RFK, Jr. Declares Vaccines Exist
[Entire internet sets itself on fire]
I once read a story about an eager, dedicated young nun who volunteered to pose as a criminal so that she could gain access to the inmates at a maximum-security prison. She believed her sacred duty was to convert the worst of the worst—murderers, rapists, gang members, guys who collect pinky fingers for fun—to Christianity.
At first, her Mother Superior adamantly objected, terrified for the girl’s safety. But the fresh-faced sister was resolute. A divine calling wasn’t a summons; it was a subpoena.
The young postulant didn’t arrive at the prison with a Bible tucked under her arm waving a smoking thurible and singing “How Great Thou Art.” For the first time in memory, she removed her habit and her cross necklace and replaced them with an orange jumpsuit and a (temporary) neck tattoo. If these savages were ever going to trust her, they needed to think she was one of them. The guards were in on the plot and conspired to concoct a gruesome criminal backstory for her; she thanked them profusely and promised to pray for them all.
The inmates were wildly skeptical at first. Their new blockmate was younger, softer, quieter, and certainly prettier than any prisoner they’d ever encountered. Physically, she stood out like a kazoo in a string quartet. They alternately taunted, bullied, and harassed her. One day, a guy who was doing life for stabbing an Uber driver who refused to stop at Taco Bell shoved her to the ground.
“What in the actual [rhymes with duck] do you think you’re doing?” she growled, scrambling to her feet and getting right in the guy’s face. “I ate a man’s eyeball for doing that once.”
She was lying, of course—but she knew God would forgive her. More importantly, she had passed their test. If the prison had a newspaper, its front-page headline would have blared The Scrawny Bag of Bones Has Balls After All. Before long and without any of them even realizing how it had happened, the convicts were begging her for sermons between smokes.
Anyone even remotely familiar with how my brain works already knows the epilogue: There was no brave woman of God; no anxious Mother Superior; no knowing guards; no violent throwdown. I made it all up to illustrate exactly the situation I imagine RFK Jr. just walked into.
As you are keenly aware, Kennedy isn’t a politician; he’s a crusader. (And anyone who wants to argue with that might want to take a look at his decades-long history of public service, protecting children, and taking on the biggest polluters in America.) In this analogy, Washington D.C. is a high-security ideological prison, packed to the rafters with political parasites, pharma shills, and backroom dealmakers. Just like my undercover nun had to be strategic, Bobby couldn’t possibly march onto The Hill with a vaccine axe and a stack of arrest warrants, as much as we all prayed—and continue to fervently pray—for that exact scenario. If he did, he’d have been Epsteined before he could even be sworn in. He had to slide in there and convince the rest of the lawbreakers to completely forget everything he had ever said, written, and done. He had to somehow assure them that he was not in fact going to destroy them and their lucrative side-hustles; he was on their side and willing to enable (or at least overlook) their dirty dealings.
And he did it!
“I support the measles vaccine,” he said during his confirmation hearing. “I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS Secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines.”
The swamp was still highly skeptical. He was a known anti-vaxxer. A Pharma- questioning threat to the establishment. An existential danger to profits society. But thanks to powerful, passionate messaging, an extraordinarily mobilized fan base, a last-minute party switch, and a Republican-controlled Senate, Kennedy was given a job in a world where men of principle can be counted in single digits.
MAHA rejoiced. Elizabeth Warren fumed. Pharma quaked.
And then he said it, the equivalent of an undercover nun’s f-bomb in the prison yard: “The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”
I didn’t believe it at first, either. But he did. He said it.
Never mind that he’s said something to that exact effect dozens times before; this time, the bad guys wholeheartedly believed him—and the good guys furiously abandoned him.
Headlines reveled (“‘Most effective way’ to prevent measles is vaccination, RFK Jr. says, in most direct remarks yet”). Crunchy moms cursed (“Measles was around forever—everyone got it! What the f*ck? I’m so disappointed in RFK Jr.”). Libs gloated (“Love the MAHA morons melting down over RFK Jr. telling people that vaccination is the only way to prevent measles.”). Somewhere, surely, a crucifix fell off a wall.
