Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode onto the stage at a Southern California church, radiating Kennedy confidence and surveying the standing ovation crowd along with his piercing blue Bobby Kennedy eyes. Then, he launched into an anti-vaccine rant. Democrats “drank the Kool-Support,” he instructed individuals assembled for a far proper convention, branded as standing for “well being and freedom.”
“It’s prison medical malpractice to offer a toddler considered one of these vaccines,” Kennedy contended, in accordance with a video of the occasion, considered one of his many assertions that ignored or went in opposition to authorized, scientific and public well being consensus.
Then, Kennedy hawked his guide. If simply 300 attendees preordered it on Amazon that night time, he instructed the group, it could land on the bestseller checklist and so they may “stick it to Amazon and Jeff Bezos.”
All earnings, he mentioned, would go to his charity, Kids’s Well being Protection.
Whereas many nonprofits and companies have struggled throughout the pandemic, Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group has thrived. An investigation by The Related Press finds that Kids’s Well being Protection has raked in funding and followers as Kennedy used his star energy as a member of considered one of America’s most well-known households to open doorways, increase cash and lend his group credibility. Filings with charity regulators present income greater than doubled in 2020, to $6.8 million.
For the reason that pandemic began, Kids’s Well being Protection has expanded the attain of its e-newsletter, which makes use of slanted data, cherry-picked details and conspiracy theories to unfold mistrust of the COVID-19 vaccines. The group has additionally launched an web TV channel and began a film studio. CHD has international ambitions. Along with opening new U.S. branches, it now boasts outposts in Canada, Europe and, most just lately, Australia. It’s translating articles into French, German, Italian and Spanish, and it’s on a hiring spree.
Based on information from Similarweb, a digital intelligence firm that analyzes internet visitors and search, Kids’s Well being Protection has turn into one of the vital fashionable “various and pure drugs websites” on the earth, reaching a peak of almost 4.7 million visits monthly. That’s up from lower than 150,000 month-to-month visits earlier than the pandemic.
As Kids’s Well being Protection has labored to develop its affect, consultants mentioned, it has focused its false claims at teams which may be extra vulnerable to mistrust the vaccine, together with moms and Black Individuals. It’s a technique that consultants fear has lethal penalties throughout a pandemic that has killed greater than 5 million individuals, when misinformation has been deemed a risk to public well being.
As vaccines have turn into a wedge political difficulty, Kennedy’s opposition to the shot has at occasions introduced him near anti-democracy forces on the precise who’ve made widespread trigger with the anti-vaccine motion. The scion of the nation’s most distinguished Democratic household has appeared at occasions that pushed the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and related to individuals who have celebrated or downplayed the violent Jan. 6. assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Kennedy has been a key a part of the anti-vaccine motion for years, however medical doctors and public well being advocates instructed the AP that COVID-19 launched him to a brand new degree.
“With the pandemic, he’s been turbocharged,” mentioned Dr. David Gorski, a most cancers surgeon at Wayne State College College of Drugs in Detroit and a critic of the anti-vaccine motion.
Dr. Richard Allen Williams, a heart specialist, professor of medication at UCLA and founding father of the Minority Well being Institute, mentioned Kennedy is main “a propaganda motion,” and “completely a racist operation” that’s notably harmful to the Black group.
“He’s actually the ringleader of the misinformation marketing campaign,” mentioned Williams, who has written a number of books about race and drugs. “So many individuals, even these in scientific circles, don’t understand what Kennedy is doing.”
Even Kennedy’s circle of relatives members name his work “harmful.”
Misinformation pipeline
Kennedy, 67, is a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother. He carved out a profession as a bestselling creator and high environmental lawyer preventing for vital public well being priorities reminiscent of clear water.
His work as a number one voice in that motion possible would have been his legacy, however greater than 15 years in the past, he grew to become fixated on a perception that vaccines are usually not protected. Whereas there are uncommon situations when individuals have extreme reactions to vaccines, the billions of doses administered globally present actual world proof that they’re protected. The World Well being Group says vaccines stop as many as 5 million deaths annually.
In the course of the pandemic, Kennedy has turn into a near-ubiquitous supply of false details about COVID-19 and vaccines. Earlier this 12 months, Kennedy was named one of many “Disinformation Dozen” by the Middle for Countering Digital Hate, which says he and the Kids’s Well being Protection web site are among the many high spreaders of false details about vaccines on-line.
