Cheryl Gay Stolberg
Appearances
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So for much of his career, RFK Jr. had a pretty kind of unfringy traditional existence. He was a district attorney in Manhattan, and then he really made a name for himself as an environmental lawyer. And he worked on a number of cases cleaning up waterways, including mercury in waterways. And
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Kennedy talks about how he would be going out and giving speeches, and these moms of kids with autism would say to him, you have to start looking at mercury and vaccines. And he would be like, no, no, no, that's not what I do. I'm an environmental lawyer. And then finally, in the early 2000s, Someone who was a college classmate of a sister-in-law of Kennedy wanted to get in touch with him.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And she showed up at the family compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, with a big stack of documents. And Kennedy comes to the door, and she's like, I want you to look at this. And he says, I have house guests, and we're going sailing. Okay. And he left. So she waited him out. And he finally said to her, if I look at these things, will you leave? And she said yes.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So he starts reading the scientific studies and the abstracts. And he says that he was just struck by this kind of delta between what the public health agencies were saying and what he was reading. Now, what exactly this Delta is, it's not really clear, but he starts to use his name to open doors.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And he gets a meeting with Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease specialist, and he goes to see Francis Collins, the head of the NIH. And none of these meetings go anywhere, which gives Kennedy the impression that these people are trying to hide something. And he concludes that they're all in the pocket of big pharma.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And he starts feeling like, in his words, this is regulatory capture on steroids. And some of the things he points to, you know, have some truth in them. Like, for example, the NIH does partner with pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs. We saw this in the pandemic, right? Moderna and NIH partnered together to make the COVID vaccine.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And then, of course, Moderna made some profit when it went to market. That doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot trust the efficacy of these drugs or vaccines just because they made a profit. But in RFK's view, this casts a shadow over the whole enterprise. And this is the thing about him. He often says stuff that has kind of like a kernel or a basis of truth.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And there might be a good, non-nefarious explanation for it. But Kennedy's not really interested in that explanation. In the case of vaccines, he decides something suspicious is afoot. So what does he do with this suspicion? So what he does is he starts an advocacy organization, and he names it Children's Health Defense, and he's gung-ho examining every aspect of vaccine safety.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And over the years, he and Children's Health Defense filed more than 30 lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and various public health measures. And he really embraces this crusade against vaccines.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So the pandemic gives Bobby Kennedy an opportunity to bring his ideas to a wider audience. And remember how I said that Biden's vaccine mandates just really triggered this incredible backlash?
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Well, who do you think was leading the backlash? It was Kennedy.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
We had this Defeat the Mandates rally in Washington in 2022. What we're seeing today is what I call
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So he's had a remarkable journey, Sabrina. You know, he comes from this storied American family, the Kennedy political dynasty, but he's also a black sheep kind of within his own family. He's had a lot of disagreements with his relatives, most recently his cousin Caroline Kennedy. And he holds these extremely anti-establishment views that you talked about. He's anti-pharma.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
He made some pretty controversial statements there. He basically compared vaccine mandates to Hitler's Germany.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
He said that, well, at least, you know, back in Germany, you know, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
In essence, saying that there was no escaping Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Well, certainly stuff that made a lot of people think that he was a conspiracy theorist, yeah. But...
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
In people who feel marginalized, in people who feel unseen. My brother had asthma.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
The answers he offers are often cherry picking the science in a way that takes it out of context. But he's speaking to something that people are feeling, that anger that we talked about earlier and that sense that like something is wrong. And he finds himself the leader of this very diverse and very large movement. So at what point does he decide to run for president?
