Robert F Kennedy Jr was left grasping for answers after being confronted with a lengthy list of his conspiracy theories in a new interview.
The Democratic presidential candidate, 69, sat last week for a wide-ranging interview with Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller from Reason, which bills itself as the nation’s leading libertarian magazine.
Mr Kennedy told the publication he had “always been aligned with libertarians on most issues”, and that he would consider appointing Tulsi Gabbard as his secretary of state.
Towards the end of the hour-long interview, Mr Gillespie, Reason’s editor-at-large, noted that RFK Jr routinely trafficked in conspiracies and displayed a “kind of conspiracist mindset where almost everything that we take for granted is bad”.
Mr Gillespie went on to list the numerous conspiracies that RFK Jr has peddled, including his anti-vaccine stance and claims that 5G and Wi-Fi are “controlling our mind”, that AIDs is not caused by HIV, that boys are becoming transgender due to chemicals in the drinking water, and that his cousin Michael Skakel was not guilty of a murder he had been convicted of.
“It kind of goes on and on,” Mr Gillespie says.
“How do you answer people who say, you know, like this is the sign of somebody whose thinking is fundamentally conspiracy-minded rather than kind of dealing with brute reality?”
Mr Kennedy responded that the questions were “very unfair”.
“You made a series of characterisations of my beliefs that you read in the newspapers. Many of which are just wrong.”
When pushed, Mr Kennedy offered to go through each one individually and challenged the interviewers to “show me where I get it wrong.”
Mr Gillespie then brought up a now-retracted article published by Rolling Stone and Slate in 2005 which made scientifically disproven claims linking childhood vaccines to autism.
Mr Kennedy falsely insisted that he had not been shown “one mistake” in the articles.
Robert F Kennedy sat for a wide-ranging interview with Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller from Reason magazine— (Reason / YouTube)
Mr Kennedy, who is running a longshot candidacy to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024, has been repeatedly called out by the scientific community for spreading dangerous misinformation about vaccines.
Last month, former Salon editor Joan Walsh said publishing Mr Kennedy’s article was the “worst mistake of my career” and that she should have been fired for it.
The nephew of John F Kennedy and son of Robert F Kennedy recently appeared on the controversial Joe Rogan podcast where he continued to spread baseless claims about vaccines.
The pair challenged Dr Petez Hotez, a noted medical expert and virologist, to debate the science behind vaccines.
Dr Hotez declined, saying he’d be happy to speak with Rogan but didn’t want to create a talk show-style spectacle.
“I’ve offered to come and talk to Joe Rogan again, and have that discussion with him, but not to turn it into the Jerry Springer with having RFK Jr on,” he told MSNBC.