Kennedy’s spokeswoman, Rita Shreffler, instructed the AP on Dec. 6 that he was not obtainable for an interview for this story.
On Dec. 2, nonetheless, she had written to AP complaining of a “full blackout by mainstream media” about Kennedy’s guide, and providing him for interviews.
An AP reporter responded inside 20 minutes and despatched a number of follow-up emails. When Shreffler lastly responded, she requested for “your checklist of interview inquiries to be accredited previous to scheduling an interview by the crew.” AP declined that restriction, and Shreffler then mentioned Kennedy wouldn’t communicate with AP.
Greater than 200 million Individuals have been given a COVID-19 vaccine, and critical uncomfortable side effects are extraordinarily uncommon, in accordance with authorities security monitoring. That monitoring and testing in tens of 1000’s of individuals has proven that the vaccines are protected and efficient at lowering the danger of great illness and demise and that any well being dangers posed by the vaccine are far decrease than the dangers posed by the virus.
Kids’s Well being Protection and its followers, in search of to undermine that message, use canny strategies to convey anti-vaccine misinformation even to these not on the lookout for it.
The AP discovered hyperlinks to Kids’s Well being Protection articles throughout Fb. Whereas many have been shared as posts on the pages of fellow anti-vaccine activists, many extra could possibly be discovered within the feedback sections on pages that folks flip to for dependable data, together with official authorities Fb pages in all 50 states, and in well being departments in almost each state.
“The vaccine was not created to avoid wasting us all from a pandemic. The pandemic was created to get us to take the vaccine and extra,” one individual wrote in February beneath a North Carolina Division of Well being and Human Providers Fb put up.
Then, they linked to a January Kids’s Well being Protection article that claimed 329 deaths following the COVID-19 shot had been reported to VAERS, a federal vaccine security surveillance system that has been misused by anti-vaccine activists.
“Each Friday, the true American hero Robert F Kennedy Jr. pulls the information from the VAERS report. Right here is the most recent up till 1/22,” the commenter wrote. One other consumer replied that the remark had been reported for dishonesty, however it was nonetheless up 10 months later.
Individuals additionally shared CHD hyperlinks beneath posts made by governors, faculties, hospitals, army outposts, universities, information retailers, even a serious league soccer crew. One state senator from Alaska has shared CHD hyperlinks on her Fb web page at the least 4 occasions since March. They have been additionally shared exterior the USA, on Fb pages in locations reminiscent of Canada, Norway and Greece.
Kennedy has tons of of 1000’s of followers on Fb and Twitter, though he was kicked off Fb’s Instagram platform earlier this 12 months. Kids’s Well being Protection stays on all three platforms.
Since January, Kids’s Well being Protection’s COVID-19 vaccine-related posts have been shared extra incessantly on Twitter than hyperlinks to vaccine content material on mainstream websites together with CNN, Fox Information, NPR and the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, in accordance with Indiana College’s Observatory on Social Media, which tracks COVID-19 vaccine-related content on Twitter. In some weeks, it discovered, CHD COVID-19 vaccine content material was shared extra typically than that of The New York Occasions and The Washington Submit.
A unique analysis crew discovered Kennedy’s group, together with the now-removed group known as Cease Necessary Vaccination, purchased greater than half of the anti-vaccine promoting on Fb previous to the pandemic. A member of that crew, David Broniatowski, of George Washington College, mentioned the teams had focused Fb advertisements to succeed in girls of childbearing age utilizing demographic information.
“They’re rather more efficient at it than our public well being infrastructure,” he mentioned. “That’s partially as a result of they simply have a centralized basis with a really clear sense of what it’s they wish to do.”
CHD’s effectiveness is partially as a result of it’s central to a community of anti-vaccine web sites that hyperlink to and amplify one another, making a disinformation echo chamber that reinforces false narratives that downplay the hazards of COVID-19 whereas exaggerating the dangers of the vaccine. For instance, the day after the FDA granted full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy and CHD despatched out an article falsely claiming that the vaccine that was licensed was not the one which was obtainable, mentioned Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Hastings School of the Regulation and an skilled in vaccine regulation.
“It began with CHD the day after the licensure after which was picked up by proper wing retailers,” Reiss mentioned.
The concept circulated on fringe media retailers on the far proper. Then, more than a month after the article was printed, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin went on Tucker Carlson’s present on Fox Information and repeated the incorrect idea that the approved vaccine was not available in the USA.