For a huge segment of his base, this wasn’t a surprise departure—it was a blatant betrayal. “I am speechless. Do we keep defending and making excuses? And if so, for how long?” wrote Dissolving Illusions author Dr. Suzanne Humphries. “Is @SecKennedy being blackmailed? Is he bought? Is he or his family being threatened by the real powers that be? Or is he a giant fraud?” asked self-styled “MAHA songwriter” Bryan McPherson. “@SecKennedy is now solidifying himself as a turncoat and coward. He has abandoned those who fought to get him where he is and caved to the evil pharma cartels. I hope the payout is worth it, Bobby,” scorched the “grieving father of [a] daughter murdered by @pfizer,” Allen Martin, whose anger is both palpable and justified.
I know what Kennedy’s shocked, disillusioned, furious former fans and forever haters are going to say: I’m an idiot. A moron. I’m in an abusive relationship with a virtual so-called savior and clearly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome if I’m going to even attempt to defend his latest travesty. People—children!—will die because of this about-face. It’s almost as unforgivable as my willingness to forgive him. I promised that if I was wrong about Kennedy, I’d own it… and here I am, digging my heels in even deeper. You can’t believe you actually thought I was mildly intelligent for a minute there. I ought to be ashamed.
Let me paint you a brutal picture: Imagine you wake up in a hotel room in the middle of the night to find the building is engulfed in flames. You can maybe rouse a few comatose souls on your way out, but you can’t possibly rally the entire hotel and make it out alive. Do you run out alone—or stand still and burn yourself—because if you can’t rescue everyone, why bother rescuing anyone? Or do you do whatever you can to save as many people as you can? And if lives are tragically lost because time wasn’t on your side, does that in any way mean you didn’t care about the people you couldn’t deliver from doom, or that you wouldn’t have saved them if you could have, or that their deaths won’t haunt you forever?
Never mind the gauntlet Kennedy is walking. Forget nuance. To hell with his history. Completely disregard the fact that he was literally the only high-profile political candidate in 2024 even willing to acknowledge vaccine injuries and risk being frog-marched off stage by sock puppets in riot gear. He didn’t say and do everything we wanted, exactly how and when we wanted him to say and do it. Nothing else matters. He’s a traitor. A liar. A fraud. Either that or he’s being blackmailed. Or he sold out. The same supporters who cheered when he swore to dismantle the Deep State and deliver “radical transparency” to the American public are now selling bullseyes with his face on them on Etsy. People are keying their own copies of The Real Anthony Fauci and rage-burning their KENNEDY IS THE REMEDY bumper stickers over the betrayal.
The perceived malfeasance hit especially hard for those in the MAHA movement who apparently expected RFK Jr. to wipe out the entire vaccine schedule overnight, retroactively uninject everyone on the planet, and replace pediatricians with shamans and crystal healers. They wanted him on Day One to transform the FDA into a kombucha co-op and end vaccine mandates with a magical pen made of enameled raw milk powder. They trusted him to blow the lid off the entire decades-old, deeply corrupt, heavily funded inoculation program in less time than it takes to perfect a decent sourdough starter.
Instead they got a sellout who’s practically shilling for Pharma. (Well, not exactly. But he claimed the MMR vaccine is effective. Which it is, to some extent, according to some studies, even though measles poses very little relative risk and all vaccines carry potential side effects. But he didn’t say it causes autism or that the vaccinated can still get it and spread it! Clearly he’s a two-bit con man!)
It wasn’t just disappointing—it was biblical; worse than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s steamy W Magazine spread; the one they shot while he was still married to that other woman we liked better (before she was a paid Pharma-pusher, too).