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So he announces he's going to run for president in April of 2023, goes to Boston to make the announcement against the Kennedy backdrop, and he's going to challenge Joe Biden. And not surprisingly, he's a Kennedy. He's doing it as a Democrat. He's going to wage a primary challenge to an incumbent president. And that's a pretty tough task. And eventually he realizes that he can't do it.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And about six months later, in October, he announces he's going to run as an independent. But eventually it becomes clear that he's not going to win. And he became convinced that the best way to present and bring forward the issues he really cared about would be to partner up with Donald Trump. And you can imagine what a shock this is, certainly to his family, who are, you know, aghast.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
I mean, they've all come out for Biden, and now to see that he's partnering with Trump? But Kennedy is convinced that Trump will give him the power, the platform, the latitude that he needs to To advance this medical freedom agenda.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
He wouldn't say he's anti-vaccine. He's a vaccine skeptic. And he's skeptical of a lot of things, everything from vaccines to ultra-processed foods. And it might be surprising that these views could be held by the future health secretary of the United States. But they're kind of seeping into the mainstream and they've coalesced around this movement, MAHA, Make America Healthy Again.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
I went to a Trump rally in Georgia a few weeks before the election, and Kennedy was there. And they were very simpatico, and Kennedy just got wild applause from the Trump crowd. I mean, he was really a showstopper.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Yes, exactly. And suddenly you started hearing, you know, conservatives talking about ultra-processed foods and, you know, big pharma and regulatory capture and all of these catchphrases that were part of Kennedy's rhetoric.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So this is a $64,000 question, right? You know, we saw on the first day of his hearings, Kennedy is kind of reeling back in. on the vaccines. When he was asked about vaccines, he insisted he supports them, and he names in particular the measles and the polio vaccines.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And he tries to steer the focus towards addressing things like obesity and chronic diseases, which are issues that have a broader base of support.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
But should he be confirmed, he would have broad latitude over a huge, sprawling agency that is responsible for Medicare and children's health and the Food and Drug Administration, which approves medicines, the CDC, the nation's public health agency, the NIH, the biomedical research enterprise. God, it's vast. It's vast.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
He would, for instance, oversee the Vaccine for Children program, an $8 billion program that provides vaccines for more than half the nation's children, kids in low income and working class families. And would he be able, Cheryl, to just cancel that, for example? No. No.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
It's a legislatively created program, but he would have authority as secretary over the contracts that that program signs with drug makers. He would be able to decline to enter contracts or amend contracts. So he could exercise his authority in that way. Cheryl, what do public health folks think? What are they saying to you? They're terrified.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
I can't even begin to tell you the terror that I'm hearing. They are worried that Americans will stop vaccinating their children, that there will be a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, and they're worried about a bird flu epidemic. The CDC says right now that the risk to humans is low. There's a lot of fear that that virus could shift and suddenly, you know, jump from person to person.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And would we be prepared? And is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a staunch critic of mRNA vaccines, the right person to lead the nation through a public health crisis?
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
They're thrilled. They cannot believe that after decades of being on the fringes of American society, suddenly they have power in Washington.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
You know, Sabrina, I think this is the apotheosis of mistrust. Think about what Kennedy's life work has been. His whole life's work, or at least the last 10 or more years, has been to sow distrust in these federal agencies, in the CDC and the FDA and the NIH.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And now that work has catapulted him to a place where he is poised to oversee the very agencies that he is telling Americans do not deserve their trust. So I think that really speaks to something broader in our society, sort of a cultural moment that we're in. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
is emblematic of the mistrust that we are seeing across society, a mistrust in government, in the media, in the pharmaceutical industry, in all manner of authority. This crisis of mistrust has seeped into every corner of American society.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
No. I think it's its own movement. It's a movement that really Kennedy himself embodies and brought to the fore. This is where the crunchy granola left meets the libertarian right. It's a very broad coalition. It includes wellness influencers and New Age environmentalists and also right-wing podcasters and...
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
They come together in this skepticism and antipathy toward the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific establishment. And they embrace everything from like raw milk to don't vaccinate your kids. And they've amassed a considerable amount of political capital. Tell me how that happened. How'd they get to the point of having so much power?