It grew to become considered one of CHD’s largest articles of the previous 12 months, with about 40,000 interactions on Fb, in accordance with CrowdTangle, a Fb-owned software that helps monitor materials on the platforms.
In feedback on CHD’s web site, individuals expressed anger, concern and calls to motion. “You understand, the extra I learn the information the extra my abdomen tightens up into a bit ball,” one wrote. “And so they marvel why we don’t belief them and why individuals received’t get the ‘jab,’” mentioned one other. One recommended individuals march on Washington on the twentieth anniversary of the Sept. 11 assaults, writing, “Make Jan 6 seem like a picnic.”
Along with its rise on social media, CHD’s web site has additionally seen an explosion in visitors. Based on Similarweb, in November 2019, a number of months earlier than the pandemic started, Kids’s Well being Protection acquired 119,000 visits. That had grown to round 3 million visits final month, after peaking in August at almost 4.7 million.
And its every day e-newsletter reaches greater than 8 million individuals a month through electronic mail, in accordance with a CHD fundraising attraction that sought to lift $1 million by Nov. 30. AP was not capable of independently confirm the declare.
In November, Kennedy launched his guide, “The Actual Anthony Fauci,” by which he accuses the nation’s main infectious illness physician of serving to orchestrate “a historic coup d’etat in opposition to Western democracy.” A spokesperson for Fauci didn’t remark.
Kennedy additionally makes use of the guide to push unproven COVID-19 remedies reminiscent of ivermectin, which is supposed to deal with parasites, and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, and he contends that childhood vaccines are usually not correctly security examined, though the FDA requires three phases of testing that includes tons of of 1000’s of individuals earlier than approving a childhood vaccine.
His sister, Kerry Kennedy, who runs Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the worldwide rights group based by their mom, Ethel, instructed AP that it was irresponsible to assault medical doctors and scientists. Many, together with Fauci, have acquired demise threats, which might deter individuals from coming into the occupation.
“Our household is aware of {that a} demise risk ought to be taken significantly,” she mentioned.
The group, which helps government-mandated vaccinations and steps reminiscent of requiring proof of vaccination, awarded Fauci its “Ripple of Hope Award” final 12 months.
Kennedy Jr. against this has spent months hyping his guide, together with on the far proper Reawaken America convention in Southern California in July. Final month, CHD urged supporters to purchase the guide immediately so it could make the New York Occasions bestseller checklist. Some commenters on CHD’s web site mentioned they purchased a number of copies to drive gross sales. One mentioned that they had purchased 9 and have been planning to purchase extra to place in neighborhood guide change containers “to assist enhance the guide to primary on the New York Occasions bestseller checklist.”
Kennedy’s want was granted. “The Actual Anthony Fauci” reached No. 5 on the Occasions’ checklist final month and hit No. 1 at Amazon. It bought almost 166,000 copies by the start of December, in accordance with NPD BookScan, which tracks round 85 % of print gross sales.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine message has introduced him near many main figures who’ve attacked the nation’s democratic norms and establishments. A photograph posted on Instagram July 18 and apparently taken backstage on the Reawaken America occasion, exhibits Kennedy alongside former President Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone, anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger and former Nationwide Safety Adviser Michael Flynn, all of whom have pushed the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Kennedy has appeared at a number of occasions with Bollinger and her husband, even after their Tremendous PAC sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally close to the Capitol on Jan. 6, when, as AP previously reported, Bollinger celebrated the assault and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy filmed a video dialog for his or her Tremendous PAC within the spring.
He has additionally courted main GOP donors together with Leila and David Centner, who have been listed as CHD board members for 2021 on a submitting the group made in August with Georgia charity regulators, and which AP obtained in a public information request. The couple are finest identified for the private school they established in Miami, Centner Academy, which put in place anti-vaccine insurance policies for kids and lecturers.
Constructing a powerhouse
Kennedy typically says he began vaccines after a mom instructed him she believed her son developed autism from publicity to mercury in a vaccine. The speculation has been totally debunked. The type of mercury, thimerosal, was faraway from childhood vaccines years in the past with no impact on the degrees of autism. Nonetheless, Kennedy and others proceed to argue, in opposition to the scientific consensus, that vaccines are linked to autism, meals allergy symptoms and a bunch of different medical issues. Among the many elements he tells individuals to be careful for are widespread substances reminiscent of aluminum, acetaminophen, fluoride and meals components.
