Much to the surprise of the millions of people who admired Robert Kennedy, his son who bears his name has become one of the nation’s leading anti-vaxxers, sometimes allying himself with the bottom fishers of the far right.
The AP reported:
While many nonprofits and businesses have struggled during the pandemic, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group has thrived. An investigation by The Associated Press finds that Children’s Health Defense has raked in funding and followers as Kennedy used his star power as a member of one of America’s most famous families to open doors, raise money and lend his group credibility. Filings with charity regulators show revenue more than doubled in 2020, to $6.8 million.
Since the pandemic started, Children’s Health Defense has expanded the reach of its newsletter, which uses slanted information, cherry-picked facts and conspiracy theories to spread distrust of the COVID-19 vaccines. The group has also launched an internet TV channel and started a movie studio. CHD has global ambitions. In addition to opening new U.S. branches, it now boasts outposts in Canada, Europe and, most recently, Australia. It’s translating articles into French, German, Italian and Spanish, and it’s on a hiring spree…
As Children’s Health Defense has worked to expand its influence, experts said, it has targeted its false claims at groups that may be more prone to distrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans. It’s a strategy that experts worry has deadly consequences during a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, when misinformation has been deemed a threat to public health. The death toll in the United States hit 800,000 this week, and nearly a third of those people have died since vaccines became available to all adults in the U.S. Unvaccinated people are 14 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than those who get the shot, according to the CDC.
As vaccines have become a wedge political issue, Kennedy’s opposition to the shot has at times brought him close to anti-democracy forces on the right who have made common cause with the anti-vaccine movement. The scion of the country’s most prominent Democratic family has appeared at events that pushed the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and associated with people who have celebrated or downplayed the violent Jan. 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Encouraging people not to get vaccinated in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed more than 800,000 Americans and millions of people around the world is downright disgraceful. People who listen to this Kennedy are risking their lives.
I heard RFK Jr give an inspirational speech that merged environmentalism, the Hudson River, and American literature and art perfectly. He struck me as amazingly intelligent and articulate. That was thirty tears ago. Since then he has devolved into a superspreader of disinformation. How did he get that way? He was probably always a narcissistic spotlight grabber—he had a “troubled” childhood and an often unhappy personal life—but he was helped by his name, money, charisma, and a gullible public that doesn’t know a thing about science. Oh, and the interwebz, of course.
*Years, not tears
Bobby Kennedy, Jr., is worse than a quack, he’s an absolute menace to the well being of his fellow Americans. I was shocked that Jr. was such an extremist when it comes to vaccines, he’s been this way for years. Now with a plague raging, he’s a traitor to commonsense, health and science. Who needs right wing maniacs when we have Jr. to spread lies, rumors and misinformation. I wonder what the other Kennedys think about his shenanigans.
I know Kennedy is not being paid $$$$ to push a false vaccine narrative nor is he operating a “supplement” company making big bucks off of phony Covid cures. So, ego and a deeply-wounded narcissistic need to keep himself front and center in a mass media controversy? What else explains his behavior. And then a Hollywood-type party where “the wife” requested fully vaccinated or Negative Test-Proofed guests?
Love your Gravatar pic, Ms. Irwin!
Maria Montessori!
Is it!?!?!?!?!!!! Wow!!!!! ❤
I think that Kennedy is sincere about what he believes, he’s just sincerely wrong and has fallen into a worm hole of vaccine conspiracy theories. He’s a whack-a-doodle when it comes to vaccines though he is good on environmental issues.
Joe Jersey,
What makes you think they are mutually exclusive?
Aren’t the people in charge of decisions about what can and can’t be done to, sprayed on, infused in our land, crops, water also entangled in the institutions that need to improve public health?
Who draws the lines, where are they drawn and to who’s benefit?
Consider this excerpt from, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
“Under Dr. Fauci’s leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charged NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 percent of children, up from 12.8 percent when he took over NIAID in 1984.
“Dr. Fauci has offered no explanation as to why allergic diseases like asthma, eczema, food allergies, allergic rhinitis, and anaphylaxis suddenly exploded beginning in 1989, five years after he came to power.
“On its website, NIAID boasts that autoimmune disease is one of the agency’s top priorities. Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves’ disease, and Crohn’s disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his watch.
“Autism, which many scientists now consider an autoimmune disease, exploded from between 2/10,000 and 4/10,000 Americans when Tony Fauci joined NIAID, to one in thirty-four today.
