RFK Jr. Presents Tucker Carlson With Kremlin-Endorsed Conspiracy Theory About U.S. Making Bioweapons in Ukraine

Tucker Carlson and 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continued to spread a conspiracy theory that the United States is creating bioweapons in Ukraine.

The theory gained traction during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the Kremlin attempted to justify it’s invasion of the sovereign nation by claiming there were bioweapons labs in the country, possibly being supported by the United States.

As the rumor quickly spread the State Department shot down the theory. “The Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a 2022 report.

Both Ukraine and the U.S. are a part of the Biological Weapons Convention, for which participating nations promise to never develop the technology.

The theory gained traction once again in 2022 when Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine had “biological research facilities,” that the U.S. feared could be taken over by the Russians.

Nuland clarified that the U.S. was working with Ukraine to ensure that the research did not fall into the wrong hands during the Russian invasion.

As Poynter reported in a fact-check of the claims from Russia, which were enthusiastically embraced by Tucker Carlson in 2022, the labs are used for public health research:

There are labs in Ukraine, backed by the United States, the European Union, Canada and the World Health Organization. These labs work with a number of pathogens, including the ones that cause anthrax, plague and hemorrhagic fever in humans. They study viruses that affect birds and pigs.

That does not make them bioweapon facilities. Virtually every nation has labs to deal with the threat of microbes that drive disease, and some of those microbes are especially deadly.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy has continued to float around far-right and QAnon circles.

Kennedy, a relentless promoter of conspiracy theories, pushed the idea during a Monday night interview with Carlson.

Carlson teed him up: “Victoria Nuland kind of blithely announced during congressional testimony last year that, ‘Oh, by the way, we have these bio labs in Ukraine.’ And that was kind of ignored and the people who covered it, got attacked for covering it. But the fact remains there are U.S. bio labs in Ukraine. Why would we have bio labs in Ukraine?”

“We have have a bio labs in Ukraine because we’re developing bioweapons,” Kennedy replied.

“Those bioweapons are using all kinds of new synthetic biology and CRISPR technology and genetic engineering techniques that were not available to previous generations. And they can make frightening, frightening stuff,” Kennedy added.

Kennedy alleged that with the Patriot Act of 2001, the Pentagon began to pour money into bioweapons but they were nervous about violating the Geneva Convention in the process.

“So they transferred the authority for biosecurity to one agency in the HHS, I call the National Institute for Infectious and allergic Diseases, run by Anthony Fauci. So Anthony Fauci got all the responsibility for bioweapons development,” Kennedy claimed.

In 2000, Fauci was a part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases when then President Bill Clinton expanded the role of the institute to research biodefense in the form of combating “smallpox, anthrax, tularemia, plague, botulism toxin, and hemorrhagic fever viruses” and also “foodborne E. coli and staphylococcus.”

“He got at that time a 68% raise from the Pentagon in order to do that work. That’s why he was the highest paid official in the American government,” Kennedy said.

The full exchange can be viewed here.

Watch above via Tucker on Twitter.

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