WorldNetDaily was already predisposed toward Robert Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaxxer rantings, so it gladly helped to boost his presidential campaign, though only in the hope that he might serve as a Biden spoiler.
By Terry Krepel Posted 12/5/2023
Robert Kennedy Jr.
WorldNetDaily has always been a fan of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaxxer nuttiness -- so much so that it felt compelled to censor his ludicrous comparison of vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Art Moore began things with a January 2022 article deceptively teasing an upcoming protest rally:
Drs. Robert Malone and Peter McCullough will join Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and many other opponents of COVID-19 vaccine mandates at a rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., this Sunday.
The event, Defeat the Mandates, will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the Washington Monument with a march to the Lincoln Memorial.
But Malone, McCullough and Kennedy aren't just opponents of vaccine mandates -- they're opponents of COVID vaccines, period. Moore is falsely soft-pedaling the underlying purpose of the protest.
Reporting on the protest itself two days later, Joe Kovacs found a way to be completely dishonest in noting Kennedy's remarks:
Despite frigid temperatures, thousands of Americans showed up Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to voice strong opposition to COVID-vaccine mandates.
"Every time you comply, you get weaker," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a featured speaker at the "Defeat the Mandates" event. "Every time you say 'yes,' you're getting pushed back to a weaker position."
"The hill that you're going to die on is the hill you're on right now," he said, "and they're coming for our children."
Kennedy hammered the companies that manufacture the experimental vaccines being mandated in many locations worldwide, with no legal liability.
"You think they found Jesus suddenly ... and they're suddenly concerned with public health?" he said. "These are the companies that gave us the opioid crisis. These are not good citizens, these are criminal enterprises."
He warned of what he called "turnkey totalitarianism," as dark powers look "to control every aspect of behavior."
"Today the mechanisms are being put in place so none of us can run and none of us can hide," Kennedy said, warning of efforts to cut off the food supply.
Kovacs is lying by calling the vaccines "experimental" -- the fact that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have received full government approval discredits that talking point. But more disturbingly, Kovacs censored the fact that Kennedy made an offensive Nazi comparison in that speech. As a more reliable news outlet reported:
At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the US to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
"Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did," said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. "I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible."
Kennedy's historically inaccurate anti-Semitic remark ignores the fact that Frank and some 6 million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank, who was a teenager at the time, hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died.
It's unknown why Kovacs didn't consider that wildly inflammatory statement to be unworthy of mention -- perhaps because he knew it discredited him, and WND has an interest in keeping Kennedy viable as an anti-vaxxer. Indeed, a few months earlier, Moore lavished an article on Kennedy misusing VAERS statistics to falsely claim that, in Moore's words, "the COVID-19 vaccines are deadlier than all vaccines combined over the past 30 years."
And since Kovacs didn't report the original statement, WND certainly did not report that Kennedy was shamed into semi-apologizing for it a couple days later. Kovacs did, at least, tacitly concede that the rally was really against the vaccines, not the mandates. But he refused to report just how extreme the crowd was; as a more reliable media outlet reported, "The marchers carried posters and flags that included false statements such as 'Vaccines are mass kill bio weapons' and 'Trump won.' A bus was parked beside the Washington Monument, wrapped in 'Arrest or Exile' signs and displaying pictures of Anthony S. Fauci, Bill Gates and Jacob Rothschild — the last an echo of antisemitic conspiracy theories involving the Rothschild family."
Given this, it's not a surprise that WND is also a fan of Kennedy's presidential bid. Not that it actually wants him to win, mind you, but because he's riding his family name to act as a spoiler to President Biden's re-election campaign. An April 20 article by Peter LaBarbera touted his announcement speech while downplaying the anti-vaxxer conspiracy stuff:
In a nearly two-hour speech that was equal parts history lesson, bleeding-heart liberalism, criticism of "crony capitalism," and pro-liberty talking points that would find agreement among conservatives and libertarians, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced his candidacy for the Democrat nomination for presidency in Boston Wednesday.
[...]
The main theme of Kennedy's speech was that a "corrupt merger of ... state and corporate power" is abusing American freedoms, decimating the middle class, and causing a "toxic" polarization of society.
Kennedy is an acclaimed environmental advocate, receiving accolades for legal actions that forced the clean up of the Hudson River of pollutants. He is also chairman of the board and the chief prosecuting attorney for Children's Health Defense, a group he founded in 2011 under a different name. CHD gained significant influence and support during the COVID pandemic by questioning the safety and efficacy of the rushed vaccines. In August 2022, Facebook and Instagram de-platformed the group for alleged "misinformation" just when Americans were increasingly questioning the government's "misinformation" regarding the safety of the COVID shots.
