Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr Team Up to Spread Nonsense About Vaccines

This is the bad kind of bipartisanship.

A cat and dog dance around a pot of boiling human children on a cloud as they excitedly prepare to feast. Photoshop by Ben Dreyfuss

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Bipartisanship comes to the Trump administration!

Surprise! It’s evil bipartisanship! This is the most anti-science Republicans joining the most anti-science Democratic to push dangerous anti-vaxx lunacy.

Vaccines work and they don’t cause autism. Them’s the facts.

There are real costs to this nonsense. Look at this map that Kevin Drum wrote about in 2014:

Use of the MMR vaccine plummeted during the aughts, as vaccine-autism hysteria was spread by charlatans and the ignorati. Needless to say, this did nothing to affect the incidence of autism, but it sure had an effect on measles and mumps. To this day, though, I don’t think any of the vectors of this hysteria have so much as apologized. It’s shameful.

Trump has a long history of spreading anti-vaxx bullshit. So, too, does RFK Jr (when he’s not slinging insane theories about Diebold and Ohio). More than 10 years ago he went on the Daily Show and, in one of Jon Stewart’s most shameful moments, was allowed to spew his brand of anti-vaxx crack-pottery. Liberals like RFK Jr because liberals like love RFK, but Robert the Younger is loony tunes on vaccines. He’s in the same boat as Jenny McCarthy.

Vaccine exemptions are bad, quoth the AMA, common sense, and anyone who has ever bothered to Google the term “herd immunity.” (Read this, if you don’t believe me.) We seemed to be making progress slowing the anti-vaxx lemmings but with Trump set to enter the White House on January 20 there is a real chance that vaccine hysteria will spread like measles. Vaccines should not be political. But elections have consequences. And once people believe this nuttery, you can’t really change their minds. People who believe crazy things do not respond to well to facts.

Even the Catholic Church, not known as a bastion of scientific forward-thinking, says you need to vaccinate your kids.

Don’t listen to lunatics even if they do come bearing the seal of the President.

Vaccinate. Your. Kids.

Update 7:20pm Tuesday 1/10/2017: Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks has denied the report that they’re tapping RFK Jr to be on a vaccine commission, so maybe it’s not true! But RFK Jr has confirmed the report so maybe it is true! Maybe RFK Jr was confused? Maybe Trump is backing off it in the face of predictable criticism? Neither Trump or RFK Jr live in the world that actually exists so who the hell knows what’s going on. Vaccinate your kids.

Update 2: 1:45pm Thursday 1/12/2017: Unnwayed by Hope Hick’s denial, Robert Kennedy Jr told his environmental group Wednesday that he expects to take a leave of absence to work on Trump’s bullshit vaccinations commission. It remains unclear if this commission will also look into chemtrails or get the truth about everlasting gobstoppers.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate