...obviously the biggest issue with RFK is his reputation as a conspiracy theorist and antivaxxer, and if you support him you may think that that's been overblown. You might think, "well, he went on a podcast that I listen to and he seemed totally reasonable," and he does do a lot of them.
We listened to a bunch, and in doing so we noticed an interesting pattern: on the more mainstream ones he will go out of his way to seem reasonable and open-minded. In fact he's got a line that he likes to deploy a lot in podcasts and other settings:
[RFK, Jr.:] "I have a critical mind. If somebody shows me where I got it wrong, I'll change. I'm not dug in, I'm not hard-headed in that sense. I will change my mind always if, um, if somebody confronts me with with facts. If somebody shows me a fact that I'm wrong, I'm going to change my opinion and I'll apologize."
That sounds pretty good even if "show me a fact" sounds like what a John Oliver action figure would say when you pull the string on his back. That and "it's not sexual harassment if it's a horse."
Unfortunately, history has shown him to be much more dug in than he likes to imply, and before we get to his more famous views on vaccines and COVID you should know they're by no means his only alarming stances. Take AIDS. It is a scientifically proven fact that AIDS is caused by HIV, but in the early '80s people looked at the fact that it was spreading in the US and Europe largely within the gay community and tried to locate other factors that might be causing it. Nowadays most people accept that those early theories were dead ends, but amazingly as recently as three years ago, RFK was out there saying shit like this:
[RFK, Jr.:] "There's a lot of people that said it's not a virus, the virus is a, a passenger virus and these people are dying mainly because of poppers. 100% of the people who died in the first, of, of the first thousand had who had AIDS were people who were addicted to poppers, which are known to cause Kaposi sarcomas in rats. And I, and you know, they were people who were part of the, a gay lifestyle where they were burning the candle at both ends..."
Okay, so there is a lot there from "a gay lifestyle", to repeating the claim that people were dying mainly because of poppers, to the notion that poppers cause Kaposi sarcomas, which, for the record: they do not. Multiple studies in humans have found that even heavy popper use showed no significant association with the risk of Kaposi sarcomas, which does make sense given that poppers are still sold everywhere in this city; I got these three blocks from here, as I do before every taping of this show. How else do you think I get through this shit?
But, but it didn't stop there. Kennedy's also argued that Anthony Fauci, who at the time worked within the NIH, and other experts wanted to call HIV a virus partly so that his agency and the pharmaceutical industry could profit from the production of AZT, which was the first first drug approved by the FDA to treat HIV and AIDS. That is part of a series of arguments known as AIDS denialism, which has done real damage.
One of its biggest proponents, a scientist named Peter Duesberg, actually helped persuade the South African government to forgo supplying AZT to those with AIDS, a decision that's been estimated to have cost over 330,000 lives there. Yet RFK recently wrote that Duesberg's arguments were "so clean, so elegantly crafted, and so compelling..." and... "Elegantly crafted"?! That would be annoying if you were writing the copy on the back of a $12 chocolate bar, but in this instance it is just obscene.
And it's not just AIDS where Kennedy's made big eye-catching claims that bear no resemblance to reality. Here he is last year in a Twitter spaces chat with Elon Musk, suggesting that psychiatric drugs may be a cause of school shootings:
[RFK, Jr.:] "Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost no, none of these events in our country and we've never seen them in human history, where people walk into a school room of children or strangers and start shooting people. There's other nations that have as many guns per capita as we do, where the last school shooting was 21 years ago. We have one every 21 hours. The one thing that we have that's different than anybody in the world is the amount of psychiatric drugs our children are taking and our people are taking. And we need to look at that."
Okay so before we go any further. let me just say this: I also don't want to be doing this. I don't want to be debunking his argument at length. I am so close to taking a hit of these poppers, you have no idea. But he's made so many confident assertions there, and if you leave even one unchallenged people will think, "well, maybe there's something to it."
So with that in mind: first, Prozac hit the market in 1988. As you probably already know, there were tons of shootings and mass shootings before then, including at schools. As to the claim other countries have as many guns as we do, they just don't. US civilians have the highest rate of gun ownership in the world by a factor of more than two. And as for linking school shootings to the amount of psychiatric drugs our children are taking, researchers haven't found any link between anti-depressants and school shootings. In fact, one study found that over 87% of the secondary school shooters it sampled were not on psychiatric medications at the time of their attack.
