RFK Jr. is not your hero
Tiana Lowe
More than half a century after his father’s promising presidential bid was cut short by assassination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a bid to unseat Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. Despite Biden’s status as the incumbent, a USA Today poll published the day Kennedy began his campaign found that the political heir has the support of 14% of Democrats, a stunning showing against a president who only managed to maintain the favor of two-thirds of his party, according to the poll.
But however much you loathe Biden, RFK Jr. is not your hero — not if you’re a Democrat, and especially not if you’re a Republican.
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Like all the great political hopefuls to emerge from the Kennedy dynasty, the 2024 candidate has reportedly been a serial adulterer as well as an abuser of drugs and alcohol. To his credit, unlike many of the family’s men, the Biden challenger has never been publicly accused of rape. Kennedy has almost certainly never drunkenly driven a car off a bridge and left a woman to drown and die.
So as far as Kennedys go, RFK Jr. is far from the worst. He has the campaign-ready Kennedy visage, picture-perfect and plastic Hollywood wife, and series of academic and professional accolades ranging from a Harvard BA to then-President Barack Obama’s consideration that he run the Environmental Protection Agency.
The only problem is that Kennedy is unusually unhinged, even for the scummy class that is the nation’s politicians.
Other than maybe Jenny McCarthy, there is likely nobody on the planet more responsible than Kennedy for mainstreaming anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. And no, these “conspiracy theories” are not the understandable hesitancy to take brand-new COVID vaccines that did not prevent infection as the government promised. (Though as a reminder, the COVID vaccines remain highly successful at staving off the risk of death from the infection.)
Instead, Kennedy trafficked in virulent lies about tried, tested, and proven vaccines, and he did it for profit.
After decades of practicing environmental law, Kennedy began the second chapter of his career with the publication of his article “Deadly Immunity” in Salon and Rolling Stone magazine. The 2005 article signal-blasted the debunked conspiracy theory by Andrew Wakefield that mercury in the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine caused autism in children. Even after publishers had to issue significant corrections, Kennedy told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “we are injecting our children with 400 times the amount of mercury that FDA or EPA considers safe.” He also claims that all 24 of the vaccines on the CDC’s vaccine schedule in 2005 contained offending thimerosal, a dangerous mercury-based preservative.
In reality, the CDC’s vaccine schedule in 2005 had only eight vaccines, not a single one of which had thimerosal in them. That didn’t stop Joe Scarborough from affirming Kennedy’s delusions:
“There’s no doubt in my mind — and maybe it’s two years from now, maybe it’s five years from now, maybe it’s 10 years from now — we are going to find out thimerosal causes, in my opinion, autism,” Scarborough said.
Kennedy teamed up with Jenny McCarthy, the former Playboy model famous for being photographed on the can, and Wakefield, who has been legally barred from practicing medicine. The three comprise the unholy trinity of the anti-vaxx cottage industry, shilling garbage books and speaking gigs in exchange for piles of cash. Kennedy’s anti-vaxx “charities” alone accrue him nearly half a million dollars per year. Like the fading beauty McCarthy, Kennedy used anti-vaxx conspiracy theories to give his career a second life. By the time the pandemic came, Kennedy was in the perfect place to weaponize the disastrous response by our public health apparatus to gain followers from across the aisle. Now, Kennedy has conned millions of poor Americans, understandably distrustful of our suboptimal and shady healthcare system and public health bureaucracy.
The anti-vaxx stuff is just the most obvious reason to let Kennedy fade into obscurity with the rest of his disgraced family. Kennedy’s environmental record alone should disqualify him, as he’s an opponent of both fossil fuels (which we still need now) and nuclear power (which we absolutely will need if we ever want to phase out the use of fossil fuels). He also opposed hydroelectric power and wind power, leaving one to wonder whether Kennedy believes in modern civilization at all. Kennedy was also an election truther before either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump made it cool, claiming that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election. Since then, has regularly cast doubt on the integrity of our election process in general.
Of the challengers looking to unseat Biden, Kennedy is probably the worst. Citizens frustrated with Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma have plenty of other medical professionals who can separate fact from propaganda. But whether you’re on the Left or on the Right, RFK Jr. is not your hero.