Bulwark Takes - Supporters Furious With RFK. Jr Over Measles Vaccine Statement

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tepid support of the MMR vaccine amid a measles outbreak in Texas that’s lead to the deaths of two children has spurred backlash from his supporters. Jonathan V. Last and Will Sommer break it down.

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Well, it's like a guy comes out, it's like water wet. And a bunch of insane people lose their damn minds. Will, can you explain to me what is going on in this insane asylum that we call America? Yeah, I mean, this really tells you where we've come to now. I mean, so RFK obviously is a famous vaccine, anti-vaccine activist, vaccine critic. And of course, he now runs HHS. And so the anti-vax people were thrilled. And they thought, you know, basically, this is our king, and he's going to shut down all the vaccines. But now that there's this measles outbreak in Texas, and now the second child has died from it, RFK on Sunday gave sort of the most lukewarm endorsement you could possibly imagine for what every sane person knows, which is that

the MMR vaccine for measles is absolutely something every child should get. And so he said, you know, the vaccine is the best way to prevent the spread of measles. I mean, this is such a milquetoast thing to say, and his fans have absolutely flipped out over it. And it's not like he held a press conference and said, I was just at funeral services for these two beautiful children who I, you know, the world will be robbed of seeing them grow old and contribute to something like it's just, he put it,

it almost felt like a hostage memo. Yes. Because it's in the third paragraph. So his, I don't know if you have it in front of you, but it is, it's in the third paragraph. So his I don't know if you have it in front of you, but it is it's in the third. You know, he takes a long time winding up to saying that the MMR vaccine, which everybody in America has been taking for decades and which almost made measles go away is. Yeah. OK, just take it.

Yeah, he says he says multiple paragraphs and just well i went to texas and all this stuff and he goes anyways yeah you should probably get the vaccine though do you think he would say that out loud if he was asked at a press conference you know it's a good question i mean even it's interesting because even during i think we're entering maybe now the second month of this measles outbreak um he has, every time he's done an interview or something, he's still been very said, you know, well, you know, it should be up to people whether they get it or not. And the vaccine has so many dangers. I mean, just the stuff he's making up. And this was the first time really he had offered support for it without qualifying it with saying, well, you know, you got to do what's right for you

or saying, you know, but it might kill you, which is what he's said in the past. So what what was the reaction online? What what were his people doing and saying? Who was it? Is this like Instagram influencers or? Sure. I mean, so it's sort of like the both the grassroots and sort of leaders of anti-vaccine movement or also Maha, the Make America Healthy, which is maybe a little more palatable than the official anti-vaccine people. A woman named Sherry Tenpenny, who is an osteopath who is sort of like a big, big player in the anti-vaccine world. You know, she said- Sherry Tenpenny?

Tenpenny. I know, kind of a Pynchon-esque name, perhaps. I was going to go in a different direction, but Pynchon, we'll go with Thomas Pynchon. That's much more highbrow than what I was going to suggest. What were you going to say? You know, not for this. I don't want to make Sebastian cut it out. Perfect. So, yeah, so they, so she was saying, you know, this is a mistake.

This is poorly worded. This woman named Liz Wheeler, who used to host a show for One America News, who's kind of like many sort of conservative women personalities pivoted into much more kind of like a wellness apothecary space. You know, she was she was saying, you know, what happened to Bobby Kennedy? He used to be so based, you know, it's like cool. And he's like, he's not based anymore. And so, I i mean she was really mad that he's described the vaccines as needed i mean this is like truly through the looking glass stuff where all these people are riling each other up um because rfk did you know the bare minimum

so i guess i i have a couple questions for you first of which, do you think they'll really stay mad? Or is this the kind of thing like where with Trump, like, you know, like when Trump started turning against free trade in like 2016, a lot of Reagan conservatives were very angry that he didn't know about what the real benefits of the free market and they, you know got right real quick are these people gonna get right with him or do they feel like they have political lives independent of him and they have audiences independent of him and they can try to cast him out and take over his influence in the sphere is it how does that dynamic work yeah it's a good question i i i don't think he is as bulletproof as Trump is, certainly. I think Kennedy is obviously like a very big deal and sort of like the king of the anti-vaccine world.

