In an aside with Martha MacCallum, the long shot candidate for the 2024 Democratic nomination lightly called out the former president ― but even the slightest dig at the twice-indicted Republican candidate can often invite a volatile response.
First, the prominent anti-vaxxer accused President Joe Biden and his administration of censoring him on social media. He has claimed, without evidence, that Biden was behind his ban from Instagram in 2021 over COVID-19 misinformation.
Kennedy then added, “By the way, President Trump censored me, too. Not for any misinformation, but what they called ‘malinformation.’ That means, information, that while true, is inconvenient to the White House, or inconvenient, or clashes with, official orthodoxies.”
Kennedy claimed in 2017 that he had been chosen by Trump to lead a commission on vaccine safety before the former president took office. Kennedy, who would make headlines later for his COVID-19 skepticism, had made numerous debunked assertions linking childhood vaccines to autism. (Before HuffPost shuttered its unpaid contributor platform in 2017, Kennedy wrote several blogs denigrating vaccines; those posts, along with others spreading misinformation about vaccines, have since been removed from the site.)
Trump’s camp at the time said he did meet with Kennedy and discussed a range of topics as the president-elect pondered a committee on autism ― but that he had made no decisions on appointments. The committee never materialized.
Kennedy has enjoyed an amicable rapport with Trump of late while noting he doesn’t agree with many of his policies.
We’ll see if the mutual admiration lasts.
Kennedy appeared at a House hearing on Thursday where he attempted to gaslight his anti-vaccine views and gripe about what he claimed was social media censorship. He was also questioned by Democrats over his recent baseless comment that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people are most immune.