Robert Kennedy Jr. has become one of the most prominent voices in the movement against COVID-19 vaccines, to the chagrin of most of his family – who have called it ‘heartbreaking’ to see him devote such passion to advocating against measures aimed at combatting the coronavirus.
The son and namesake of the assassinated Democratic presidential candidate has been vocal against vaccinations for years, but the breaking point for many of his loved ones came after he argued that Anne Frank had it better than Americans under vaccine mandates.
‘The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates. It will make you a slave,’ he said at an anti-vax rally hosted by his group The Children’s Health Defense in Washington, D.C., last month.
In the same speech, he likened the Holocaust to COVID-19 safety measures and said ‘Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.’
Robert Kennedy Jr. has drawn ire from family members after becoming one of the most prominent voices in the movement against COVID-19 vaccines. He is above at a rally opposed to vaccines in Washington, D.C., last month
The breaking point for many of his loved ones came after he argued that Anne Frank had it better than Americans under vaccine mandates, which his sister Kerry called ‘heartbreaking.’ The two are above in 2015
Robert’s own wife Actress Cheryl Hines (right) has tried to distance herself from his comments, calling them ‘reprehensible and insensitive.’ The two are above in 2018 at the 24th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards
Robert, who was a pallbearer at his father John F. Kennedy’s funeral when he was 14, has faced numerous scandals and controversy throughout his life.
However, his family has often dealt with such matters in private. Some have spoken out against his anti-vaccine views in the past, but are pushing back harder than before in the wake of his Anne Frank comments.
‘He was an extraordinary older brother,’ Kerry Kennedy told the New York Times in an article published on Saturday, recalling how he used to bring her to play outside with his friends and stick up for her when they protested to having a little girl tag along.
‘He’s brilliant, he’s well read, he cares deeply, he is extremely charismatic. He has a childlike buoyancy and lightness to him. He’s a beautiful person in a million different ways. And then he has this.’
He expressed remorse in a January 25 tweet, saying: ‘I apologize for my reference to Anne Frank, especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors,’ Kennedy said in a tweet before doubling down on his anti-vax stance.
‘My intention was to use examples of past barbarism to show the perils from new technologies of control. To the extent my remarks caused hurt, I am truly and deeply sorry,’ he concluded.
But his loved ones were quick to distance themselves from his comments. ‘Bobby’s lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and destructive. I strongly condemn him for his hateful rhetoric. He does not represent the views of @RFKHumanRights or our family,’ Kerry tweeted last month.
Kerry Kennedy told the New York Times that she will always treasure her memories of growing up with Robert. ‘We have much more in common than our differences on vaccines, but on that subject we are diametrically opposed. I can’t say enough how much I love Bobby. It’s so heartbreaking. It’s so tough.’
Cheryl Hines, Robert’s third wife and actress on HBO’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ called the reference to Anne Frank ‘reprehensible and insensitive’ in a tweet that came about 20 minutes after Robert’s apology.
The Kennedy family came together in 2019 to mourn 22-year-old Saoirse Kennedy Hill, who died of an accidental overdose at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Ted Kennedy Jr. (left), Joe Kennedy Jr. and Joe Kennedy lll attended the funeral services for Saoirse Roisin Kennedy Hill at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville
Robert was a pallbearer at his father John F. Kennedy’s funeral in 1963
‘The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own,’ Hines tweeted.
‘I love my brother but could not disagree with him more,’ Robert’s brother Christopher G. Kennedy said in a statement to the New York Times.
Friends have also spoken out against Robert’s rhetoric, including writer Blake Fleetwood, who called Robert an ‘inspiration’ and asked why he was ‘risking his whole life’ of activism by ‘taking on this crusade.’
‘Why is he blowing his whole life’s work?’ Fleetwood asked, as quoted by the New York Times.
And Mike Papantonio, another friend who is a lawyer and talk show host, told the news outlet that: ‘Sometimes you want to shake him and say, ‘Jesus Christ, Bobby, pay attention to something else.’ But at the end of the day he’s committed to it. The jaws are locked.’
While Douglas Kennedy, a correspondent at Fox News, didn’t condemn his brother specifically, he did speak out in favor of vaccinations. ‘I am vaccinated. I got vaccinated as soon as I was able,’ he told the New York Times.
Douglas added that Robert ‘probably has the most natural political talent of not only everybody in our family in this generation but anybody I have ever met. Most of the time he is motivated to use those talents for good purpose.’
Robert became an environmental advocate earlier in the 2010s, before devoting his passion to the anti-vaccine movement. He made his comments about the Holocaust during a Washington rally on Sunday that was organized by his anti-vaccine nonprofit group
His comments were widely condemned as offensive, outrageous and historically ignorant. Anne Frank is pictured in Amsterdam at age 12 in 1940
Robert didn’t only ruffle feathers with his Anne Frank comment, but drew the fury of White House top health expert Dr. Anthony Fauci when he published a book in November called ‘The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.’
After the book was published, Fauci said in a Yahoo News interview that its statements would ‘hurt people’ and said: ‘It’s very unfortunate because I don’t think he is inherently malicious. I just think he’s a very disturbed individual.’
Robert has a past cloaked in adultery, according to the book ‘RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream,’ written by , author Jerry Oppenheimer.
He allegedly cheated on his first wife Emily Black multiple times and struggled with heroin abuse while the two were students at the University of Virginia, sources close to him told Oppenheimer.
The two married in 1982 and, less than two years later, Robert was on his way to rehab in Rapid City, South Dakota, when he reportedly suffered an almost fatal overdose of heroin on the flight there.
He was found with the drug on the flight and charged with heroin possession and sentenced to community service.
Robert isn’t the only member of the Kennedy family to have struggled with the disease of addiction and depression. The family came together in 2019 to mourn 22-year-old Saoirse Kennedy Hill, who died of an accidental overdose at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Emily stood by Robert while he eventually got sober and the couple, who had two children together, divorced after 12 years. Before they even finished finalizing their divorce, Robert allegedly proposed to his second wife, Mary.
During their 18-year marriage, which ended in 2010 and was followed by Mary’s suicide in 2012, Robert allegedly had an ‘astronomical number’ of affairs and kept track of some in a diary that was leaked to the New York Post in 2013, reportedly writing that his greatest flaw was his ‘lust demons.’
Before she died by suicide, Mary allegedly told a close friend that she ‘feared for her life’ and claimed that Bobby ‘repeatedly told her that she would be ‘better off dead,’ and that it would be ‘so much easier’ if she killed herself,’ Oppenheimer wrote in his book.
Robert went on to become an environmental advocate who led the charge to clean up the Hudson River in New York.
Robert told the New York Times in an email that his vaccine hesitancy began when he was working to sue coal-burning plants emitting toxic mercury emissions linked to brain damage.
‘Women started attending my speeches — they were moms of intellectually disabled children who believed their kids were vaccine injured,’ Robert said.
He also said that the mother of a child with autism came to his Cape Cod home with pages of studies defending conspiracy theories about a link between vaccines and autism.