[...]
The Hill reports on a new poll that shows Robert Kennedy, Jr. already has sizeable support among Democrat voters.
"In a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 14 percent of surveyed voters who backed President Biden in 2020 said they would support Kennedy in 2024," the Hill reported Wednesday. Williamson, who ran for president in 2019, polled at five percent.
An April 27 column by Ilana Mercer fretted that Kennedy would be the next victim of the establishment after Tucker Carlson:
Fox News is an echo of the Republican Party, which serves the deep, warfare, industry-captured state.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on the other hand, is "a choice, not an echo."
One need not agree with every word Kennedy spoke in a pellucid address announcing for president, almost two hours long, delivered extemporaneously, to grasp that, on the defining issues of our time, almost all of which he addressed in depth and in detail, Robert F. Kennedy is right and righteous.
Of the welter of words spoken so very beautifully – for a man with a disorder of the vocal cords – Kennedy Jr. underplayed perhaps two issues and failed to mention but one crucial matter, while delivering a riveting information-dense address, at once deep and philosophical, yet wise and pragmatic, undergirded by historic and constitutional truth. Tactical to boot.
[...]
On second thought, and for now, I retract my implicit insinuation that Kennedy had omitted to address the war on whites and on law-and-order – for he may have opted to do so tactically and indirectly. Kennedy is hardly sanguine about the "garrison and surveillance state" America has become, noting that, "Being an imperium abroad will destroy democracy, turn America into a garrison and surveillance state." Kennedy's condemnation and contempt for the fulsome, foul Democratic Party was complete, calling it deliciously the party of "fear, war and censorship ... neocons with woke bobble-heads."
For now, I charitably conclude that this gifted man has simply hit on a way to approach the war on whites and on law enforcement in a less divisive and direct manner, using proxy issues. Kennedy thus spoke as passionately and deliberately about the impoverished whites of Appalachia – they were as much Kennedy constituents as the poor of Southeast Washington, D.C.
Daniel McCarthy hyped Kennedy's candidacy in his May 1 column:
Joe Biden is a nostalgia president. He's a link to the Obama era, of course. But he's also a living reminder of the days when Democrats were automatically the party of white ethnics, especially Irish Catholics.
For senior white voters in the Democratic coalition, the professed Catholic and Irish-ish Biden is an older, lesser Kennedy – but an heir to JFK nonetheless.
Only now Biden has to contend with a real Kennedy for next year's Democratic presidential nomination.
McCarthy then tried to hang Kennedy's conspiracy theories around Democrats:
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s penchant for "conspiracy theories" leads Biden-friendly commentators and political strategists to dismiss him.
He threatens to spoil their myth that Republicans are the crazy party, whether or not he poses any risk to Biden.
But in fact conspiracy theories have as much of a home in the Democratic Party as in the GOP, if not more of one.
The difference is that Democratic conspiracy theories, such as those alleging Russian responsibility for the election of Donald Trump in 2016, often come with the imprimatur of prestigious media outlets.
RFK Jr., on the other hand, is a Democrat whose conspiratorial beliefs don't dependably align with the elite media's prejudices. He's long believed that vaccines contribute to autism. And he's a fiery critic of Anthony Fauci and the response by government and the medical establishment to COVID-19.
Views like those are supposed to be the province of QAnon, not Democratic primary voters, according to the commentators who routinely burnish the party's image – and tarnish the GOP's.
Just a couple problems with that: The only people actively promoting Kennedy's candidacy were right-wingers like McCarthy, Mercer and WND -- because they want him to be a Biden spoiler, not because they actually want him to be president -- and the rest of the Kennedy family has rejected his conspiracy theories.
A May 1 "news" article by LaBarbera helped Kennedy play victim by complaining that non-right-wing media called out Kennedy's anti-vaxxer lies:
ABC News refused to air a portion of its interview with Robert Kennedy, Jr., the recently announced Democrat primary challenger to Joe Biden, because it disagreed with his criticism of COVID vaccines.
Rather than play the full interview so that viewers could evaluate Kennedy's own words, ABC chose to censor them, with reporter Linsey Davis giving what Kennedy said was a "defamatory disclaimer" on air: “[W]e should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview,” she said in the interview published April 27.