The truth is, it’s a miracle that RFK Jr. got into the White House at all. His job isn’t to burn his new department down; that would only send the swamp creatures scurrying. It’s to move in, quietly investigate every inch of the place, and ultimately expose every single scumbag hiding in the shadows. In the meantime, there will continue to be carnage. You can hate that fact and also not cancel a man who is passionate about exposing public health corruption because he’s not doing it on your timeline. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Really.
A handful of folks out there still agree with me. On X, journalist Holden Culotta posted a revealing and reassuring thread I encourage any disheartened followers to read. I won’t even try to bullet-point it; it’s too long and too good, but the gist is this: This is not a fight that can be won overnight.
Of course, my own rosy readers rarely disappoint.
And then there are these two pearl-clutching paragraphs from The New Yorker:
As for the vaccines that prevent these diseases, there’s ample reason to doubt whether Kennedy has meaningfully switched up his views. One of his current top advisers has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the polio and hepatitis-B vaccines and to halt distribution of several others. After Kennedy took the helm at H.H.S., he paused a clinical trial for an orally administered COVID-19 vaccine, claiming in a written statement that “four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production.”
Kennedy also postponed the first meetings of the F.D.A.’s vaccine-advisory committee and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “If R.F.K., Jr., starts meddling with ACIP, and fills it with anti-vaccine people or just bad actors—that’s how you can destroy the U.S. vaccine program from the inside out,” [epidemiologist and immunologist Michael] Mina said.
“R.F.K., Jr., is the same person he always was,” [pediatrician and vax-peddler Paul] Offit told me. “He is a virulent anti-vaccine activist. I think he’s going to do whatever he can to make vaccines less affordable and less available.”
Like I said, I know how deep the collective rage and disappointment are running right now. With some notable exceptions like I posted above, X has transformed into a virtual lynch mob, all hunting the same target. They’re not just livid; they want everyone to be as livid as they are, why aren’t you more livid, this is blasphemy! And if RFK were doing no good whatsoever in his new role—if he hadn’t ordered the CDC to change its guidance on fluoride in drinking water, directed the FDA to eliminate the loophole that allows food companies to declare their own products are safe, and forced vaccine fanboy Peter Marks to resign in a delightful fury—or if he were saying, “I was wrong all those years when I said vaccines were risky and unnecessary. I’ve now seen the [invisible] science and all vaccines are safe after all! I plan to make them all mandatory for every man, woman, and child, too,” I promise you I’d be waving a sad white flag while googling “what do you wear to a rage mob?”
But I’m not there yet. And even though I can hear the Vees and the Doc Maliks of the world cursing my impossible, misguided optimism, I’m going to keep holding onto hope like a dog clinging to his favorite squeaky toy. Relative to what RFK Jr. is up against, I still believe he’s the good guy in this awful movie—he’s just trying not to get shivved.
P.S. I recently had the honor and delight of chatting with the brilliant, bubbly Dr. Karin Abrell on the Love & Life Podcast. The topic: COVID trauma *who can relate? Feel free to check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Rumble, or Substack.
P.P.S. Oh, and to all of you who tried to tell me that change.org was yet another mainstream liberal platform that amplifies progressive causes while suppressing conservative ones, you were right. Yesterday, with no warning or notification whatsoever, they disappeared our petition that was based on my Open Letter to RFK, Jr. The last time I’d checked before an alert reader told me it was gone, we had racked up almost 2,000 signatures in two days. Of course I emailed them (and got an auto-reply letting me know I’m in the queue!), and will not let up until I get an explanation. But if I had a membership or any change.org stock, I’d sell them both promptly (I wouldn’t key your computer monitor if you still wanted to support them, though. Just FYI). If you donated to their stupid platform because of this petition, you might want to demand your money back.🤬
Well said, Jenna. In the indomitable words of Jeff Childers (Coffee & Covid), "Let the man work!". 🦅
“Relative to what RFK Jr. is up against, I still believe he’s the good guy in this awful movie—he’s just trying not to get shivved.”
Thank you Jenna. Brilliant post.