But at the same time, you can see people already kind of picking away at him. Candace Owens, who's like a huge deal on YouTube, of course, right winger. This conspiracy theorist, Ian Carroll, they've kind of teamed up and they've been promoting this idea that, well, RFK, because he isn't outright banning vaccines yet, he must be being blackmailed by Israel. You know, and I mean, oh, Israel. Well, well, to just pick a country. I'm sure they threw a dart at a map of the world and it just happened to land on Israel. Could have been El Salvador. Could have been Bulgaria.

It was just what a coincidence. It comes back to that for them. And they really like they obviously have no not even like sort of a shred of evidence to set this off. But, you know, you do see this idea that RFK is being blackmailed, picking up on kind of the far right. And so I do think that something like that could be used to just credit him. I mean, there is this obvious, and this is what we ran into with Trump and Operation Warp Speed, where there's this obvious disconnect between someone who says, you know, oh, these vaccines are so bad for you in RFK's case. I mean, he was saying they killed more people or could kill more people than measles itself. And suddenly

now he's saying, oh, you got to get the measles vaccine. I mean, there is this cognitive dissonance his fans have to deal with. So I, again, I have more questions. Is it the case, I mean, we've seen this in politics before where somebody will sound like an insane person on the outside when all they have to do is criticize, but the moment they are handed governing authority, they kind of get deer in the headlights and realize, ah, shit, I can't just say crazy stuff anymore. I have to govern. Is it possible that RFK,

having been handed real-world responsibility for the first time in his adult life, has realized that he can't do that or are the maha influencer types maybe right that somebody got to him like somebody within say the trump administration who doesn't want kids dying of measles because it's bad for the president uh sat him down and said you're gonna fucking say that the mmr vaccine is okay. And so Bobby did it in a tweet. Is that like, what do we think happened to him?

I could see it going either way. I mean, on one hand, you know, this, this tweet came a couple hours after he visited with the family of the second child to die from measles. You know, that kind of stuff hasn't really stopped him and other anti-vaccine people before. They've always come up with rationalizations for why it wasn't measles or the vaccine wouldn't have helped. But perhaps that was it. On the other hand, I think we're also seeing we're seeing a lot of like leaking about about HHS under RFK. We're seeing complaints about his communications team, that the White House is getting kind of fed up with how he's getting the messaging out about measles and vaccines. And so, you know, I think it's it's not a huge leap to imagine that someone was like. And so, you know, I think it's not a huge leap to imagine that someone was like, all right, you know, enough is enough.

We can't have these kind of creeping measles pandemics. Yeah, like this feels like it could be a Susie Wiles joint, right? Like Susie Wiles, she wants to keep Trump's fingerprints off of it, so she's the heavy, and she says, you don't ever have to use your own word. You don't have to use your pie hole. can you can have some some mope tweeted out for you but you got to say that it's okay to take the the mmr vaccine in some form god well i mean you compared it to a hostage note and you know maybe maybe there is something to that it does right this is why i

kind of think that he ought to be goaded the next time he takes questions from the press. Like, oh, tell us what you think about the MMR vaccine, Mr. Secretary. Is it effective? Is it the best way to prevent the spread of measles? Would you like to say it? Say it! The old Sam Kinison, right? Say it! The old Sam Kinison, right? Say it!

It's really something. And I feel like we then, so we got another tidbit from him this late today on fluoride, where the FDA is going to, I guess, what is this, remove their recommendation? I think the CDC is going to stop recommending to local municipalities to say, like, we don't recommend you do fluoride anymore. Is this his, like, hey, I'm still on the team, guys. Hey, I'm one of you. Or do you think there's no linkage? This isn't him trying to prove. You know, to be clear, yeah, I mean, we should say, like, it's not like this is now, you know, Mr. Mr. Sober Reality here.

You know, a few a few hours after he sent the tweet about the vaccine, he posted a picture with some sort of questionable doctors who have claimed to have treated all these kids for for measles with sort of alternative remedies. Guys would face like medical discipline in the past um and now this is vitamin a and cupping yeah right ear candling we're gonna fight measles with ear candling not too far off um and then now this fluoride thing i mean i don't know how much perhaps that was already happening um but it is like very much I think he's still delivering most of the sort of maha kook agenda yeah I do you know that if you've said it it does feel like his position is weaker than Trump's like he was the avatar of the anti-vax kooks and the reason they loved him was because like at least he was a little famous and so they found one famous person to carry their banner.