So multiple facts there are just plain wrong, despite how confidently he just spewed them out there. He could just as easily pointed out the link between school shooters and milk, because you know what, a shocking number have above average dairy intake, and ice cream in particular may contain neuroglycerides that initiate psychopathic behavior.
Except none of that is true. I just made all of that shit up. "Neuroglycerides" isn't even a word, and Lactose Quarterly isn't a magazine. But it does show just how easy it is to reel people in when you're spouting self assured bullshit on an unchallenged platform. And if you're noticing a pattern here, that RFK will find a problem and then work backwards to point at a big, powerful entity pulling the strings, that's basically what he's done with vaccines. Although again he will deny that, insisting he's not antivax at all. Here he is making that point under oath before Congress:
[RFK, Jr.:] "I have never been an antivax. I have never told any, I have never told the public 'avoid vaccination.' The only thing I've asked for, and my views are constantly misrepresented so that the truth of what I believe is not we're not allowed to have a conversation with, about that with the American people, which I believe vaccines should be tested with the same rigor as other medicines and medications."
Yeah that's a pretty vehement denial. And quick shout out to the guy recording that like it's his kid's dance recital. But when are you going to watch that footage, dude? You do know there are other cameras recording this, right? But here's the thing: remember when I said Kennedy goes on a lot of podcasts and can sound reasonable? He goes on a bunch of fringy ones too, and when addressing those audiences, he sends out a very different message. Like on this one three years ago:
[RFK, Jr.:] "Our job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail with a, carrying a little baby, and I said, 'better not get them vaccinated,' and he heard that from me, if he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won't do it. You know, maybe, maybe he will save that child. When they hear that from 10 people, it'll make an impression on them, you know. And we all kept our mouth shut... don't keep your mouth shut anymore; confront everybody on it."
[Podcaster:] "I love that. I love it, thank you."
"I love that. I love it." I have to say, that is exactly the kind of person I'd expecting to be co-hosting an antivaccine podcast. The sort of person you'd expect to see walking around a grocery store during a COVID surge, licking everything to fortify her immune system. But I only say that because she actually did that and posted it to Instagram, because of course she fucking did. But also, you don't get to say "I'm not antivax" and then wander around the woods telling people to not vaccinate their babies like you're some red-pilled version of Smokey the Bear, who I'm realizing is clearly where you get your workout wardrobe inspiration from.
Over the years Kennedy's promoted a number of theories about vaccines, including how they supposedly cause autism. We've discussed his claim that a preservative called thimerosal was linked to autism in our piece on vaccines several years ago. Not only is it bullshit, thimerasol hasn't been in children's vaccine since 2001 except for the flu vaccine, and even then there was, and remains, a version without thimerasol in it. But Kennedy parlayed the initial panic he helped cause into founding the Children's Health Defense, one of the country's leading antivaccine organizations, and he's continued to fear-monger about a connection between thimerasol and autism ever since.
In 2015 he said of kids getting vaccinated, "they get the shot, that night they have a fever of 103, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country," which is clearly absurd. A vaccine cannot make someone's brain go away, although I'm increasingly believing that a dead worm might actually be able to.
And if you're noticing a certain cruelty in how Kennedy tends to talk about autistic people, you're not wrong. It goes well beyond the antivax community's general gross tendency to imply that they'd rather have a kid die from polio or measles than be diagnosed with autism, because just listen to him here:
[RFK, Jr.:] "I bet you've never met anybody with full-blown autism your age. You know, headbanging, football helmet on, non-toilet trained, nonverbal... I mean my I've never met anybody like that my age but in my kids age now one in every 34 kids has has autism and half of those are full-blown, meaning that description."
Okay, first if there's limited variety in the people you've met your age, maybe it's because you've only ever hung out with the same circle of five or six sex offenders or murderers. I don't know, I am just asking questions. And I could talk about the history of autism diagnoses and how they're still so new; the first person to be given one died just last year. I could talk about the fact that autistic people were long misunderstood and institutionalized. I could also throw in that there is definitely no such diagnosis as "full-blown autism." Well, you know what, I could just let this guy with autism point out that just because RFK didn't know anyone with autism didn't mean they didn't exist, in the most deliciously derisive way:
[Tik Tok video:] Fucking... Mount Everest wasn't discovered until 1852, but I'm pretty sure it was still there. Also, yeah, like all those old grandpas with like a giant ass train collection? You don't think they're just, just a little bit on the spectrum? Just, just a teeny weeny... Fucking... God, conspiracy theorists are the dumbest people on the planet, bar none."
