Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Make America healthy Again!
Kennedy is a name like no other. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. honors the legacy left by his father and uncle JFK. But how can you join Trump’s campaign when you come from a historic line of Democrats? Here’s how…
Source: Lilly H. Norberg, L’echo des Boucles, 21 September 2024
Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and why is he siding with Trump?
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to talk about Robert Francis Kennedy Jr without mentioning the career of his uncle, John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the legendary JFK.
At the age of 43, John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the 1960 U.S. presidential election to become the youngest elected president of the United States, and also the youngest president to die, less than three years after entering the White House at the age of 46. He left his mark on U.S. history through his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, his commitment to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, his opposition to the construction of the Berlin Wall, his policy of gender equality and his assassination. He also publicly supported the African-American civil rights movement and the integration of minorities into society.
His brother, Robert Francis Kennedy, father of Robert Francis Kennedy Junior, was U.S. Attorney General from 1960 to 1964, and a candidate in the 1968 U.S. presidential election a few years after his brother John’s death. And so the Kennedy family’s unique destiny continues, as Robert is also tragically assassinated during his campaign.
A lawyer who convicts polluters
It was against this dramatic backdrop that Robert F. Kennedy Jr, only 14 at the time, tried to find his place in the world. In several of his interviews, he talks openly about his addiction to heroin less than a year after his father’s death, and the five years he spent in this hellish state. At the age of 21, he managed to pull himself out of his addiction and went on to do brilliant studies at the London School of Economics and Harvard, among others. He became a lawyer. Having loved nature and outdoor activities since childhood, he began to take an interest in environmental protection. In the mid-1980s, he joined two non-profit environmental organizations: Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Through a series of lawsuits and hard work, Kennedy was able to help these organizations hold the Hudson’s biggest polluters accountable and force them to carry out substantial clean-up work. The Hudson had become so polluted that a long tradition of fishing was in serious jeopardy, and the amount of chemical pollutants was such that the river was literally catching fire.
Kennedy’s name certainly helped to draw attention to the issue and to denounce industrial pollution. The case catapulted Kennedy into the media spotlight. He was invited everywhere and spoke publicly at universities, on radio programs and in numerous interviews. He also co-wrote a book on the subject with John Cronin. He became America’s Mr Environment!
Monsanto next
Never one to rest on his laurels, Kennedy continued his career as a lawyer, taking on agribusiness giant Monsanto. He was one of the lawyers for Dewayne Lee Johnson, who won a landmark case against Monsanto in 2018 where the company was ordered to pay the plaintiff $289 million. In 2014, Dewayne Lee Johnson was diagnosed with incurable cancer of the lymphatic system. In his work, he sprayed – sometimes hundreds of liters at a time – Roundup and especially its professional version, Ranger Pro, Monsanto weedkillers containing glyphosate, a substance suspected of being carcinogenic. After years of litigation, Dewayne Lee Johnson emerged victorious from this battle, and an undeniable link between his cancer and Monsanto’s product was established.
Over the course of his career, Kennedy established himself as an activist lawyer, siding with the weakest to block the overwhelming power of industry and sometimes of government. The Hudson River pollution and the Monsanto product trials are perhaps his best-known battles, but there are so many others. He’s never been afraid to get his hands dirty, take part in protests, whatever the weather, even if it meant going to jail. To find out more, visit his website.
The pharmaceutical industry’s turn
In the early 2000s, he was approached by several mothers of autistic children, including Lyn Redwood. Lyn was a pediatric nurse and her husband a doctor. Lyn had already shared her observations and research with public authorities, and co-authored the scientific article entitled ” Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning ” in 2001. After observing a sudden regression in their child shortly after vaccination, numerous parents, following several years of research and reading, had come to suspect a link between the mercury contained in vaccines (in the form of thiomersal) and their children’s autism. Listening to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak publicly about pollution and the excessively high levels of mercury in fish, they decided he was the right man to shed light on the matter.
A little reluctant at first, Kennedy finally agreed to talk to them and read the scientific documents they had unearthed. For him, this became a point of no return in his career. By taking this issue head-on, his public image changed almost instantly. The pharmaceutical industry is immensely powerful in the U.S., and spends more on advertising than any other industry on American television. As major sponsors of the media, they indirectly influence the content shared with the public.
Despite this, Kennedy, in collaboration with Lyn Redwood, launched the WORLD MERCURY PROJECT in 2016, a public health advocacy organization dedicated to ending exposure to the neurotoxic mercury found in fish, medical products, dental amalgams and vaccines. It was a vast project met with much opposition and accusations of being anti-vaccine. However, the World Mercury Project did gain enough ground to increase public awareness and help bring about some changes in the industry’s ways. Most of the vaccines offered to babies today no longer contain mercury (in the form of thiomersal), although it is still used in the flu vaccine. Let’s just say that the “mercury” fault is only half admitted by the industry itself even today.
Children’s Health Defense
Aluminum, another well-known neurotoxin and adjuvant in most vaccines available today, remains a controversial and debated subject, unresolved to this day. The number of vaccines is increasing year after year, and in some countries and states (notably France), a large number of vaccines are compulsory in order to attend school. Children’s exposure to this adjuvant, mixed with other chemical substances, naturally increases when the doses of the various vaccines are multiplied and new vaccines are added to the old ones. However, studies on the effect of multiple injections during the first year of a baby’s life, the “cocktail effect”, have been little studied to date.