“Neurological diseases like ADD/ADHD, speech and sleep disorders, narcolepsy, facial tics, and Tourette’s syndrome have become commonplace in American children.
“The human, health, and economic costs of chronic disease dwarf the costs of all infectious diseases in the United States. By this decade’s end, obesity, diabetes, and pre-diabetes are on track to debilitate 85 percent of America’s citizens.68
“For this reason, all the drug companies and members of Congress (except Rand Paul) LOVE Fauci.”
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of a passionate intensity.”
–Willie Yeats
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cia-advisor-us-is-closer-to-civil-war-than-thought-possible/ar-AARZS8Q?ocid=msedgntp
The better question is: How could Bobby Jr NOT have become a quack? It’s 2021, for crying out loud. There is a Jewish Space Lasers Congressperson. Vladimir Putin is an influencer on par with Mark Zuckerberg. Billionaires are buying spaceships for fun. Britney Spears is a hero. How did any one of us get through this year without becoming a quack? Bobby Jr, I understand. I get you. It’s hard to understand up from down and left from right these days. Simply reading seven Elon Must tweets or reading an article about the U.S. Supreme Court can cause one to write a book about lizard aliens from outer space planting micro-robots in penicillin. I am. Your title is not as tantalizing as mine, American Spiderman Christmas Sex Conspiracy.
This year actually started with the President and several Congresspeople fomenting a coup against the United States.
And there have been no consequences for that.
Anything else seems relatively rational. Unborn baby sings like Elvis? Slender Man and Princess Sparkle’s baby will be the Messiah? AOC is the Antichrist? Sure. Pass the popcorn.
Let me see if writing the name Bobby Jr puts me in moderation.
It did.
Justice Beer Drinker has company on the ignominious list, and it’s — oof — a Kennedy. I haven’t been this upset with that family since the NCLB. Looks like it’s coal in the Santa stockings for B.K. and R.K.
RFK Jr is what his sister describes: a person lost in the wilderness of delusion and wild with fear of the unknown … “sad soul”!
Just remember RFK Jr threw a holiday party that required all attendees to be fully vaccinated.
RFK Jr needs psychological help. Pray for him and his entire family.
Not a non-profit taking millions in Federal Covid Funds to run Charters!
“experts said, it has targeted its false claims at groups that may be more prone to distrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans. ”
What experts? Are they named? A 5 year old can figure out that if the name of the organization is Children’s Health Defense that target audience is mothers. Black Americans know the history, and they know the data that says Black Boys are most prone to the negative side effects of this investigational drug.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study (Maybe only a reliable source when the narrative fits?)
IDK why folks are afraid of a book with 2,200 citations, including hundreds of peer reviewed studies and historical news sources regularly cited on this blog.
Not a single person has made a single claim to dispute anything in the book, but having read the cover they’ve decided it’s hogwash. Intelligent.
Any book that argues against vaccines that save lives is hogwash, and very dangerous hogwash.
Diane,
Non conformance with an idiom (book/cover) is a good thing, but making up the content of a book to suit your narrative is also hogwash.
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
Synopsis from Amazon:
“Pharma-funded mainstream media has convinced millions of Americans that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a hero. He is anything but.
As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists – whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward.
During more than a year of painstaking and meticulous research, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unearthed a shocking story that obliterates media spin on Dr. Fauci…and that will alarm every American – Democrat or Republican – who cares about democracy, our Constitution, and the future of our children’s health.
The Real Anthony Fauci reveals how “America’s Doctor” launched his career during the early AIDS crisis by partnering with pharmaceutical companies to sabotage safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS. Fauci orchestrated fraudulent studies and then pressured US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators into approving a deadly chemotherapy treatment he had good reason to know was worthless against AIDS. Fauci repeatedly violated federal laws to allow his Pharma partners to use impoverished and dark-skinned children as lab rats in deadly experiments with toxic AIDS and cancer chemotherapies.
In early 2000, Fauci shook hands with Bill Gates in the library of Gates’ $147 million Seattle mansion, cementing a partnership that would aim to control an increasingly profitable $60 billion global vaccine enterprise with unlimited growth potential. Through funding leverage and carefully cultivated personal relationships with heads of state and leading media and social media institutions, the Pharma-Fauci-Gates alliance exercises dominion over global health policy.
The Real Anthony Fauci details how Fauci, Gates, and their cohorts use their control of media outlets, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, global intelligence agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent.”