Is RFK, Jr., Bat Shit Crazy?

Here are the main criticisms of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he challenges both President Joe Biden and past President Donald Trump for the Presidency in 2024, a critique that essentially boils down to whether an independent candidate has a chance of winning. At the end are links to long-form interviews.

1. RFK is an Anti-Vaxxer

“RFK Jr. spent years stoking fear and mistrust of vaccines. These people were hurt by his work.” BY MICHELLE R. SMITH AND ALI SWENSON of APNews

https://apnews.com/article/rfk-kennedy-election-vaccines-2ccde2df146f57b5e8c26e8494f0a16a

The AP has published articles amplifying the message that RFK Jr. is “bat-shit crazy.” Here are some of the points raised in the article:

• “He has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. He has said vaccines had caused a “holocaust[1],” and has traveled the world spreading false information about the pandemic.”
• RFK Jr. wrote the forward to “Cause Unknown[2],” a book that questions the increase in deaths of young people and raises the question that this increase may be due to the COVID-19 vaccination. One of the photos on the cover is of 12-year-old Braden Fahey, who the AP article says his parents were not consulted about the photo and said their son died of a blood disorder. The author said that this was not disclosed in the obituary or the public record.
• RFK Jr. consistently questions the link between the rapid increase in vaccines since 1988 and the rise of autism (and other childhood conditions). In the AP article, his questioning caused a woman to not find care for her son who evidenced autism, despite not being vaccinated.[3]
• In June 2019, Kennedy visited Samoa at the invitation of an anti-vaxxing organization. Subsequently, 83 people died of measles. The article (and a subsequent documentary, “Shot in the Arm,” blame RFK Jr. for these deaths even though the article points out that “Vaccine rates had plummeted after two children died in 2018 from a measles vaccine that a nurse had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant.” This left over a year’s worth of children unvaccinated and a generation of parents suspicious about Samoan health services.
• A State Senator, Richard Pan, a pediatrician, was driven from public office over his pro-vaccine and lockdown stance. (He is now running for mayor of Sacramento.) Pan said it’s one of many instances when Kennedy has whipped people up against public health advocates.^[4] Pan said people trying their best to protect children are “being threatened and even assaulted because of his rhetoric and his lies. That harms America.[5]”
• Kennedy wrote a bestselling book attacking infectious disease expert and former top government scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who claims to have received death threats as a result.

Kennedy has called for studies about the use of toxic chemicals like thermasol (mercury) and aluminum in vaccines and what harm their cumulative effect might have on childhood health. He does not discount other factors such as glysophates, processed foods, sugar, and other toxins. He has called for federal agencies to find the causes of the increase in autism, obesity, ADHD, allergies, and other conditions harming our children. Because he has raised these questions, the news media, like the AP, have attacked Kennedy as a dangerous quack:

• If there was no connection between thimerosal and human harm, why did pharmaceutical companies remove it?
• Can we still call the AP an independent news organization when it receives funding from foundations such as:

o   Eli Lilly Endowment

o   Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

o   Jonathan Logan Family Foundation

o   William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

o   Journalism Funding Partners

o   Conversation U.S.

Kennedy’s organization filed a lawsuit against several news organizations, including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. 

The AP article said, “Though Kennedy did not respond for this story, he has long said that he is not anti-vaccine, and only wants vaccines to be rigorously tested.”

The AP defended The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explaining that vaccines undergo thorough testing before being approved in the U.S. and are monitored for safety after being introduced to the public.”

However, is this true? Has the AP dug into the Center for Disease Control? RFK conducted the research the AP should have done if it were still an independent and unbiased news organization and not beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.

• March 2017, RFK Jr. met with Drs. Fauci and Francis Collins to point out that HHS was mandating 69 doses of sixteen vaccines, none of which had ever been tested for safety before licensing. Fauci and Collins denied this and insisted the vaccines were safely tested.
• RFK asked them to provide evidence, but they could not provide a citation for a single clinical trial. In October 2017, RFK Jr. sued HHS to produce the long-promised safety studies.
• Ten months later, HHS admitted that there were no such studies.

