Robert F. Kennedy Is A Danger to This Country
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has officially announced his intention to challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination. However, his announcement has been met with a wave of criticism, with many pointing out his history of promoting conspiracy theories.
Kennedy has made a number of controversial claims over the years, including suggesting that vaccines, including those for COVID-19, are incredibly dangerous. He has also been a vocal critic of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, alleging that he has a hidden agenda related to vaccines and population control.
Kennedy's irresponsible embrace of conspiracy theories, and attitude towards vaccines even at one point convinced multiple family members, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P Kennedy II and Maeve Kennedy McKean to come forward and write an op-ed in 2019, in the midst of a measles outbreak in the United States. They wrote:
We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment. His work to clean up the Hudson River and his tireless advocacy against multinational organizations who have polluted our waterways and endangered families has positively affected the lives of countless Americans. We stand behind him in his ongoing fight to protect our environment. However, on vaccines he is wrong.
And his and others’ work against vaccines is having heartbreaking consequences. The challenge for public health officials right now is that many people are more afraid of the vaccines than the diseases, because they've been lucky enough to have never seen the diseases and their devastating impact. But that’s not luck; it’s the result of concerted vaccination efforts over many years. We don’t need measles outbreaks to remind us of the value of vaccination.
They then continued, by speaking about John F. Kennedy’s views towards vaccines:
We are proud of the history of our family as advocates of public health and promoters of immunization campaigns to bring life-saving vaccines to the poorest and most remote corners of America and the world, where children are the least likely to receive their full course of vaccinations. On this issue, Bobby is an outlier in the Kennedy family. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy urged the 80 million Americans, including almost 5 million children, who had not been vaccinated for polio to receive the Salk vaccine, which he called “this miraculous drug.” In the same year, he signed an executive order creating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has spent billions of dollars over the past decades in support of vaccine campaigns in developing countries.
President Kennedy signed the Vaccination Assistance Act in 1962 to, in the words of a CDC report, “achieve as quickly as possible the protection of the population, especially of all preschool children ... through intensive immunization activity.” In a message to Congress that year, Kennedy said: “There is no longer any reason why American children should suffer from polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, or tetanus … I am asking the American people to join in a nationwide vaccination program to stamp out these four diseases.”
Kennedy's most outlandish claim, however, centers on the events of September 11, 2001. He has suggested that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers may have been the result of controlled demolition, rather than the impact of two hijacked planes.
In addition, Kennedy has supported the theory that the government is engaged in a secret program to spray chemicals from airplanes, a phenomenon known as "chemtrails."
While Kennedy's bid for the Democratic nomination has been met with excitement from some quarters, others are concerned about his history of promoting conspiracy theories. Few political pundits feel he has any shot at challenging Biden for the nomination, but his very existence in the race could help propel more outlandish claims into mainstream America.