After a few years, The World Mercury Project changed its name to Children’s Health Defense, an organization warning of the pollutants and hazardous exposures that threaten children’s health: pesticides, neurotoxins in food and medical products, processed foods, electro-magnetic waves and many others. Kennedy has been director of Children’s Health Defense for many years, currently on leave.
In 2020, with the advent of lockdowns, masks, school closures and then mRNA vaccines, hastily developed and brought to market without sufficient testing, Kennedy’s organization naturally spoke out on this issue and went against the “consensus” that lockdowns, masks and vaccines were necessary “whatever the cost”. When vaccine mandates were introduced, forcing people to be vaccinated against their will, Kennedy traveled to Europe, to defend the fundamental rights violated by these requirements in many countries. He spoke at a major rally in Germany, encouraging people to resist this pressure and stand firm. He maintained that those who wished to be vaccinated should be able to do so, but that it should under no circumstances be compulsory, particularly with a product that had just come onto the market and had barely been tested. He reminded the public of the numerous lawsuits brought against drug manufacturers in the past. Explaining how compensating sick people injured by their products is an integral part of their business model, and that the entire industry suffers from a high level of corruption, with some of the most powerful lobbies in the world.
Censorship demanded by the US government!
The U.S. government demanded censorship of Children’s Health Defense content on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to invisibilize this opposition from an organization that, over the years, had grown in size and popularity. Partly to counter this censorship and to bring the children’s cause to the media, Kennedy announced in 2023 his candidacy for president. Rejected by the Democratic Party with Biden in the lead, he decided to run as an independent candidate. He also realized that he no longer recognized the Democratic Party of his childhood, which traditionally fought for equality, free speech and against the impunity of industrialists and war lobbies.
At first, his candidacy was entirely ignored by the mainstream media, but as he gained ground, the major networks found themselves obliged to mention his campaign. The media argued that he didn’t stand a chance as an independent, that he would “spoil” the election by penalizing the other two candidates, that he was half-mad (yes, journalism at its best), and so on. Biden’s administration long denied him the protection that is normally provided free of charge to every presidential candidate, and CNN found an excuse to exclude him from the presidential debate and invite only Trump and Biden.
The truth is, his poll numbers were rising and he was becoming harder and harder to ignore.
In the course of his campaign, he discovered that two of his key advisors in the field of chronic disease and obesity, Casey Means (a former surgeon at Standford School of Medicine) and her brother Calley Means (a lobbyist) had also become Trump’s health advisors. Casey recently released a book called ” Good Energy – The surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health“, in which she calls for more holistic medicine and a focus on diet rather than surgery and drugs. She maintains that the root cause of obesity and the epidemic of chronic disease ravaging her country is poor-quality, hyper-processed, toxic food. She maintains that Big Agriculture and Big Pharma have joined forces to get Americans hooked on certain substances to always consume more of them, making them sick and then dependent on drugs for life.
She also points to the total failure of the various health administrations in the United States, FDA, CDC, NIH, etc., whose mission is to control these industries and protect the population. They are largely funded by the very industries they are supposed to oversee, and corruption has reached new heights in recent years, resulting in what Kennedy calls “corporate capture” of public bodies.
Support for Donald Trump’s campaign
Recently, Trump contacted Kennedy and, after some lengthy exchanges, Kennedy announced, to everyone’s surprise, that he wished to suspend his own campaign and lend his support to Trump’s campaign. Nothing seemed more unlikely. Kennedy comes from a long line of Democrats, his whole family are Democrats, his wife, his children…most of his supporters too.
In a long speech to his supporters, he explained his choice in detail. He spoke of his deep disappointment at seeing the Democratic Party deviate from its traditional values, and why he couldn’t imagine working with Kamala Harris (who, by the way, had refused all his calls). He maintained that his views on several issues differ from Trump’s, and that the two had agreed to be able to criticize each other, even while “playing on the same team”.
Beyond their differences, he is now convinced that the two can agree on one overriding issue and that is, of course, the subject of children’s health and the need for action in this area. You can read the last few minutes of his speech here (transcribed).
Wouldn’t we all like to see people devoted to serving the public enter politics?
The candidacy of someone like Kennedy cannot leave us indifferent. After all, don’t we all dream of seeing more people in politics who have long served their communities, who have fought for the less fortunate, for the noble causes they believe in? Why not a Minister of Health who has spent his life caring for patients in public hospitals, holding their hands and making sure they are treated with dignity? A Minister of the Environment who for years has fought to expose and hold to account major polluters, and who refuses to fly his own private jet. And why not a Minister of Education who has worked with children, who knows what a school is and the daily lives of teachers and pupils and, of course, a President who, instead of having made a fortune in a bank for his own account, has shown through his work and his career, his dedication to the country, its nature, its agriculture, and above all, to the most disadvantaged in society.
Wouldn’t we like to see people enter politics who have not spent their time rising through the bureaucracy, but rather have put their knowledge, talent or vocation at the service of others?
In a political landscape where the right-left, Republican-Democrat paradigm is losing its substance, being turned upside down, and where the separation of the two is now blurred, anything can happen. When a Kennedy, who embodies traditional Democratic values possibly more than anyone else in America, comes into the Republican camp, even the media don’t know how to take it anymore. Will Trump, seen by some as the worst of evils, manage to soften his image through the Kennedy ” Make America Healthy Again ” movement? And most importantly, will he stay true to his promises if re-elected?
One thing’s for sure: the children of America, and all the children of the world, deserve clean rivers, clean food, clean air and ethical medicine where financial interests no longer take precedence over people’s health. With this in mind, we can only encourage Robert Francis Kennedy Junior’s mission and wish him well.