With Trump, it's more like Trump is the savior and he does so much winning and we have to place our trust in him. It seems like if you're an anti-vax insane person, you look at Kennedy and when Kennedy starts selling you out, you can throw him overboard and find someone else. Well, you can just say, well, this guy's an ex-Democrat. You know, we never should have trusted him, perhaps. Yeah. I guess. And that that really gets to the the movement of the vaccine stuff is very interesting to me.

And I wanted to know what your thoughts are, because you go back 15 years, 20 years ago, and you looked at the social profile of anti-vaxxers. And I mean, I don't have any hard science on this, but my sense is that it is it was equal parts like crazy Christian homesteader types. And then crazy Marianne Williamson crystals and beads progressive types. Does that is that about right? Like it was, you know, they were fairly evenly distributed across the political spectrum. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, as you said, sort of like on, on one hand you have, you know, I mean, we're seeing, for example,

a lot of this outbreak in Texas is with the Mennonites who sort of code more like kind of off the grid conservatives, religious types, or and then previously, you know, on the left, like hippies, maybe, you know, people sort of distrustful of the system. Now, I think a lot of the people on the left, you know, is kind of classic horseshoe theory. They have they they have joined up with sort of the cranks on the right. And, you know, they really united around Kennedy in that. All right. So let me throw one last thing at you.

And this is one of my one of my hobby horses. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, really the 1980s, we had this great sorting out of our political parties. So our political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, used to have less or more unfairly even number of conservatives and liberals in both. And the differences were much more regional than ideological. And over the course of the 80s and into the 90s, we got very real ideological sorting where the Democrats became the liberal party and conservatives became the Republican Party. Is it possible that we are having that same sort of sorting for crazy in America? I think that's possible. Yes. I think, you know, I obviously wouldn't rule out like all the, you know, no crazies in the Democratic Party. But I do think, you know, obviously I cover a lot of, you know, fringe elements and people always want to say to me, you know, after talking about the right or, you know, all this stuff, they'll say, but, you

know, what's going on the left? And it's like, you know, there's really, there's certainly nothing. I mean, it doesn't get, it certainly doesn't get validated in the way that it does on the right, right. Where you have, let's say the the health secretary promoting these ideas or the president. And so in that way, I really think a lot of those sort of cranks people who are kind of cut off from society perhaps or have various grievances that have turned to conspiracy theories

into kind of fringe stuff. I think the majority of those people are on the right. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think the majority of those people are on the right. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think the last big conspiracy theory in America pre-COVID was 9-11. And it was the 9-11 was an inside job, people. And there were at the time, there were, again, like a fairly even amount. There were the the Noam Chomskyites on the left who were like like you know america is always the root of every evil and so uh america must have planned this out and then he had like the timothy mcveigh kind of crazy right is i feel like today if you went around looking for the people who still believe

9-11 was an inside job you're not going to find too many progressives in that spot anymore i think that's right i mean you know you think about 9-11 conspiracy theories. I mean, Laura Loomer, right, who's now purging the National Security Council and the NSA, you know, has promoted 9-11 conspiracy theories.

And so I think, yeah, I think a lot of that stuff has gravitated towards the right and particularly kind of Trumpism. All right, I'll put you on the spot. Just as a question of raw numbers and vote getting, if you could have the party that had the lock on the crazies or the party that had the lock on the normies,

which do you think holds a larger percentage of Americans? Well, I think, I certainly like to hope it's normies but but i think uh you know i think the most recent election uh suggests it you might want to be the crazy party i i think democrats at least should consider getting more like a bit more appeal to crazies um with things like uh you know like i think jeff Jeffrey Epstein stuff was at least once very potent in terms of because, you know, if you just say like there's nothing weird out there, you know, there aren't any conspiracies. People say, I don't think that's true.

And I think often rightly. Interesting. Invites the Democratic Party from the bulwark. Maybe be open to some conspiracies. Yeah, I think that's right. God help us. All right. Yeah, I think that's right. God help us. All right. Will, thanks a lot.

Guys, hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. We'll be back with all of the insanity, probably in like three minutes, because there will be more. Good luck, America.