Yeah, I honestly cannot put it much better than that. And look, RFK will insist he just wants vaccines to be tested for safety and efficacy, but as we have said before, they have been. And repeatedly. Not only are vaccines already held to a higher safety standard than other medications, thousands of studies have found that they're safe and effective, including a systematic review of over 160 studies on vaccine safety that found any serious adverse reactions were "extremely rare." You could also look at this study of over 650,000 children born in Denmark, some vaccinated, some not, which concludes that the "MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism," or this meta review of 10 studies involving over one and a quarter million children, which also "revealed no relationship between vaccination and autism."
There are so many examples like this. And it's why experts will tell you that a person's chance of having a bad reaction to a vaccine is about one in a million. As one expert we spoke to pointed out, given that we have over 40,000 deaths by car accident in the US per year, the most dangerous aspect of vaccinating children is driving to the doctor's office to get them, especially, by the way, if your kids are singing Baby Shark the whole time, because that will make you drive off a cliff.
And I know this can all seem very abstract, but the thing is Kennedy's ideas have been put to the test in the real world, and sometimes with hideous consequences. Take what happened in Samoa. In 2018, there was a horrible accident when two children died from a measles vaccine that two nurses had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant. It was awful, but it was human error. Nevertheless the antivax movement seized on the sudden fear of vaccines there.
In the following year, Kennedy visited Samoa in a trip arranged by a local antivaccine influencer. There he met with other anti-vaccine activists including one who wrote that "the meeting was profoundly monumental for this movement." He even met with the Prime Minister, with whom he discussed vaccines, in his words, "a limited amount." And when, a few months later, there was a measles outbreak in Somoa, RFK wrote a four-page letter to the Prime Minister, in which he suggested the measles vaccine itself might be the true cause of the crisis. In the end that outbreak killed 83 people, mostly infants and children, in large part due to their lack of vaccinations. An outbreak Kennedy later referred to as "mild." And when confronted about all of this, he is quick to try and distance himself:
[RFK, Jr.:] "Yeah, I'm aware there was a measles outbreak, but I didn't have anything, you know, I had nothing to do with, um, with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn't, you know, go there for any reason to do with that."
Got it, got it, so you just popped in to one of the most remote countries on Earth and just happened to encounter all your antivax buddies along the way. It is the ultimate conspiracist code: "nothing is a coincidence except when I do it." And look, on some level I do get why people are drawn to RFK. There is an earned distrust of big pharma and medical authorities, and illnesses and disease are scary. Kennedy's explanations, as bullshit as they may be, can almost be comforting at a frightening time. That is an environment in which he thrives.
And it may explain why his popularity took off during the COVID pandemic. There there was a lot of uncertainty back then and medical experts were understandably making mistakes and learning in real time. Kennedy saw that and he pounced. He took a lot of big swings, including writing a book in which he claimed that Fauci was using COVID to execute a "historic coup d'etat against Western democracy." And once again his just asking questions caused real harm to real people.
For example, he pushed the idea that the COVID vaccine was dangerous, especially to young people, even writing the forwards to this book, called "Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022", a compilation of young people who died suddenly, heavily implying their deaths were caused by the vaccine. And look, it is true that a very few young people reported heart complications after receiving the vaccine, but not only is the risk rare and most patients felt better quickly, but importantly in children and teens the risks of getting COVID and developing severe illness that could seriously impact the heart are far greater than the risk of experiencing postvaccine heart complications. Nevertheless, in that book's forward, RFK wrote that it "proves an undeniable and urgent reality, laid out with facts that can be confirmed by any reader, point by point, page by page." He even went on Joe Rogan to give the book a hard sell:
[RFK, Jr.:] "It's the kind of book, if you have a skeptic, and you can get them to sit down for 90 minutes with this book, when they get up they will, uh, they will have converted. And it's really, it's, uh, it's sickening. I mean it's terrible these, you know, these beautiful children who were dying on the playing field, and COVID was killing people, but it was old people, yeah."
[Joe Rogan:] " 'Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022'. Edward Dowd. Yeah, yeah. Died after first vaccine dose, dies at hospital football died on the field."
Okay, set aside that Joe Rogan's just muttering random words off the cover with an energy level I describe as "just ate a fist full of melatonin pills," that, that is a pretty hard sell there from RFK: give this book to people for 90 minutes and they'll be converted. But here's the thing: the AP found that dozens of individuals included in the book died of known causes not related to vaccines, including suicide and choking while intoxicated. The book even includes one person who died in 2019, so unless the headline was "Time Traveler Dies of COVID Vaccine," they don't really belong in there.
But that's not all, because when the book was first printed, one of the kids on the cover was Braden Fahey, who died after collapsing during football practice at just 12 years old. But we know for a fact that the COVID vaccine didn't kill Braden because he wasn't vaccinated. He died from a malformed blood vessel in his brain and no one ever contacted his parents to ask about their son's death or for permission to use his photo, something they are understandably furious about.
[Padrig Fahey:] "It's just another gut punch. Yeah, you know, we've been punched in the gut as hard as you can be punched in the gut and this is just another one right after, you know?"
[Gina Fahey:] "You try so hard each day to, like, heal, and then you just have to take on a whole another nightmare, and party you wants to just dismiss it and go, 'we've dealt with so much, we can't deal with anymore,' but then, you know, you just have to do it for your son, and we can't as his parents look the other way."
That is awful. They've had to go out of their way to correct the record about their son's death in the face of someone who not only has the platform of a Kennedy, but also of a presidential candidate. Now I should tell you, after that story Braden was removed from the cover of subsequent editions of that book. But not only is the first version with him on the cover still selling on Amazon, even the newer edition despite everything we just told you, still includes him inside the book itself. And the publisher's excuse for this is enraging because they argue to us this week that the book never specifically says that the people shown in it died from the COVID vaccine, just that it highlights a new trend of people dying suddenly for unknown causes, which is not what the book does at all.
And it is definitely what RFK did when he tweeted out its cover with Braden's picture on it and claimed the book showed the COVID shots are a crime against humanity. That tweet is still up, which is a little odd to me because what was it that Kennedy liked to say:
[RFK, Jr.:] "If somebody shows me a fact and I'm wrong, I'm going to change my opinion, and I'll apologize."
Huh, that's weird, but I guess it does make sense. Saying "if somebody shows me a fact and I'm wrong, I'm going to totally ignore it and force grieving parents to relive the worst thing that's ever happened to them," doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it. And look, I could litigate Kennedy's stupid arguments all night long, but I really do not want to do that to myself or to you. There are not enough poppers in the world to take the edge off this. And to quote Kennedy's neurologist, I really don't have time to to go down all these wormholes.
Hopefully though, at this point, you've got a better sense of who this man actually is, and if you don't know any of this I do get why you might like him, because the idea of RFK is appealing. But so many of the reasons to support him just don't stand up under the slightest scrutiny. If you're voting for him because he seems honest or trustworthy, I think you've seen otherwise. If it's the Kennedy legacy, you should know over a dozen members of his own family have come out against his campaign. If you're voting for the environmental hero of the '90s, I'll point out multiple prominent environmental groups have opposed his campaign, including many former colleagues. If you like that he's against polluters and big pharma, I get it, we criticize them all the time, but when we do that we make sure we've got our facts right and don't just pull them out of the ass of our best workout jeans.
And finally, if you're frustrated with a two-party system, me too! But honestly, the way to dismantle that isn't through voting for one magical candidate, it'll come from building a movement toward ranked choice voting. And it's important to know at least one of those parties may not be as opposed to Kennedy as he says he is to them, because Republicans seem to be counting on him to siphon off Democratic votes. His campaign's largest contributor is Timothy Mellon, a Republican megadonor who's also donated $50 million to a pro-Trump group this election. And if Trump wins a second term, Kennedy may wind up working for him, because when we reached out to RFK's campaign this week they told us he and Trump have discussed the possibility of a cabinet position for him: specifically Health and Human Services. And if that is true that is a fucking nightmare. There is no good outcome here.
Even if RFK drops out tomorrow he'll have injected and amplified misinformation that, as you've seen, takes a lot of effort to debunk. And if he stays in, history has shown spoiler candidates can do intense damage to no real end. And don't just take that from me. Ralph Nader famously helped swing the election for George W. Bush back in 2000, and there was a guy back then who was very smartly imploring him to drop out:
[Reporter:] "Despite fading poll numbers, the core support behind Nader's candidacy is making some liberal Democrats unhappy."
[RFK, Jr.:] "There's a political reality here, which is that his candidacy could draw enough votes in certain key States from Al Gore to give the entire election to George W. Bush."
Exactly. And look, this is the only time you're going to hear me say this but RFK is, and don't you dare take this out of fucking context, making a really good point there. But the fact is the rest of the time Kennedy is a full-blown menace and frankly spending this much time thinking about him has been, if I may quote Vanity Fair, "the low point of my summer." And now, if you'll excuse me, I think I have earned these.
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