June 26, 2023, Bill Maher, host of the Club Random Podcast, interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2024 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party (video above).
They discussed the Kennedy family’s political history, legacy media’s fierce opposition to his bid for the presidency, ideological changes within the Democratic Party, the tragic assassination of his father mere minutes after winning California’s Democratic Primary in 1968,1 and why the claim that vaccines are “safe and effective” is false.
Regulatory Capture Is a Threat to Public Health
Kennedy highlights the link between regulatory capture by Big Pharma and the lack of vaccine safety studies. He points out that in his career as an environmental lawyer, he spent a great deal of time suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its approval of toxic chemicals, so he was well aware of the kinds of conflicts of interest present.
Thus, when he was dragged into the vaccine safety issue, the realization that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were also compromised by industry came as no great surprise. As he told me when I interviewed him back in March 2023:
“I’ve been an environmental attorney and advocate for 40 years, and I saw the impact of agency capture. That’s why I was able to recognize it so easily when I saw it in the pharmaceutical industry. All these agencies are captured. The pharmaceutical industry owns the National Institutes of Health … CDC, FDA. The coal and oil industry and the pesticide industry own the EPA.”
Kennedy also points out the importance of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, which granted vaccine makers immunity from liability when children were injured by their vaccines.
This law was passed because vaccine makers admitted vaccines were unavoidably unsafe, and they could not afford to make vaccines if people were allowed to sue them for damages. So, the government created a federal vaccine court to adjudicate these cases and pay out damages.
Importantly, vaccine makers were given blanket immunity “no matter how grievous the injury, no matter how reckless the behavior, no matter how shoddy their manufacturing and testing processes,” Kennedy says, adding, “and the reason we gave them that liability shield is because they were able to convince the Reagan White House that vaccines could not be made safe. They’re going to injure certain people.”
So, why is there even an argument about this, when vaccine makers, decades ago, admitted vaccines could not be made safe for everyone, and government agreed?
Vaccine Injuries Are Common, but Underreported
The next question is, are vaccine injuries rare? And if so, how rare? According to the CDC, vaccine injuries are very rare, affecting only 1 in 1 million. However, they’ve known this is a lie since 2010, when the CDC finally studied that question. The so-called Lazarus Study2 revealed that the real-world injury rate is 2.6%, or about 1 in 37 people — a far cry from 1 in 1 million.
As noted by the authors of that study, “Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported … fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” They also stressed that “Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of ‘problem’ drugs and vaccines that endanger public health.”3
Maher tries to argue that just because someone experiences a problem after a vaccine, that doesn’t mean the vaccine caused that problem. People have underlying conditions and the like. However, as noted by Kennedy, vaccine makers are supposed to design products that are safe for all people, not just the super-healthy minority.
After all, more than half of the American population have chronic diseases that might make them more prone to vaccine injury, so arguing that underlying health problems are to blame for vaccine injuries is hardly a solid argument. The question is, if so many people are at risk for vaccine injury, why aren’t we making sure vaccines are as safe as they can possibly get?
Vaccines Did Not Save Millions From Infectious Disease
Kennedy also rebuts Maher’s argument that vaccines have saved millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost to infectious diseases. In 2000, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health reviewed vital statistics data to assess to what degree vaccines and other interventions contributed to the massive decrease in infectious disease mortality in the 20th century.4
Interestingly, medical interventions such as antibiotics and vaccines were found to have played a very minute role. The explanation for the improvement in public health was improvements in nutrition and sanitation.
Kennedy also cites the McKinlay and McKinlay study,5 published in 1977, which found that less than 1% of the decline in mortality from infectious disease in the U.S. in the 20th century could be attributed to modern medical interventions, including drugs, vaccines and surgeries.
Antidepressants and the Rise of Gun Violence
Maher also brings up Kennedy’s views on antidepressants and their potential role in mass shootings.6 Kennedy accurately points out that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) carry a black box warning that these drugs can cause suicidal and homicidal ideation.
