Trump and Kennedy: An anti-vax alliance

MILWAUKEE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of former United States president John F. Kennedy, praised Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally held in Wisconsin on Friday. Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist, began his alliance with Trump earlier this year after being promised control of US health agencies were the former president to be re-elected.

MILWAUKEE RALLY

He never said anything nasty about me, he was always very civil,” Kennedy said about Trump at the rally. Earlier in the year, the former president called Kennedy a “democratic plant” and that he would “even take Biden over Junior.”

“Junior’ is totally anti-gun, an extreme environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet,” continued Trump’s Truth Social post from April, back when Kennedy was still running for President as an independent.

“Today, in my generation, 70-year-old men, one in ten thousand of us has autism, in my children’s generation its 1 in every 34 children,” said Kennedy during Friday’s rally, adding later that “40 per cent of our kids are on antidepressants. Sperm count have dropped 50 per cent. Testosterone levels have dropped 50 per cent.”

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After riling up the Wisconsin crowd, Kennedy turned their attention to the saviour that will put him in a position to combat America’s health issues, stating that “for 19 years, I have gotten up every morning, I have said a prayer to God to put me in a position where I could end the chronic disease epidemic.”

 “And on August 23rd, got sent me Donald J. Trump,” said Kennedy.

MAKE AMERICAN HEALTHY AGAIN

Kennedy was running for president as an independent, siphoning votes from both the Democratic and Republican candidates, before he suspended his own campaign in order to join forces with Trump.

The New York Times reported that the unlikely alliance originated through a phone call from health care entrepreneur Calley Means who had advised Kennedy in the past, hours after the first assassination attempt on the former president. According to interviews with over 20 people that were involved in a series of discussion that followed that phone call, the alliance hinged on a role for Kennedy in health.

In a meeting in Milwaukee in July, the two met, and Kennedy’s team began pitching a role for him in the health sector. “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said at his Madison Square Garden rally in October.

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Kennedy revealed in October that Trump had promised him control of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with its sub-agencies, including the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and others.   

ANTI-VAX HISTORY

“A mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children,” wrote Kennedy in a now deleted Rolling Stone article in which he propelled false claims about autism and vaccines. Kennedy was referring to a two-phase study by CDC scientist Thomas Versraeten, in which “no consistent significant associations” between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental conditions.

However, Kennedy made false claims in his 2005 article stating that the “(CDC) withheld Verstraeten’s findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been “lost” and could not be replicated.”

“There is no indication that thimerosal exposure is linked to increased risk of degenerative or other non-developmental neurologic disorders,” reads the last line of the published study.

Kennedy also made claims in his article that the original results of the study were covered up, a claim that Versraeten denies. “Did the CDC water down the original results? It did not,” wrote Versraeten, explaining that a neutral result from the second phase of the test led anti vaccine lobbyists to believe that the first phase, which found a few associations between thimerosal and neuro-developmental disorders in specific contexts, was buried.

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More recently, Kennedy falsely attributed a statistic, stating that Verstraeten had found that there was a 1,135 per cent great risk for an autism diagnosis among kids who had got the hepatitis B vaccine in the first 30 days. The data is actually from a 2004 presentation from anti-vaccine group SafeMinds.

It is important t note that the CDC has stated that thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines in the US in 2001.

Other recent statements from Kennedy include a comment made in 2022, in which he stated that Anne Frank had more freedom than those in America due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy continues to advocate for additional research on vaccines, stating on the Joe Rogan Experience, that their link to neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism, “is something that should be looked at.” Such calls for action ignore the countless peer reviewed studies that state no such relationship exists.

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