Davis added, “[Kennedy] also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism. Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks,” according to an Epoch Times report on the manipulated interview.
[...]
As WND and others have reported, there is a growing skepticism in the medical field of the government's COVID vaccine narrative that the shots are "safe and effective" — repeated ad nauseam in the last two years and now again by Davis. Dissenting doctors like Peter McCullough have earned the respect of many millions worldwide by bucking the government line on COVID and simply informing the public of the risks associated with the shots, including a spike in "sudden deaths" and myocarditis injuries thought to be a product of the vaccines.
McCullough, of course, is another anti-vaxxer WND has promoted, which means he has not "earned the respect" of anyone notable.
Joe Kovacs gave Kennedy space to spout yet another conspiracy theory in a May 7 article:
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a bombshell claim Sunday in connection with the assassination 60 years ago of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy, who is now challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, blamed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for the murder and "cover-up" of the tragic motorcade killing on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
Kovacs didn't explain how this (debunked) claim makes anyone want to vote for him for president.
WND borrowed (or stole) articles from elsewhere to help spread Kennedy's conspiracy theories and keep his candidacy alive:
WND has done the occasional original "news" article as well (or, more to the point, rewritten from someone else's article in an apparent bid to create "original content" for its nonprofit WND News Center). Like this anonymously written June 22 article:
A newly posted video of an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat candidate for the 2024 nomination for president, reveals how it was Barack Obama who actually made Big Pharma a part of his political party.
And, he said, it was when Obama "made a golden handshake with the devil."
Kennedy explains that Obama needed the pharmaceutical industry in his corner in ordered to get his Obamacare through Congress.
An anonymously written July 11 article touted more conspiracy-mongering from Kennedy:
Anthony Fauci, a former federal health official advising Joe Biden on COVID-19, now in a lucrative teaching job, 'caused a lot of injury" during that pandemic, according to Democrat presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Fauci, in fact, was behind a lot of the masking requirements, the demand for experimental and highly speculative shots for citizens, the bans on ordinary treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which proved effective, and more.
[...]
He pointed out that nations that allowed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine "had 1/200th of our death rate."
In fact, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were never proven effective.
Mercer continued her praise of him in her May 18 column:
As it emerged from the RFK Jr. announcement for president, his worldview departs from that of the progressive Democratic Party's, which he has decried as "the party of fear, war and censorship ... neocons with woke bobble-heads."
RFK Jr.'s philosophy of liberty, moreover, appears wedded to reality. He doesn't jabber GOP-style about a return to small government and the passing of a balanced budget amendment.
[...]
Your columnist's task over the decades has been to address reality, not to levitate in the arid arena of pure thought. Kennedy does the same. As does he appear to grasp that the natural law of the Constitution has been buried under piles of statute and administrative-law precedent. He knows this all too well, having spent his working life litigating against the Deep, Regulatory, Administrative, Security, Welfare-Warfare State.
Mercer also praised Kennedy's pandemic conspiracy-mongering:
Kennedy was all teeth and talons against the lockdowns back when it counted – and now. Never forget!
Tarting-up or forgetting the lockdowns won't wash.
How right RFK Jr. is when he says nobody wants to talk about the lockdowns, as both political factions promoted or failed to stop the invasion and occupation of American bodies and businesses.
It seems Mercer would like to forget there was an actual pandemic threat that made lockdowns a reasonable option, and that people did what they thought was best under the circumstances.
In his June 22 podcast, Jack Cashill cheered that Kennedy is a "a bit of a conspiracy theorist" and argued that his conspiracy theory that the CIA was involved in the assassination of his father was "a more credible argument." Cashill also declared that "I admire his stand on -- his really upfront attack on Anthony Fauci and the whole medical-industrial complex," but that he needed to change his views on climate change to mesh with that conspiratorial narrative.
Wayne Allyn Root spent his June 23 column fawning yet again over Donald Trump and insisting that his odds of winning the presidency in 2024 would increase if he teamed up with Kennedy:
RFK Jr. just announced he's running for president a few weeks ago. There's a total blackout and blacklist of RFK in the mainstream media. His interviews are banned on YouTube. The DNC has announced there will be no Democratic presidential debates – denying RFK any platform to reach the voters. Yet RFK Jr is tied for No. 1 most popular politician in America? How can this be?
The answer is, as James Carville would say: "It's the COVID-19 vaccine, stupid."