So, clearly, they can play a role, and this connection is something Kennedy believes we need to seriously investigate and not simply dismiss offhand as unimportant. Indeed, research shows:
- 31 drugs, including 11 antidepressants, six sedatives and three ADHD medications, account for 78.8% of all cases of violence toward others reported to the FDA.7
- A 2021 analysis of the Violence Project database, which is funded by the U.S. Justice Department, revealed 23% of mass shooters were on psychiatric drugs.8,9
- According to CDC Surveillance for Violent Deaths data, 35.3% of those who committed suicide in 2013 tested positive for antidepressants at the time of death.10,11
But despite obvious warning signals, the government will not study the role of antidepressants in gun violence because they don’t want the answer. And they don’t want the answer because it might force them to take a stand against the drug industry. They also won’t study the role of violent video games and the like, for the same reason.
What the Science Says About the COVID Shot
Maher and Kennedy also discuss the potential risks and benefits of the experimental COVID jab. Maher got it, and shortly thereafter tested positive for COVID. He suspects there’s a link. But he also believes the reason his illness was so mild might have been because he got the jab.
I would argue that COVID was a nothingburger for the vast majority of people, jabbed or not, but Kennedy opts instead to discuss what the science says about the effectiveness of the shots. He cites a Cleveland Clinic study posted online in December 2022, which concluded that:12,13
- The shots provided protection for a couple of months, after which effectiveness wanes precipitously, and after approximately seven months, you are more susceptible to COVID than before (negative efficacy).
- The risk of COVID-19 infection increased with each vaccine dose. Those who had received two doses were 2.6 times more likely to get infected than the unvaccinated, and those with three or more doses had a 3.4 times higher risk.
- The bivalent COVID-19 booster was only 29% effective in preventing infection during the timeframe when it was well-matched to the circulating strain.
While not discussed in this interview, CDC data also reveal that by April 2022, most COVID deaths were occurring among the jabbed and boosted, and this even though numbers are artificially suppressed by only counting people as “vaccinated” or “boosted” if they’re at least two weeks out from their last shot. As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF):14
“In fall 2021, about 3 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted. But by January 202215 … about 4 in 10 deaths were vaccinated or boosted. By April 2022 … data16 show that about 6 in 10 adults dying of COVID-19 were vaccinated or boosted, and that’s remained true through at least August 2022 (the most recent month of data).”
Who Really Shot Robert F. Kennedy?
At the very end of the interview, Kennedy tells the story of his father’s assassination, which took place June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel, minutes after winning the primary election. While Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian man, was caught firing at Kennedy and was convicted of the murder, the real killer was a security guard hired for the event named Thane Eugene Cesar.17
Cesar was a CIA operative who worked for Lockheed and, according to Kennedy, he was a “vocal racist who hated the Kennedys” for their advocacy of civil rights for Blacks. Basically, Sirhan was a distraction. His frontal attack allowed Cesar to fatally shoot RFK from behind. Cesar passed away September 2019 at the age of 77.18 Sirhan, now 79 years old, is still in prison and Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly denied his parole recommended by the parole board.
Sources and References
- 1 CBS News June 7, 2018
- 2 Electronic Support for Public Health
- 3 Electronic Support for Public Health, page 6
- 4 Pediatrics December 1, 2000; 106(6): 1307-1317
- 5 JSTOR Summer 1977; 55(3): 405-428
- 6, 11 Psychreg.org January 26, 2021, Updated January 30, 2023
- 7 PLOS One December 15, 2010 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015337
- 8 VOA History of Mass Shooters June 1, 2021
- 9 Wate.com June 14, 2023
- 10 CDC MMWR August 19, 2016; 65(10): 1-42
- 12 MedRxiv December 19, 2022
- 13 Open Forum Infectious Diseases June 2023; 10(6): ofad209
- 14 KFF November 30, 2022
- 15 KFF Health System Tracker April 21, 2022
- 16 CDC Rates of COVID Cases or Deaths by Age Group and Vaccination Status
- 17 Justice for RFK
- 18 Daily Mail September 12, 2019
