It’s a severe signal of one thing when as many as 20% of registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents inform pollsters they assist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Maybe it’s an indication that their brains have been addled by Wi-Fi radiation coming at them from their cellphones, one thing Kennedy claims occurs on a regular basis.
Or possibly it’s an indication that 5G high-speed transmission towers are warping folks’s skills to suppose clearly, yet one more favourite Kennedy conspiracy principle.
Opinion Columnist
Robin Abcarian
Extra probably, in my opinion, it’s an indication that some Democrats are nervous about President Biden’s superior age, and {that a} (barely) youthful man from a beloved Democratic political dynasty appears at first look to supply an affordable different.
Don’t be fooled.
Robert Kennedy Jr. is off his rocker.
It’s not completely apparent at first, which is why there’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance at play. Kennedy, in any case, together with his Kennedy-esque full head of hair, piercing blue eyes and blinding white smile, seems like presidential materials. He’s an environmental legal professional who has spent many years crusading for a cleaner atmosphere (though detractors say he has finished extra hurt than good, or taken credit score the place none has been earned). His liberal bona fides appear in good order. He has spoken of closing the wealth hole, of restoring our “hollowed-out” center class, of the urgency of confronting world warming, and so forth.
And but, when he opens his mouth, as he did for greater than three hours on Joe Rogan’s podcast the opposite day, the inanities that come out are positively Trump-esque.
“Wi-Fi radiation opens your blood-brain barrier, and all these toxins which are in your physique can now go into your mind,” he instructed Rogan.
“How does Wi-Fi open up your blood-brain barrier?” Rogan requested, in maybe his most incisive follow-up query of the complete fawning puffcast.
“Now you’ve gone past my experience,” replied Kennedy.
No duh.
Kennedy needs to seal our southern border “completely.” He believes antidepressants are answerable for mass shootings. (“Previous to the introduction of Prozac, we had nearly none of those occasions,” he instructed Elon Musk earlier this month throughout a Twitter Areas dialog.)
He believes that his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated by the CIA, and he instructed Rogan that he, RFK Jr., might be an intelligence company goal as properly. (“I’m conscious of that hazard,” mentioned Kennedy. “I don’t dwell in concern of it, in any respect, however I’m not silly about it, and I take precautions.”)
He has questioned the scientifically unassailable relationship between HIV and AIDS. He has written a preferred ebook demonizing Dr. Anthony Fauci, accusing the previous director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments of sabotaging remedies for AIDS, and trashing him as “a robust technocrat who helped orchestrate and execute 2020’s historic coup d’etat towards Western democracy.” (Fauci has known as Kennedy “a really disturbed particular person.” I’m on Workforce Fauci.)
Most dangerously, in fact, Kennedy is a fount of anti-vaccine misinformation. He has embraced the prolifically debunked declare that vaccines trigger autism. He’s chairman of Youngsters’s Well being Protection, a virulently anti-vax group that positions itself, per its web site, as “the worldwide rebellion towards medical tyranny to defend human rights.”
The group is a mega-spreader of vaccine disinformation on social media websites like Fb, Instagram and Twitter. In a single Fb submit, Kennedy claimed — with out proof — that COVID-19 vaccine shouldn’t be protected for pregnant ladies. Research have proven there isn’t any particular vaccine danger to pregnant ladies.
Kennedy has additionally inspired Black People, who’ve suffered disproportionately from COVID-19, to mistrust COVID-19 vaccines, evaluating them to the horrific Tuskegee syphilis examine, during which over a interval of 40 years, tons of of Black males had been denied medical therapy for syphilis with out their data, whereas public well being officers studied the illness.
And but, in 2021, when he and his third spouse, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actor Cheryl Hines, threw a vacation get together at their Brentwood dwelling, visitors had been instructed to be examined for or vaccinated towards COVID-19.
“I assume I’m not at all times the boss at my very own home,” Kennedy instructed Politico.
When you get on the anti-vax bandwagon, I assume it is sensible guilty nearly all bodily issues on immunization. Kennedy has even prompt that vaccines might have induced the dysfunction that impacts his larynx, spasmodic dysphonia, making his voice sound tremulous or strained. In 2007, although, he didn’t contradict Oprah Winfrey when, throughout an interview, she requested him about his “genetic neurological situation” and he replied that it got here on when he was in his early 40s. By 2021, nevertheless, he instructed a podcaster he thought a flu shot might have induced it.
It’s true that vaccination carries a vanishingly small quantity of danger, and there are some circumstances of kids experiencing damage from vaccines, however the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention estimates that childhood vaccines save at the least 4 million lives worldwide a 12 months, and grownup vaccination additionally saves multitudes every year.
On the marketing campaign path, Kennedy has largely downplayed his aversion to vaccines. Democrats, in any case, are far more probably than Republicans to embrace vaccination. In a latest NBC Information profile of Kennedy, reporter Brandy Zadrozny talked about a Fb group of Kennedy supporters who’ve determined to label their candidate a “Vaccine Security Advocate” as a manner of constructing his anti-vax sentiments extra palatable to Democratic voters.
Properly, you may name him something you need. His views are harmful and he belongs nowhere close to the White Home, or any place of actual political energy. He’s already finished sufficient injury.
Kennedy dynasty, schmynasty.
