Fact-Checking RFK Jr.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign last week and endorsed former President Donald Trump. 

I disagree with Kennedy about a lot. But at least he was willing to talk to people who disagree with him.

In my newest video, we debate.

Kennedy complains that mainstream media won’t have him on—even to argue with him. 

“Nobody will. None of them. They won’t have me on any of their networks.” 

“I see why,” I reply. “You get into the weeds of vaccine science, and we feel not all of it’s true.”

“If it’s not true,” Kennedy responds, “then argue with me, or post something afterward.”

OK. 

Here are three incorrect things Kennedy says:

No. 1: “I was in Dimock, Pennsylvania, watching fire come out of a faucet from fracking. Every home in that neighborhood, they can light up a cigarette lighter under their faucet, turn their faucet on, and it’ll flame like a lighter. That’s from fracking.”

No, it isn’t. A leftist documentary, “Gasland,” publicized flaming faucets and claimed fracking is the cause. But it’s not.

Water is flammable in many places in America where no fracking is done. It happens because of naturally occurring gas, already in the ground. 

Even the director of the Environmental Protection Agency during Barack Obama’s presidency said, “In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater.”

No. 2: Kennedy claims many vaccines do more harm than good.

I ask, “If your kids were young now, would you give them the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine?” 

“No,” he says, “Studies show that kids who get measles as a child are much healthier when they grow up … resistant to cancers, atopic diseases … ”

I tell Kennedy, “You convinced people not to get the measles vaccine. An outbreak resulted in 83 deaths in Samoa.”

“That story is not true,” he says. “Nobody died in Samoa from measles.”

But the Samoan government and the Lancet medical journal report there were 83 deaths.

Kennedy blames the deaths on bad vaccines, and two babies did die after being given incorrectly mixed vaccines.

But Samoa’s response, after years of anti-vax messages, was worse: They pulled the measles vaccine.

That’s what caused the 83 deaths. Now, Samoa vaccinates kids again.

No. 3: Kennedy ties vaccines to autism. 

“You still say that autism is caused by vaccines?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he replies firmly. “Autism is caused by vaccines.”

He points to unpublished data presented decades ago by a researcher named Verstraeten.

“They looked at children who got the hepatitis B vaccine during their first 30 days and compared those to kids who got it later or didn’t get it at all. There was a 1,350% elevated risk for autism!”

That was true, about the preliminary raw data. But in later analyses of the same data, Verstraeten made adjustments, and the vaccine-autism correlation went away. RFK doesn’t trust the adjustments. Even if he were right, the chemical in the vaccines (thimerosal) that Verstraeten looked at was discontinued in vaccines, except flu shots, decades ago.

More thorough researchers have now studied the effects of modern vaccines and found no connection to autism.

One study even looked at every child born in Denmark over 10 years and concluded that the MMR vaccine “does not increase the risk for autism.”

“You ignore the big studies,” I tell him.

“You have this wrong,” he insists. 

Finally, Kennedy’s critics claim he makes things up.

One told me, “Studies he cites won’t show what he says they show. The web is full of detailed explanations of why nearly every study he has cited is bogus or wildly misinterpreted by him.”

I didn’t find that. I found that when Kennedy cites studies, he cites them accurately. But he misleads by ignoring bigger, better, more reliable studies. This does a grave disservice to his followers. Vaccines (most of them, anyway) reduce misery and save lives.

Although Kennedy and I disagree about a lot, I’m grateful that he will debate. 

All my career, I’ve debated people for my TV shows. Debate is one of the best ways to get closer to the truth. But today, activists and politicians hide from skeptical inquiry. Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Kennedy are rare exceptions.

Good for them. 

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