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Well, the concept that Kennedy espouses, he calls it medical freedom, that concept has very deep roots in the United States as far back as the 1700s during a smallpox outbreak in Boston when the Reverend Cotton Mather was promoting inoculation, which was the precursor to vaccination. And someone literally in 1721 threw a bomb through his window. Oh, my God. Cotton mather, you dog. Damn you.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
I'll inoculate you with this. Wow. And in the early 19th and 20th centuries, there were these health freedom advocates. They were homeopaths and naturalists, and they wanted recognition for their way of doing things. So there's always been this kind of deep sort of fringe suspicion of medical practitioners in this country. But there's one place that we often see this, and that's around vaccines.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
So most people would date the modern anti-vaccine movement to 1998 and a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Who published a paper that later got retracted and was debunked many times that asserted the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine caused autism.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Parents were worrying about rising autism rates and the whole issue of vaccine safety kind of spilled out into the public.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And we had hearings on Capitol Hill with a congressman whose grandson had autism and was convinced vaccines were to blame.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
We had Hollywood actors like Jenny McCarthy, who had a child with autism.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Greed. She and her partner at the time, Jim Carrey, led a march, Green Our Vaccines, trying to rally Congress.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Well, it was debunked, but it took some time to do studies. And The Lancet, which published the original Wakefield study, didn't retract it for 12 years. Oh, wow. That's a long time. A long time. And so the movement, the anti-vaccine movement, starts to gain steam around the late 1990s and the early 2000s. 2000s.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And over time, we see parents starting to apply for exemptions to vaccination, religious exemptions. In California, they had a philosophical exemption. It was pretty loose. Pretty much anybody could apply. And as more and more parents applied for exemptions for their children, fewer kids got vaccinated. It's still pretty small numbers.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
though it tended to happen in pockets in small communities, maybe in New York or California. And because of that, those pockets began to be vulnerable.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Any public health expert or vaccine expert will tell you that when vaccination rates go down, the first disease to come back is measles.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
The big moment was an outbreak that happened in Disneyland in California in late 2014 and 2015.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And after that happened, states started cracking down on vaccine exemptions. California, Oregon, Washington all tried to enact legislation making it harder for parents to opt out of vaccination.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Well, it certainly made parents who didn't want to vaccinate their kids mad. What it also did, though, we started to see a turn, a shift in the rhetoric around vaccination. And it wasn't just the kind of crunchy granola. I don't want to put any toxins in my child's body. I want my child to have everything natural. Shifted a little bit to include basically get the government off my back.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Don't tell me what to do. It's a liberty argument, a civil liberties, a medical freedom argument. I should have the freedom to make my own medical choices.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Right. And, you know, the whole argument for vaccines has always been that it's a community-wide activity. It's something that you do to protect yourself against infectious disease, but also to protect your community. And suddenly that argument wasn't flying anymore. Instead of being about the community, it was about me and my kid and what I have the right to do.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic was a perfect storm to allow this anti-vaccine sentiment to flourish.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
First of all, you had the worst public health crisis in a century. You know, people were dying. Everyone was frantic. The economy was shut down. You layer over that Donald Trump. The country wants to get back to work. A mercurial, chaotic president who doesn't really want to listen to the experts.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And you've got this political climate that is erupting around the pandemic.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Resistance to masks and vaccination becomes part of that bigger whole.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Where other kinds of misinformation was flourishing about drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
All of this was brewing in this kind of stew, this anti-establishment environment. Anti-public health, kind of anti-science, anti-pharma soup.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Right, Biden was really worried about it. He thought this misinformation was costing Americans their lives.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
But people start feeling like they're being censored.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Like, what is big pharma hiding from me? They're making all this money with these vaccines. They have government contracts to sell 300 million doses, you know, one for every... American citizen? And what do they know that we don't know? And why are they shutting us up? These conversations start to go out into the broader culture on conservative podcasts.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Joe Rogan and a whole core of kind of Conservative doctors grew up. Robert Malone.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And suddenly this mistrust started to spill over into other topics beyond vaccines.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
People worrying about obesity, fueled by ultra-processed foods.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
People promoting clean living and holistic health and vitamins.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Not that vitamins are bad, but, you know, it's this whole kind of return to nature, natural, holistic feeling and the whole kind of I did my own research crowd.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
Merged with a conservative anger at the liberal elites telling people what to do.
The Daily
How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power
And there's one person who is a natural fit to lead this movement. He's been making these claims for years and he's a big name.