This will come as a disappointment to the right-wing media outlets, unhinged conspiracy theorists and faux-libertarian billionaires who are doing their best to pretend Kennedy’s delusionary candidacy is a viable challenge to President Biden.
It is true that about 15 percent of Democrats say they support Kennedy, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, as opposed to 62 percent who favor Biden. And I get it: Many Democrats wish there were a younger alternative to the 80-year-old Biden; and Kennedy, 69, has that magical name. The problem comes when Kennedy opens his mouth — and reveals that he lives in a make-believe world of paranoid conspiracy theories.
His most dangerous notion is that lifesaving vaccines are a menace — that childhood vaccines cause autism and coronavirus vaccines are harmful. He is absolutely wrong.
“Everybody will say, ‘There’s no study that shows autism and vaccines are connected.’ That’s just crazy. That’s people who are not looking at science. It’s part of the religion,” Kennedy said this month on the podcast hosted by right-wing loudmouth Joe Rogan.
Actual scientists categorically disagree. “Vaccines do not cause autism,” says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website, adding that rigorous and authoritative studies have shown no link whatsoever between childhood vaccines and autism spectrum disorder. On the contrary, the CDC says, those safe and effective vaccines against diseases such as measles save an estimated 4 million lives worldwide each year.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ravings are “dangerous misinformation” that endangers public health and puts children at risk. That’s not just me talking; that was what Kennedy’s siblings Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Joseph P. Kennedy II and his niece Maeve Kennedy McKean wrote in a Politico op-ed in 2019.
In 2021, Kennedy published a book, “The Real Anthony S. Fauci,” that accused the eminent physician who led the U.S. response against AIDS, covid-19 and other deadly infectious diseases of staging a “coup d’état against Western democracy.” In 2022, Kennedy apologized for remarks at a rally on the National Mall in which he compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.
But his deep affinity for conspiracy doesn’t stop there. For a while, he crusaded against 5G internet technology, claiming it damages human DNA and is a secret tool of mass surveillance. He has accused Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates of working to develop an “injectable chip” that would allow, once again, mass surveillance. These are sentiments more commonly expressed on a street corner, at loud volume, while wearing a tinfoil hat.
Kennedy has said he believes that the CIA was behind the 1963 assassination of his uncle President John F. Kennedy and that there is “very convincing” evidence the CIA was also responsible for the assassination of his father, Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968. (Back here in the real world, JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald and RFK was killed by Sirhan Sirhan.) Asked by Rogan whether he, too, could be a target of CIA assassins, Kennedy said, “I gotta be careful. I’m aware of that, you know, I’m aware of that danger.” He added, “I take precautions.”
On current topics, he is more in tune with MAGA Republican policies than those of today’s Democratic Party. He is sharply critical of the Biden administration’s record on immigration, pledging to somehow “seal the border permanently.” He has attacked U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, calling the war “a setup by the neocons and the CIA.” And on a podcast hosted by Canadian internet personality Jordan Peterson, he claimed there was an increase in the numbers of transgender youths, which he blamed on their “swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals.”
Fox News has aired dozens of segments about Kennedy’s campaign, treating him as a serious rival to Biden. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has endorsed him; the platform’s current owner, Elon Musk, tweets him encouragement. To the extent Kennedy has any support, some might be sincere — and much looks like an attempt to weaken Biden before the general election.
For most of his career, Kennedy was a respected and effective environmental lawyer. Apparently, his anti-vaccine crusade led him down a rabbit hole — I hate to use that cliché, but there is nothing more apt — to a realm where up is down, medicine is poison, and the CIA is plotting day and night to sap our precious bodily fluids. He should stay there.
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