In 2015, Kennedy joined up with Eric Gladen, who in 2007 had based a gaggle known as World Mercury Venture in Southern California. Gladen believes he acquired mercury poisoning from a tetanus shot and had made a movie known as Hint Quantities.
Gladen instructed AP that Kennedy relations urged him to distance himself from the group after they screened the film at Kennedy’s sister’s home in Malibu. The following morning, Gladen recalled, Kennedy known as him at 6 a.m. to say he was in.
World Mercury Venture had been struggling to remain afloat, however every part modified when Kennedy joined. He was “a machine,” doing analysis, writing op-eds, delivering speeches and connecting with well-placed individuals, Gladen mentioned. There was “virtually no restrict” to who they might attain.
World Mercury Venture, which reported simply $13,114 in income on its 2014 tax filings, introduced in $467,443 in income the next 12 months, when Kennedy got here on board.
Gladen stepped down for well being causes in August 2016, however continues to help its work.
Kennedy grew to become board chairman and chief authorized counsel. The group rebranded with the title Kids’s Well being Protection in 2018, eradicating the phrase “mercury” from its title and asserting an expanded mission. A press launch emphasised autism, ADHD and different “well being epidemics” affecting kids. It talked about vaccines solely as soon as, virtually as an afterthought.
Kennedy instructed Tucker Carlson in a July 2017 look that his vaccine work was “most likely the worst profession transfer that I’ve ever made.” When the Fox Information host requested him if he was “getting paid for this,” Kennedy replied, “No, I’m not. In actual fact, I’m getting unpaid for this.”
Based on tax filings, Kennedy was paid $131,250 by Kids’s Well being Protection in 2017. In 2018, he was paid $184,375. By 2019, the latest 12 months obtainable, his compensation had risen to $255,000.
Kennedy instructed the conspiracy web site InfoWars this month that he had “the alternative of a revenue motive.”
“In all probability I’ve misplaced 80 % of my earnings due to what I’m doing, together with a number of friendships and, you already know, and broken relationships even with individuals in my household,” Kennedy mentioned.
Nonetheless, CHD’s fundraising success has solely grown with Kennedy’s involvement, and no 12 months was extra profitable than 2020.
Filings the group made with charity regulators in California present that in 2018, CHD reported $1.1 million in gross income. That grew to just about $3 million in 2019. By 2020, the latest 12 months obtainable, income had greater than doubled to $6.8 million. It reported that it spent greater than $3.5 million on program bills final 12 months, the primary 12 months of the pandemic. That features producing 49 “instructional movies” and 6 eBooks, CHD reported to Guidestar.
Kennedy’s group has additionally lobbied over vaccine laws within the states, collected massive sums of cash from particular pursuits reminiscent of chiropractors, and filed a number of lawsuits, together with a $5 million lawsuit final 12 months in opposition to Fb. Amongst its claims is that Fb deactivated the “donate button” on its web page, hurting CHD’s efforts to lift cash. In Could 2019 alone, in accordance with its lawsuit, Kids’s Well being Protection mentioned it acquired $24,872 in consumer donations from its Fb web page. A federal decide dismissed the lawsuit in June, however CHD is interesting.
Capitalizing on the Kennedy title
Kids’s Well being Protection’s new film studio launched a movie earlier this 12 months, known as “Medical Racism.” Medical doctors and public well being advocates mentioned it was aimed toward spreading misinformation and concern of vaccines throughout the Black group, which has been disproportionately hit by coronavirus.
The film brings up racist abuses in drugs, such because the Tuskegee experiment, when tons of of Black males in Alabama with syphilis have been left untreated, to query whether or not the vaccine might be trusted or is critical. Examples of racist medical practices have contributed to mistrust and hesitation about vaccines amongst some members of the Black group.
Williams, of the Minority Well being Institute, identified that within the Tuskegee research, individuals have been denied medicine to deal with a illness. Within the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, medicine is offered – however anti-vaccine activists try to influence individuals to not take it. He mentioned the movie is “completely slanted.”
“It isn’t solely dangerous, however it’s lethal,” he mentioned.
