Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long record of promoting anti-vaccine views
Associated PressLong before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines. Kennedy said in a 2023 podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told Fox News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. That same year, in a video promoting an anti-vaccine sticker campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen next to one sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.” The World Health Organization has estimated that global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives in the past 50 years. An Associated Press investigation found one chiropractic group in California had donated $500,000 to Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense, about one-sixth of the group’s fundraising that year.