RFK has raised the alarm that vaccines are being tested on the poor and ill-informed in Third-World countries. One by one, his “wild theories” have been proven correct.

• June 2017, NPR headline, “Mutant Strains of Polio Vaccine Now Cause More Paralysis than Wild Polio.”
• RFK questioned whether the Gardasil vaccine had caused record declines in birth rates in Africa.
• Neither Fauci nor Gates has ever offered empirical evidence to support their claim that their vaccines have “saved millions of lives.”

No one can question that vaccines can cause harm, which is why the pharmaceutical companies lobbied for indemnity in the 1980s. If vaccines did not cause harm, there would be no need for this indemnity from lawsuits. The argument in favor of indemnity is that vaccines reduce all-cause mortalities, and the release from liability is necessary for pharmaceutical companies to risk developing new products. Following this change to the law, the pharmaceutical industry received approval to advertise directly to consumers. Today, print and broadcast media depend so much on pharmaceutical money that they no longer question the premise that every vaccine reduces more harm than it causes.  

Conclusion: RFK Jr. is the most prominent person challenging the pharmaceutical companies, the federal agencies, and the media to produce evidence that vaccines do not cause more harm than they prevent. Keeping him off the ballot and pillorying him with bad press sounds as if what he says is true but too dangerous for the public to hear for themselves.

2. His family does not support him.

“The Kennedys Really Hate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Maybe they’re onto something.” By Heather Schwedel https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/06/robert-f-kennedy-jr-president-campaign-family.html

Heather Schwedel wrote an article for the Slate publication trying to separate the candidate from his hallowed political name by focusing on his family members who do not support him. The writer argues that the Kennedy name is inseparable from the Democratic Party, so not supporting the party’s candidate diminishes the legacy of the Kennedy name. To silence him, articles like this refute his “crazy” theories:

• The Covid virus was developed in a lab in Wuhan China, which received part of its funding through Anthony Fauci.
• He wants an investigation into 5G Networks, which he believes may be killing us
• John Kerry had the 2004 election stolen from him.
• Sirhan Sirhan was not the actual killer of his father.
• He wrote a book proving the financial ties between Fauci, Bill Gates, and the pharmaceutical companies that have now captured the regulatory and international health agencies and the media.

The article mentions that his cousin Carolyn Kennedy is Biden’s ambassador to Australia and that he pushes “dangerous ideas with no basis in reality.”

Conclusion: Members of the media do not delve into whether RFK’s theories are correct or worth investigating, even those that have been proven in court. Rather the media tries to control the narrative.

Points RFK Raises: the US has:

• the highest incidence of chronic disease;
• 16% of the Covid deaths with 4% of the population;
• 79^th in the world in health outcomes despite spending the most money;
• Pharmaceutical drugs are now the 4^th leading cause of death.
• 50% of the FDA’s budget comes from the pharmaceutical industry it is supposed to regulate.

His book “Dying Suddenly” shows that the mRNA vaccine caused more deaths than it prevented.

3. An Independent candidate has no chance or RFK Jr. will draw votes away from (Biden) (Trump)

Kennedy has a path to victory because both mainstream candidates have high negatives, and the growing population of independent voters view the binary choices of the two-party system as a significant impediment to the country’s future.

Both Trump and Biden have High Negatives

“ Donald Trump leads Democratic President Joe Biden by six percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that showed Americans are unhappy about an election rematch that came into sharper focus this week.[6]

“Fifty-nine percent of respondents who said they planned to vote for Biden said they were motivated primarily by opposition to Trump.”[7]

“During President Joe Biden’s third full year in office, spanning Jan. 20, 2023, to Jan. 19, 2024, an average of 39.8% of Americans approved of his job performance. Among prior presidents in the Gallup polling era who were elected to their first term, only Jimmy Carter fared worse in his third year. Carter averaged 37.4% approval in a year in which gas prices soared, inflation reached double digits and Iranian militants took U.S. citizens hostage.”[8]

Self-Proclaimed Independent Voters Are Growing

“According to the most recent Gallup news polls, including historical data, Independent voters make up a much larger portion of voters than most might imagine. In the most recent report, 35.3 million registered voters identified as independents which makes up 28.55% of voters from the states reporting this data. By contrast, the number of people who declare as Republicans or Democrats consistently hovers around 30 percent.”[9]

Long Form Podcasts

RFK believes the long-form podcast will help voters understand the issues and get to know him because the mainstream media will ignore him. He has also been a podcast host for many years. (Warning: not all podcast hosts are objective or fair.)

