RFK Jr.'s long con

The anti-vax environmental lawyer is not worthy of the rehabilitation tour he's getting from pundits and podcasters.

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Children's Health Defense, a nonprofit that warns of the possible dangers posed by vaccines, used to receive a modest 119,000 monthly visits to its website. When COVID hit and public skepticism of the medical establishment exploded, the site's web traffic went wild, peaking at 5 million monthly visits.

Who's behind this group that warns of the alleged dangers of electromagnetic radiation and a "global cabal" attempting to ban meat? The group's chairman, chief legal council, and highest compensated officer is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who recently launched a longshot bid to become president of the United States.

RFK Jr. is not worthy of the rehabilitation tour he's getting from various pundits, podcasters, and tech luminaries. He pushes tabloid-quality "reporting" and he wildly extrapolates from little grains of truth. His and his organization, Children's Health Defense, give opponents of vaccine mandates and government overreach—like me—a bad name by lumping us together with science-denying anti-vaxxers.

Kennedy frequently mistakes correlation for causation, gets his numbers wrong, and portrays complex trends as simpler than they really are, with easily identifiable villains.

Libertarians who understand the incompetence of government entities should be more skeptical that the World Health Organization would be so effective at carrying out such a nefarious scheme.

Kennedy has chaired Children's Health Defense for the last eight years, speaking at events all over the country on its behalf. He used his famous last name to add the veneer of respectability to the anti-vax cause. 

In fact, he's been focused on this single issue for decades now: In 2005, he first became obsessed with the preservatives in vaccines, writing an article for Salon on the danger of vaccine additives that needed five corrections appended to it and was later retracted.

He's not really a persecuted truth-teller—although recent attempts to go after Joe Rogan for having him on his podcast, or to cut him out of public debate in other ways, have fed that impression. The real issue is that RFK Jr.'s bold claims don't hold up to scrutiny, even when examined by people who don't have a dog in the fight.

So what would RFK Jr. be like as president?

Part of his appeal, to libertarians at least, is that he's staunchly anti-war and a huge critic of COVID lockdowns and mandates. But he's fundamentally a big-government liberal. He supports Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal. He favors heavy-handed government intrusion in the realm of environmental policy. He's against nuclear energy. He favors massive wealth redistribution, saying: "I don't think huge disparities in wealth are healthy for our country or healthy for democracy."

What's surreal about libertarians now embracing RFK Jr. is that he's publicly fantasized about jailing his political opponents and cracking down on free speech for years. At the People's Climate March in 2014, Kennedy said this: "They should be in jail. I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at The Hague with all the other war criminals who are there. Do I think the Koch brothers should be prosecuted for reckless endangerment? Absolutely."

He's not a real free speech advocate, and he's not especially thoughtful about the principles or people he endorses. After all, this is a man who once heaped praise on Hugo Chávez, touting the socialist dictator's bogus literacy programs and alleged commitment to democracy.

Is it fair to hold 15-year-old soundbites against RFK Jr., as some of his fans that I've sparred with have claimed? One thing I'll say for him is that, unlike most politicians, he's been extraordinarily consistent in his views. He thinks the world is divided into heroes and villains, and he makes wild, unsupported claims that portray things as simpler than they are.

The difference is that he's no longer a widely ignored crackpot environmental lawyer. He's asking you to vote him into the White House.

Produced by Liz Wolfe; edited by Regan Taylor; audio mix by Ian Keyser.

Music Credits: "Formational," by Lance Conrad via Artlist; "Flying Above the Sun," by Yehezkel Raz via Artlist.