Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday, pushing back on claims that he is “anti-vaccine.”
Maher began the segment by pressing Kennedy on running mate Nicole Shanahan, who spoke out against the Moderna vaccine.
“She’s not gonna . . . I think those vaccines need to . . . We need to have, again, true double blind placebo control trials,” Kennedy struggled to explain.
Notably, the results of a phase III double-blind clinical trial of the Moderna vaccine were published in 2021.
Kennedy went on to discuss vaccine skepticism in the American public, possibly fueled by claims he made, saying, “There’s 25% of Americans who believe that they know somebody who was killed by a COVID vaccine.”
It’s true that a 2023 poll concluded that 34% of Americans believe COVID vaccines have contributed to deaths. Although, beyond their initial FDA clearance, multiple studies have shown that COVID vaccines are safe.
Kennedy then spouted a debunked claim that those who took the Pfizer vaccine in a clinical trial saw a 23% increase in death rate.
Maher, who said he himself was an early skeptic, touted the effectiveness of the vaccine in response to Kennedy’s and, eventually, the two came to an agreement, with Maher arguing for “mak[ing] it a case by case basis.”
The pair’s shared agita with vaccine mandates is in contrast with scientists, who hold that a large threshold of populations must be vaccinated for them to be maximally effective.
“I’m not anti-vaccine,” Kennedy said. “I’m called that because it’s a way of silencing me.”
Kennedy’s long history of vaccine skepticism was reported on in a 2005 article originally published by Salon, in which he argued that a link between compounds in vaccines and autism existed. The article was retracted after evidence suggesting critical errors and potential fraud in the cited studies emerged.
Watch RFK Jr. on "Real Time" here:
