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There’s an unhinged, anti-vax conspiracy theorist running for president and unfortunately he’s doing so in the Democratic primary. Nepo baby candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last Thursday and spouted a bunch of nonsense about vaccines and the war in Ukraine, which he absurdly claimed cost “$8 trillion … That’s $24 trillion that they had to print to pay for nothing.”
“That money, the way they’re paying it back,” he said, “it’s a hidden tax called inflation, and it hits the poor and the middle class”
Yeah, so everything that guy just said is bullshit. Congress has committed $113 billion to our ally Ukraine. (Please note that a trillion is a thousand billions or roughly the number of blows to the head Kennedy Jr. seems to have suffered.)
Kennedy Jr. also shared a number of debunked conspiracy theories, including the popular one about how the CIA assassinated his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and could possibly do the same to him because he’s not at all dangerously paranoid.
“Well, I got to be careful,” Kennedy told Rogan. “And I’m aware of that — I’m aware of that danger. I don’t live in fear of it, you know, at all. But I’m not stupid about it, and I take precautions.”
I’d love to know the “precautions” a private citizen takes to avoid getting whacked by the same shadowy figures who apparently took down a president. Does he spring for a SimpliSafe system with the doorbell camera?
PREVIOUSLY:
Robert Kennedy Jr Keeps Dreaming Up New Ways To Disgrace Family Name
Antivaxx Loons RFK Jr., Jim Hoft, Other Idiots Sue News Outlets For Booting Them Off Twitter
In an upcoming New Yorkerprofile titled “Is R.F.K., Jr., the First Podcast Presidential Candidate?” Kennedy said with all due humility, “The same way my uncle discovered television in 1960 and realized it was going to be a new path to the White House, podcasts are a good media for me, because my weakest media is the short sound bite.”
I don’t think the problem is that Americans weren’t hearing the full scope of Kennedy Jr.’s dementia. What Kennedy Jr. loves most about podcasts, it seems, is that he’s “able to outrun the censorship juggernaut” or in other words, his favorite podcast hosts let him say whatever goofy ass shit he wants unchallenged. For instance, Rogan shamelessly extended a platform for Kennedy Jr.’s baseless claims that vaccines cause autism. (They do not.)
When vaccine researcher Dr. Peter Hotez criticized Rogan for broadcasting Kennedy Jr.’s BS, Rogan challenged him to “debate” Kennedy Jr. on his podcast as if that is a valuable use of anyone’s time, let alone a medical professional’s. Rogan also offered to donate $100,000 to the charity of Dr. Hotez’s choice, which is not how actual charity works. (Rogan earns an estimated $60 million a year, so this is chump change.)
Dr. Hotez considered this an offer he definitely could refuse, and there was a back-and-forth Twitter exchange where Kennedy promised a “respectful, congenial, informative debate that the American people deserve.” The American people might bear responsibility for 27 seasons of “The Bachelor” but they don’t deserve a “debate” between an entitled crackpot and serious person.
Chief Twitter troll Elon Musk claimed Dr. Hotez “hated charity” and was “afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.” He’s not a scientist. He’s a chicken! Coo-coo-coo-chaw!
Sunday, Dr. Hotez explained to MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan that actual scientists write papers supporting their positions. They don’t rhetorically arm wrestle idiots.
I have a new book coming out that basically says 200,000 Americans needlessly perished, because they believed the anti-vaccine disinformation and refused to take a COVID vaccine during our Delta wave and BA.1 Omicron wave in 2021-22 after vaccines were widely available.
So the point is anti-vaccine disinformation, it’s always done a lot of damage and harm, but now it’s a lethal force in the United States, and that’s why we have to have that discussion. And I offered to come and go on Joe Rogan again — I’ve been on a couple of times — and have that discussion with it, but not to turn it into the Jerry Springer Show with having RFK Jr. on.
Some of Rogan’s creepier fans stalked Dr. Hotez’s home in Texas. He claims one asshole shoved a cellphone in his face and asked if he would accept Rogan’s challenge. “They were clearly lying in wait,” Hotez told the Washington Post. “It’s very sad. All we were trying to do is get a cake for Father’s Day.”
Kennedy Jr. also had a cozy chat last week with Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, a noted crackpot who has it out for feminists, minorities, and queer people. Peterson recorded the interview as a podcast for the right-wing Daily Wire, which is not an ideal venue to reach potential Democratic primary voters.
YouTube yanked the video for “violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities,” the company said Monday in a statement.
Kennedy and Peterson claimed (stupidly) that YouTube was “interfering” with a presidential campaign. “Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates?” Kennedy whined on Twitter, where of course the video remains up. We’re not sharing the link here, but Kennedy repeated an Alex Jones-addled conspiracy theory that chemicals in the water were “turning the frogs gay.” Kermit was no longer sexually interested in Miss Piggy. He just found her fabulous.
Cranking the crazy up a notch, Kennedy told Peterson, “I think a lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated on that how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing.”
Yes, Kennedy Jr. believes polluted water turns kids TRANSGENDER. Don’t worry. We don’t “underappreciate” how deranged this man is.
[Newsweek / New Yorker / Independent]
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