RFK Jr. knows what I have known for two and a half years, and he boldly says out loud what I have said on my national radio and TV shows for two and a half years: The COVID-19 vaccine is the biggest failure, disaster and cover-up in the history of health care. It never worked. It is dangerous and deadly. It is a killing machine. Except it's a "silent killer" – because the mainstream media refuse to report about COVID-19 vaccine deaths and injuries. The COVID-19 vaccine deaths are covered up by the media as tightly as Hunter Biden's laptop.
And the one and only candidate for president talking about this deadly health care disaster and fraud is RFK Jr.
[...]
Trump's only weakness is the COVID-19 vaccine.
And I have the strategy to turn his weakest link into a huge win. Trump doesn't need to change his views 180 degrees.
Trump simply needs to pledge (as soon as he's back in the White House) to name a special counsel to lead a massive investigation of the COVID-19 vaccine controversy; Dr. Anthony Fauci's role; the false claims about the effectiveness of the vaccine; the dangerous side effects that were never disclosed; the trial results that were covered up; the deaths and injuries that were covered up; the role of Big Pharma and government agencies in misleading the American people and in paying off the mainstream media; the demonization of effective drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine; and the silencing, banning and censorship by social media of any dissent about the COVID-19 vaccine.
All of this needs to be investigated and if proven true, prosecuted – so this can never happen again.
And I happen to know of the perfect attorney who can lead this investigation. To make sure this is carried out honestly; and not whitewashed; and Big Pharma can't bribe their way out of it; and it's seen as bipartisan ...
Trump needs to pledge he will appoint RFK Jr. as special counsel to lead this massive corruption investigation.
The beauty of my strategy is that Trump doesn't need to change his opinion of the COVID-19 vaccine. He only has to acknowledge the controversy, commit to investigate and let the chips fall where they may.
This investigation will be about truth and facts. Either the vaccine killed and injured millions around the world, or it didn't. Either politicians, government bureaucrats, medical experts and the media were bribed to cover up the deaths and injuries, or not. Either Fauci is an evil criminal and fraud who misled Trump and the American people, or not. Let's find out, once and for all.
But there's only one way to ensure this massive investigation is carried out honestly and without being whitewashed ...
Pledge to put RFK Jr. in charge.
This is a simple strategy for Trump to turn his biggest weakness – the COVID-19 vaccine – into a huge win-win.
Pledge this special counsel investigation; pledge to put RFK Jr. in charge; show that you're open to seeing what really happened; and Trump wins back the presidency by a landslide.
An anonymously written July 11 article uncritically repeated Kennedy's dubious attacks on Anthony Fauci in a Fox News appearance:
Anthony Fauci, a former federal health official advising Joe Biden on COVID-19, now in a lucrative teaching job, 'caused a lot of injury" during that pandemic, according to Democrat [sic] presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Fauci, in fact, was behind a lot of the masking requirements, the demand for experimental and highly speculative shots for citizens, the bans on ordinary treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which proved effective, and more.
During his tenure, more than a million Americans died of COVID. Kennedy pointed out that America has 4.2% of the world's population, and suffered 16% of the COVID deaths.
Now RFK Jr., in an interview with Jess Watters, charged that the Biden administration is uninterested in punishing China for allowing what now is widely considered to be a lab leak of the pandemic, because it would reveal the National Institutes of Health "funded bioweapons programs."
A report at Summit.News reported he said, "I think the CIA was involved certainly in this research. They were funding it through USAID. And NIH, I think, in the end gave about $26 million in funding to the Wuhan lab. But USAID, which was functioning as the CIA surrogate, gave over $64 million. The Pentagon also gave a lot of money."
Kennedy said of Fauci, "I think he caused a lot of injury. I think that he particularly by withholding early treatment from Americans we racked up the highest death count in the world. We only have 4.2% of the globe’s population but we had 16% of the COVID deaths in this country and that was from bad policy."
He pointed out that nations that allowed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine "had 1/200th of our death rate."
The anonymous writer made no effort to fact-check anything Kennedy said. For instance, there's no evidence that either works, and the U.S. COVID death rate was higher than other countries largely because fewer people were vaccinated (in part because of anti-vaxxers like Kennedy).
When Kennedy got caught arguing that COVID is "ethnically targeted" to affect "attack Caucasians and black people" and that "the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," WND did a lazy bit of cleanup by reprinting an article by the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit, which insisted that the reporter who broke the story "read into Kennedy’s quote more than what was actually said. That’s unfortunate." It's even more unfortunate that WND thinks Gateway Pundit is a credible source of, well, anything.
