Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Compares His Anti-Vax Stance to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Activism

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., responded to a Daily Beast story on Friday by comparing his decision to offer his kids fake vaccine cards to the civil disobedience practiced by Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Federal law clearly prohibits the government or private companies from using coercion to compel the use of experimental medical products,” Kennedy said in a post on X, quoting a post from this Daily Beast reporter that included video of his recent Las Vegas radio appearance where he made the original comments, first reported in the Trail Mix newsletter.

“Nevertheless,” Kennedy continued, “coercion to force submission to illegal vaccine mandates became the norm during Covid. As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, ‘One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’ I acted accordingly. Both science and courts across the country are currently vindicating those who resisted.”

The Daily Beast reported earlier on Friday that Kennedy had recounted offering his adult children vaccine cards so they wouldn’t have to get the jab.

“I offered my kids vaccine cards and said, ‘I don’t want you to take this product,’ because I had read the clinical trial data,” Kennedy said in the interview. “And they said, no, they didn’t want to do it, because they didn’t want to lie. They didn’t want to lie to their friends. So, they made their own decision—that they wanted to go to law school, they wanted to go to school, and that they had to take this risk. And they did it.”

The Kennedy campaign did not return a request for comment on the MLK comparison, nor the original blurb in Trail Mix on the vaccine cards.