Kennedy has additionally made hay from the deaths of distinguished individuals. Baseball legend Hank Aaron acquired his shot as a approach to present different Black Individuals that the vaccine was protected. A couple of weeks later, the 86-year-old died in his sleep. Kennedy posted on Facebook and Twitter calling it “a part of a wave of suspicious deaths amongst aged intently following administration of COVID vaccines,” however offered no proof of a connection. Kennedy’s Jan. 22 posts are each nonetheless up and have been shared, commented on and preferred 1000’s of occasions, though the Fb put up now carries a warning that it’s lacking context and “may mislead individuals.”
Within the film, Kennedy and others additionally invoke the legacy of his household and its involvement in causes reminiscent of civil rights, Particular Olympics and well being care advocacy.
Dr. Oni Blackstock, who based the racial and well being fairness consulting group Well being Justice and who’s a former assistant commissioner within the New York Metropolis Well being Division, mentioned the Kennedy title provides “heft” to the anti-vaccine motion amongst individuals who have optimistic associations with the Kennedys’ legacy as advocates for civil rights.
“It might make individuals extra keen to pay attention and to contemplate what’s being mentioned,” Blackstock mentioned.
Kennedy additionally makes use of his household title and legacy to lift cash. On a number of events, he has provided a visit to the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod as a lure to drum up donations for Kids’s Well being Protection. As household pictures and pictures of individuals together with President Kennedy flashed on display of 1 Fb attraction, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., mentioned the winner would meet Kennedy relations on the go to.
“There’s at all times loads of individuals and good dialog,” he mentioned in a single video posted in 2020. “If my mother decides to return, journey is assured.”
Kerry Kennedy mentioned her brother had taken down some family-related content material at her request. Nonetheless, she famous, he continues to reference President Kennedy’s title to advance his anti-vaccine stance.
“Anybody who believes this doesn’t know their historical past. Vaccinations have been a serious effort of John F. Kennedy, each as a senator and later as president,” she mentioned.
“I like Bobby, I feel he’s simply utterly fallacious on this difficulty and really harmful,” she mentioned. “Failure to take vaccines places individuals’s lives in danger. It not solely impacts the one that refuses the jab however imperils the group at massive.”
However that hasn’t deterred him. He typically name-drops the highest authorities officers and scientists that he has had entry to, together with Francis Collins, director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
“A part of the advantage of being a part of my household is that I may get these individuals on the telephone virtually instantaneously,” Kennedy mentioned at Centner Academy.
Collins instructed AP he was “very disillusioned” in Kennedy.
“Along with his title recognition, along with his exceptional heritage and a household that has carried out a lot for America — that he’s utilizing that to unfold lies with out by some means having some sense, wanting within the mirror, that he’s doing harms,” Collins mentioned, including, “Disgrace on him.”
In a speech to the Ron Paul Institute in October, Kennedy instructed a receptive crowd that his kids have typically questioned him.
“They are saying, effectively that is going to kill individuals. And I say to them, there’s rather a lot worse issues than dying,” he mentioned, earlier than evoking the “era of Individuals in 1776” who fought the Revolutionary Struggle after which likening their trigger to a “second American Revolution.”
Throughout his speech, he referenced Nazis a number of occasions, obliquely evaluating public well being measures put in place by a number of governments around the globe to Nazi propaganda meant to scare individuals into abandoning important considering.
On Sunday, Kennedy once more raised the specter of Nazis as he put out a video asking followers to participate in a global marketing campaign to “wallpaper your group legally” with anti-vaccine stickers. The stickers popped up subsequent to his face as he spoke, together with one which confirmed an image of Fauci with a Hitler mustache, and one other that learn “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”
Worldwide ambitions
The pandemic has allowed Kennedy to take Kids’s Well being Protection’s anti-vaccine message international.
In August 2020, CHD launched a Europe department, and Kennedy attended an enormous rally in Berlin in opposition to coronavirus restrictions. Final month, Kennedy appeared earlier than 1000’s of individuals at protests on successive days in Switzerland and Italy. He complained of conspiracies by authorities officers and Large Pharma operatives and claimed falsely that the Pfizer COVID-19 shot kills extra individuals than it saves. Kennedy promised that he would “see you all on the barricades” and that “I and lots of others are able to die with our boots on for liberty.”
It has turn into one thing of a stump speech for Kennedy, one delivered to not win political workplace however to influence as many individuals as doable to not get vaccinated.
Related Press writers Lauran Neergaard, Colleen Barry, Hillel Italie, Matt O’Brien and AP researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.