RFK Jr. Makes Unfounded Claims About Mass Shootings, Covid-19: Here Are All The Conspiracies He Promotes
Topline
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promoted a string of conspiracy theories about gun ownership and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, among others, in a Twitter Spaces discussion Monday as he challenges President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination—these are some of the unfounded claims to which he gave merit, among others he has helped spread over the better part of the past two decades:
Key Facts
Mass shootings are linked to prescription drugs: Kennedy Jr. blamed school shootings on drugs like the antidepressant Prozac in Monday’s Twitter discussion, telling owner Elon Musk, “Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events” (there’s no scientifically established correlation between psychiatric drugs and mass violence, according to experts cited by PolitiFact).
The 2004 presidential election was stolen: Kennedy Jr. said in a 2006 Rolling Stone article he was “convinced” that voter fraud in the 2004 presidential election allowed former Republican President George W. Bush to steal the victory from Democrat John Kerry, but while a 2005 postmortem by the Democratic Party found a breakdown of the election system in Ohio, it found no evidence of fraud.
The CIA was involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy: Reprising the unfounded claim he has made for years, Kennedy Jr. recently made the suggestion to Fox News’ Sean Hannity (though the federal government’s Warren Commission convened to study the killing found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot JFK in 1963).
The wrong person may have been convicted of killing his father: Kennedy Jr. cast doubt on the conviction of Sirhan Sirhan in the 1968 assassination of his father, former U.S. Attorney General and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, to which gunman Sirhan Sirhan confessed days later, though his lawyers have claimed in recent years that he was hypnotized and coerced to kill Kennedy.
The pharmaceutical industry is throwing money at Democrats: After the Affordable Care Act of 2010, “Democrats were getting more money from pharma than Republicans,” Kennedy Jr. claimed on Twitter Spaces, though an analysis by STAT News found 23 of the country’s biggest drug companies and 2 pharmaceutical trade organizations have favored Republicans in 14 of the past 16 elections from 1990-2020, the most recent year STAT studied.
Gun ownership in Switzerland is similar to the United States: While vowing not to “take away anyone’s guns,” if elected president, Kennedy Jr. made the debunked claim, despite data that shows U.S. civilians possess an average of 120.5 firearms per 100 people, the highest per-capita rate in the world, compared to 27.6 in Switzerland, according to the Small Arms Survey by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Covid-19 virus was genetically engineered: “Covid was clearly a bioweapons problem,” he said on Twitter Spaces, repeating a claim promoted by some hard-right lawmakers—U.S. intelligence agencies have said it’s possible the virus originated from a lab accident, but have found no evidence to support the claim that it was deliberately leaked.
Former White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates sought to exaggerate the pandemic, in part, to promote vaccines: Kennedy Jr. accused the pair in his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci of launching “a historic coup d’état against Western democracy” by exercising outsize influence over the media and public health realm, while Kennedy also promoted use of unapproved treatments for Covid-19, such as ivermectin.
Vaccines can cause autism: For years, Kennedy Jr. has promoted the theory that the preservative, thimerosal, which has largely been phased out of modern vaccine formulas, appears to be responsible for a rise in autism diagnoses and that the government knew but “knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children,” he wrote in Rolling Stone and Salon in 2006, despite consensus among a number of certified health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and more that have found no credible link between vaccines and autism.
Contra
Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly disavowed the “anti-vaxx” label, claiming he is not against safe vaccines and has vaccinated his children. Forbes has reached out to Kennedy Jr. for comment.
Big Number
20%. That’s the average percentage of support Kennedy Jr. has among Democratic voters in three recent polls commissioned by CNN/SSRS, Emerson College and USA Today/Suffolk University.
Key Background
Kennedy Jr., a former environmental lawyer and Harvard Law graduate, veered into the fringe in the early 2000s with articles in Rolling Stone and Salon promoting conspiracies about vaccines and the 2004 election. He is the founder and chairman of the Children’s Health Defense nonprofit, a leading promoter of vaccine skepticism. The group’s influence surged during the Covid-19 pandemic and was the subject of widespread condemnation for a controversial film critics said targeted the Black community with vaccine misinformation. Kennedy Jr. announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination on April 6, calling Biden a close family friend and vowing not to run a “mean-spirited campaign,” while explaining the two “differ really dramatically on issues like the war, like censorship, like the control of Wall Street and the big corporations of our federal government and the pharmaceutical companies and also use of fear as a governing tool,” he told CNN. Politicos have observed Kennedy Jr.’s relatively strong polling numbers (similar to those of GOP candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) are more of a reflection of his name recognition and a lack of enthusiasm about Biden, who more than half of Democratic voters don’t want to run again, according to an April Associated Press/NORC poll.
Tangent
Ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressed support for Kennedy Jr. over the weekend by retweeting a video of him saying he could beat Biden, captioned: “He can and he will.”
Surprising Fact
Kennedy Jr.’s family has distanced themselves from his rhetoric. His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, who said she supports his presidential bid, said his “opinions are not a reflection of [her] own,” in a tweet last year after he compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany. Two of Kennedy Jr.’s siblings, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former Rep. Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), along with Kennedy Jr.’s niece, Maeve Kennedy McKean, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Global Health Initiatives, also denounced his promotion of vaccine misinformation in a 2019 op-ed in Politico. “We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong,” they wrote, noting his environmental advocacy efforts, including a Hudson River revitalization project. “His and others’ work against vaccines is having heartbreaking consequences,” they opined, presenting a long list of evidence about the positive effects of vaccines, including that they “prevent some 2 million to 3 million deaths a year.” His niece, Dr. Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, also contested his rhetoric on vaccines in a 2020 New York Times op-ed titled: “Vaccines Are Safe, No Matter What Robert Kennedy Jr. Says.”
Further Reading
Robert Kennedy Jr., With Musk, Pushes Right-Wing Ideas and Misinformation (The New York Times)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tests the conspiratorial appetite of Democrats (Washington Post)
Have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and His Anti-vax Conspiracies Found a Home? (Vanity Fair)
