anti-vaccine propaganda video, "Medical Racism: The New Apartheid", that promotes COVID-19 conspiracy theories and claims that COVID-19 vaccination efforts are medical experiments on Black people. Kennedy appears in the video, inviting viewers to disregard information dispensed by health authorities and doctors. Brandi Collin-Dexter, a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said, "the notorious figures and false narratives in the documentary were recognizable" and "the film's incompatible narratives sought to take advantage of the pain felt by Black communities." At the urging of disinformation experts, the film was removed from Facebook, but Kennedy was permitted to keep his account.

HIV/AIDS denialism

In his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the War on Democracy and Public Health, Kennedy writes that he takes "no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS",  but spent over 100 pages quoting HIV denialists such as Peter Duesberg who question the isolation of HIV and the etiology of AIDS. Kennedy refers to the "orthodoxy that HIV alone causes AIDS"  and the "theology that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS",  and repeats the false HIV/AIDS denialist claim that no one has isolated the HIV virion and "No one has been able to point to a study that demonstrates their hypothesis using accepted scientific proofs."  He also repeats the false claim that the early AIDS drug AZT is "absolutely fatal" due to its "horrendous toxicity".

Molecular biologist Dan Wilson noted that Kennedy falsely claims that Luc Montagnier, the discoverer of HIV, was a "convert" to Duesberg's fringe hypothesis. Wilson concludes that Kennedy is a "full blown" HIV/AIDS denialist. Epidemiologist Tara C. Smith suggests that Kennedy's book "even flirts with outright germ theory denial", quoting from a portion in which Kennedy contrasts the germ theory of disease with terrain theory and another in which he writes that Louis Pasteur "is said to have recanted" germ theory on his deathbed in favor of Antoine Béchamp's terrain theory, an unproven claim that circulates among germ theory denialists.

Chemtrails conspiracy theory

In August 2024, after endorsing Trump for president and starting to work with Trump's campaign, Kennedy posted, "We are going to stop this crime" of chemtrails. Belief in chemtrails involves a conspiracy theory that airplane water vapor trails (contrails) are purposely dumped chemicals designed to harm people.

Pushback from the Kennedy family

Several members of Kennedy's close family have distanced themselves from his anti-vaccination activities and conspiracy theories on public health, and condemned his comments equating public health measures with Nazi war crimes. On May 8, 2019, his niece Maeve Kennedy McKean and elder siblings Kathleen and Joseph wrote an open letter saying that while Kennedy has championed many admirable causes, he "has helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines". They also cited the roles played by President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy in (respectively) signing and reauthorizing the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962.

On December 30, 2020, another niece, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a physician, wrote a similar open letter, saying that her uncle published misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines' side effects. John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy said her family was generally united in supporting public health infrastructure, citing the work of Ted Kennedy and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She added, "I think Bobby Kennedy [Jr.]'s views on vaccines are dangerous, but I don't think that most Americans share them, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens."

On January 28, 2025, Caroline Kennedy publicly denounced Kennedy in a letter she sent U.S. senators and in a video of her reading the letter, calling him a "predator" and a "hypocrite" who was unqualified to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. She accused him of animal cruelty and "encouraging" other family members, such as his brother David Kennedy, into substance abuse that led to addiction, illness, and death. Caroline Kennedy's cousin Stephen Smith Jr. said, "I completely support my cousin Caroline's view that RFK Jr. is unqualified in terms of experience and character for the role of Secty of HHS."

Political views

Kennedy's political rhetoric often uses conspiracy theories.

Economic inequality

Kennedy has argued that poor communities shoulder a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution. Speaking at the 2016 South by Southwest environment conference, he said, "Polluters always choose the soft target of poverty", noting that Chicago's South Side has the highest concentration of toxic waste dumps in the U.S., and added that 80% of "uncontrolled toxic waste dumps" are in black neighborhoods, with the largest site in Emelle, Alabama, which is 90% black.

Kennedy has said that "systematic" erosion of the middle class is taking place, remarking in a 2023 interview with UnHerd that American politicians have "been systematically hollowing out the American middle class and printing money to make billionaires richer". He said that the financial industry and the military–industrial complex are funded at the expense of the American middle class; that the U.S. government is dominated by corporate power; the Environmental Protection Agency is run by the "oil industry, the coal industry, and the pesticide industry"; and that the Food and Drug Administration is dominated by "Big Pharma". Kennedy sees a "vibrant middle class" as the economy's backbone and has said that the economy has deteriorated because the middle class has become poorer.

In an interview with Andrew Serwer, Kennedy said that the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. had become too great and that "the very wealthy people should pay more taxes and corporations". He also expressed support for Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax plan, which would impose an annual tax of 2% on every dollar of a household's net worth over $50 million and 6% on every dollar of net worth over $1 billion.