RFK Jr.’s long-running podcast

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/RFKjr

Joe Rogan’s interview of RFK Jr.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3DQfcTY4viyXsIXQ89NXvg

Lex Fridman with RFK Jr.:  CIA, Power, Corruption, War, Freedom, and Meaning

https://lexfridman.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-transcript/

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg: Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e127-presidential-candidate-robert-f-kennedy-jr-in/id1502871393?i=1000611941938

Tucker Carlson on Twitter | Ep 16 - Tucker Talks With RFK Jr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztItklmVrK8

ReasonTV's Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller: with RFK Jr. on vaccine hesitancy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFal_LsIxQ4

Robert Schilling interview with RFK Jr.

https://www.schillingshow.com/2024/01/26/robert-f-kennedy-jr-interview-on-the-schilling-show/

Bill Maher interview with RFK Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0dQD1Z6j60

Piers Morgan with RFK Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdtQRhu8IdM

Frank Morano interview with rfk jr

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cmVPIE8hXBc

2014 Earth Day interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbKAxmNI2h0

Breaking Point interview with RFK challenging him on Israel, getting on the ballot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LWHZDO7tgE

Dr. Mark Hyman’s interview with RFK Jr.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&param1=20220612&param2=9d561946-9d9b-4032-811b-640bf3d50961&param3=quicksearchtool_1.2%7EUS%7Eappfocus1%7E&param4=d-ccc4-lp0-cp_15987672383-tst1--dklp%7EChrome%7Emark+hyman+s+interview+with+rfk+jr%7E793779BE1573AC51CB9D801723277294%7EMac+OS+X&p=mark+hyman%27s+interview+with+rfk+jr&type=A1-mac-%7E2022-25%7E#id=3&vid=33148768eb5e2504a6ec54890f52a940&action=click

End Notes

[1] “When Kennedy asked the crowd of a few hundred viewers how many parents had a child injured by vaccines, numerous hands went up. ‘They get the shot, that night they have a fever of a hundred and three, they go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone,’ Kennedy said. ‘This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.’”

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article17814440.html#storylink=cpy

[2] "’CAUSE UNKNOWN' THE EPIDEMIC OF SUDDEN DEATHS” by Edward Dowd, December 13, 2022. Why are So Many Healthy, Young People Are Dying Unexpectedly? The CEO of OneAmerica, Scott Davison, publicly disclosed that during the third and fourth quarters of 2021, death in people of working age (18–64) was 40 percent higher than it was before the pandemic — and the majority of the deaths were not attributed to COVID-19.

[3] “According to 42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22, "No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings." https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-are-pharmaceutical-companies-immune-covid-19-vaccine-lawsuits-1562793

[4] “I think it is dangerous that he is spreading misinformation about something that’s very important for public health,” Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, a pediatrician, said in an interview. “Autism rates have continued to rise even though we are not using thimerosal in vaccines for children,” he added. “We still haven’t figured out exactly what causes autism. We do know it’s not vaccines.”

Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article17814440.html#storylink=cpy

[5] “The overwhelming scientific consensus supports vaccine use and dismisses any serious side effects. Multiple studies have rejected any link between the mercury-containing chemical thimerosal and autism. Nevertheless, vaccine manufacturers have removed thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines (some influenza vaccines are the exception) and a California bill further barred thimerosal content.” https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article17814440.html#storylink=cpy

[6] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-dismayed-by-biden-trump-2024-rematch-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2024-01-25/

[7] Ibid

[8] https://news.gallup.com/poll/609188/biden-third-year-job-approval-average-second-worst.aspx

[9] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/independent-voters-by-state