RFK Jr. Is a Conspiracist and MAGA Extremist

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has feigned alignment as a political “independent,” his extremist platform proves he and Donald Trump are in lockstep. From supporting Project 2025 to supporting a national abortion ban and restrictions on IVF, Kennedy Jr. has shown he’s nothing but a MAGA extremist in disguise.

• RFK Jr. supported the same 15-week federal abortion ban championed by former Vice President Mike Pence before attempting to walk back his comments.
• RFK Jr. “left the door open” for supporting the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for an authoritarian takeover of government.
• RFK Jr. is “one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists” and made a fortune off of dangerous and debunked conspiracy theories that encourage parents not to vaccinate their children.
• RFK Jr. would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election. He allies himself with election deniers and says that the election system is rigged.
• RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in climate change and says it’s a pretext for totalitarianism.

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Abortion

• As early as 1978, RFK Jr. said he was “against abortion myself on a moral basis.”
• He continued to hold that belief, and in 2005, RFK Jr. said he was “pro-life.”
• At a campaign event in Iowa, RFK Jr. said he supported the same federal 15-week abortion ban championed by former Vice President Mike Pence before his campaign attempted to walk it back.
• RFK Jr. supported state-level abortion bans by saying, “I think the states have a right to protect a child once the child becomes viable.”
• His running mate Nicole Shanahan is best known for her war on IVF.

Fascism and Democracy

• RFK Jr. would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election, and allies himself with 2020 election-denier activists associated with “Stop the Steal.” He has repeatedly implied that legitimate state elections regulations, party rules, and polls are “rigged.” He also alleged that election fraud took place in 2004.  
• RFK Jr. “left the door open” for supporting the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for an authoritarian takeover of government.
• RFK Jr.’s Super PAC, American Values 2024, is being openly funded by extreme right-wingers, because it gives them “more bang for their buck” than donating to Trump.
  • RFK Jr. has received $25 million from banking heir Timothy Mellon, a major Trump donor who also funds anti-immigrant campaigns.
  • RFK Jr. has received millions of dollars in donations from small donors who have given to right-wingers.
  • More than 500 of RFK Jr.’s biggest donors gave to Trump in 2020.
  • RFK Jr. has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from dark-money MAGA megadonor Robert Bishop, who gave more than a million dollars to Trump and Republicans in 2016 and 2020.
• RFK Jr. has said he would consider pardoning the January 6th rioters, saying “I want to hear every side” and “I would look at individual cases.” He said “reasonable people … tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection” and complained about the “harsh treatment” of the rioters. He cast the insurrection as a partisan feud, saying, “Both establishment parties are using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions.”
• RFK Jr. has repeated Russian propaganda that Putin invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country.

Climate

• Dozens of RFK Jr.’s former colleagues in the environmental movement signed a letter calling him “a dangerous conspiracy theorist and a science denier.” They said, “We can’t, in good conscience, let him continue co-opting the credibility and successes of our movement for his own personal benefit.”
• RFK Jr. has called climate change a manufactured problem meant to “clamp down totalitarian controls.”
• RFK Jr. has criticized clean energy subsidies, opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, opposes government regulations to reduce carbon emissions, and has no meaningful policy proposals to curb global warming.
• RFK Jr. was pushed out of Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council for his anti-science views and support of Donald Trump.

Public Health 

• RFK Jr. has been the face of the anti-vax movement and has made false and misleading claims for years that push debunked conspiracies about vaccines that have been proven safe.
• Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group RFK Jr. founded, is a “leading spreader of anti-vaccine falsehoods” which was removed by Facebook and Instagram for spreading medical misinformation.
• RFK Jr. has claimed vaccines cause autism, which has been proven to be false. He has also blamed vaccines for autoimmune diseases, developmental disorders, and allergies.
• RFK Jr. traveled to Samoa to support anti-vaccine activists, and shortly afterward a measles outbreak killed 83 people.
• RFK Jr. sued the FDA, claiming the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t work.