This story is excerpted from a longer article by Madison Czopek and Katie Sanders that appeared on Politifact.com on December 27, 2023. Read the full article here.
As pundits and politicos spar over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign will factor into the outcome of the 2024 election, one thing is clear: Kennedy’s political following is built on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories.
His claims decrying vaccines have roiled scientists and medical experts and stoked anger over whether his work harms children. He has made suggestions about the cause of covid-19 that he acknowledges sound racist and antisemitic.
Bolstered by his famous name and family’s legacy, his campaign of conspiracy theories has gained an electoral and financial foothold. He is running as an independent — having abandoned his pursuit of the Democratic Party nomination — and raised more than $15 million. A political action committee pledged to spend between $10 million and $15 million to get his name on the ballot in 10 states.
Even though he spent the past two decades as a prominent leader of the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy rejects a blanket “anti-vax” label that he told Fox News in July makes him “look crazy, like a conspiracy theorist.”
But Kennedy draws bogus conclusions from scientific work. He employs “circumstantial evidence” as if it is proof. In TV, podcast, and political appearances for his campaign in 2023, Kennedy steadfastly maintained:
- Vaccines cause autism.
- No childhood vaccines “have ever been tested in a safety study pre-licensing.”
- There is “tremendous circumstantial evidence” that psychiatric drugs cause mass shootings, and the National Institutes of Health refuses to research the link out of deference to pharmaceutical companies.
- Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were discredited as COVID-19 treatments so COVID vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization, a win for Big Pharma.
- Exposure to the pesticide atrazine contributes to gender dysphoria in children.
- COVID-19 is “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
For Kennedy, the conspiracies aren’t limited to public health. He claims “members of the CIA” were involved in the assassination of his uncle, John F. Kennedy. He doesn’t “believe that (Sirhan) Sirhan’s bullets ever hit my father,” former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He insists the 2004 presidential election was stolen from Democratic candidate John Kerry.
News organizations, including PolitiFact, have documented why those claims, and many others, are false, speculative, or conspiracy-minded.
Kennedy has sat for numerous interviews and dismissed the critics, not with the grievance and bluster of former President Donald Trump, but with a calm demeanor. He amplifies the alleged plot and repeats dubious scientific evidence and historical detail.
Will his approach translate to votes? In polls since November of a three-way matchup between President Joe Biden, Trump, and Kennedy, Kennedy pulled 16% to 22% of respondents.
Kennedy’s movement exemplifies the resonance of conspiratorial views. Misinformers with organized efforts are rewarded with money and loyalty. But that doesn’t make the claims true.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign based on false theories is PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year.
He became concerned about mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants; methylmercury can build up in fish, posing a risk to humans and wildlife. As he traveled around the country, he said women started appearing in the front rows of his mercury lectures.
“They would say to me in kind of a respectful but vaguely scolding way, ‘If you’re really interested in mercury contamination exposure to children, you need to look at the vaccines,’” Kennedy told Rogan, whose show averages 11 million listeners per episode.
Kennedy said the women sounded “rational” as they explained a link between their children’s autism and vaccines. “They weren’t excitable,” he said. “And they had done their research, and I was like, ‘I should be listening to these people, even if they’re wrong.’”
He did more than listen. In June 2005, Rolling Stone and Salon co-published Kennedy’s article “Deadly Immunity.” Kennedy told an alarming story about a study that revealed a mercury-based additive once used in vaccines, thimerosal, “may have caused autism in thousands of kids.” Kennedy alleged that preeminent health agencies — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the World Health Organization — had colluded with vaccine manufacturers “to conceal the data.”
Kennedy’s premise was decried as inaccurate and missing context. He left out the ultimate conclusion of the 2003 study, by Thomas Verstraeten, which said “no consistent significant associations were found between [thimerosal-containing vaccines] and neurodevelopmental outcomes.”
Kennedy didn’t clearly state that, as a precaution, thimerosal was not being used in childhood vaccines when his article was published. He also shared the comments of health agency leaders at a June 2000 meeting, pulling certain portions of a 286-page transcript that appeared to support Kennedy’s collusion narrative.
Scientists who have studied thimerosal have found no evidence that the additive, used to prevent germ growth, causes harm, according to a CDC FAQ about thimerosal. Unlike the mercury in some fish, the CDC says, thimerosal “doesn’t stay in the body, and is unlikely to make us sick.” Continued research has not established a link between thimerosal and autism.
By the end of July 2005, Kennedy’s Salon article had been appended with five correction notes. In 2011, Salon retracted the article. It disappeared from Rolling Stone.
Salon’s retraction was part of a broader conspiracy of caving “under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry,” Kennedy told Rogan. The then-Salon editor rejected this, saying they “caved to pressure from the incontrovertible truth and our journalistic consciences.”
Kennedy has not wavered in his belief: “Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he told Fox News’ Jesse Watters in July.
David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, interviewed Kennedy for a July story. Noting that Kennedy was focusing more on vaccine testing rather than outright opposition, Remnick asked him whether he was having second thoughts.
“I’ve read the science on autism and I can tell you, if you want to know,” Kennedy said. “David, you’ve got to answer this question: If it didn’t come from the vaccines, then where is it coming from?”
The anti-censorship candidate frames his first bid for public office as a response to “18 years” of being shunned for his views — partly by the government, but also by private companies.
“You’re protected so much from censorship if you’re running for president,” Kennedy told conservative Canadian podcaster and psychologist Jordan Peterson in June.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Kennedy may be a “placeholder” for voters who are dissatisfied with Trump and Biden and will take a third option when offered by pollsters.
The only 2024 candidate whose favorability ratings are more positive than negative? It’s Kennedy, according to FiveThirtyEight. However, a much higher percentage of voters are unfamiliar with him than they are with Trump or Biden — about a quarter — and Kennedy’s favorability edge has decreased as his campaign has gone on.
Kennedy was popular with conservative commentators before he became an independent, and he has avoided pointedly criticizing Trump, except on COVID-19 lockdowns. When NBC News asked Kennedy in August what he thought of Trump’s 2020 election lies, Kennedy said he believed Trump lost, but that, in general, people who believe elections were stolen “should be listened to.” Kennedy is one of them. He still says that the 2004 presidential election was “stolen” from Kerry in favor of Republican George W. Bush, though it wasn’t.
American Values 2024 will spend up to $15 million to get Kennedy’s name on the ballot in 10 states including Arizona, California, Indiana, New York, and Texas. Those are five of the toughest states for ballot access, said Richard Winger, co-editor of Ballot Access News.
Four of Kennedy’s siblings called Kennedy’s decision to run as an independent “dangerous” and “perilous” to the nation. “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” the group wrote in a joint statement.
Kennedy brushes it off when asked, saying he has a large family and some members support him.
On her podcast, Weiss asked whether Kennedy worried his position on autism and vaccines would cloud his other positions and cost him votes. His answer ignored his history.
“Show me where I got it wrong,” he said, “and I’ll change.”
In a campaign constructed by lies, that might be the biggest one.
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.