The Making of America's Most Prominent Anti-Vaxxer

December 7, 2025·1 hr 6 min·5 clips

How did Robert F. Kennedy Jr. go from campaigning for Obama to creating his own MAGA spinoff franchise?

Alex Wagner hosts Atlantic staff writer Michael Scherer, who spent over seven hours in direct conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while reporting a cover story on his political evolution. Kennedy, now 71 and serving as HHS Secretary under Donald Trump, was once a committed Democrat, environmental trial lawyer, and rumored future senator from New York who campaigned for Clinton and Obama. Scherer traces three converging threads: a childhood shaped by the assassinations of his uncle and father, a teenage descent into hard drug use followed by decades of 12-step recovery, and a legal career built on exposing corporate contamination of rivers and air. In the early 2000s, mothers began approaching Kennedy at environmental events urging him to investigate thimerosal, a mercury compound in vaccines, and despite initial skepticism he became convinced a grand conspiracy was at work. Kennedy then broadened his anti-vaccine message by fusing it with widespread bipartisan discontent about the healthcare systems profit orientation, rising chronic disease rates, and COVID-era public-health failures. His entry into electoral politics as an independent candidate in 2024 ended in a negotiated alliance with Trump after Democrats refused to engage with him. Scherer describes Kennedy as physically imposing at 71 due to daily weight training and testosterone replacement therapy, and ideologically mercurial, swinging between warm charm and cold combativeness within single conversations. At HHS Kennedy has already cut 25 percent of the workforce, pulled 500 million dollars in mRNA vaccine contracts, and prompted a federal advisory committee to recommend delaying the newborn hepatitis B vaccine. A live hearing showed the scientific breakdown, with only Kennedy ally lawyer Aaron Siri testifying before the vaccine advisory committee because opposing scientists declined to appear. Scherer notes genuine bipartisan concerns Kennedy has latched onto including pharmaceutical advertising, diet, and chronic disease, while also documenting his lack of interest in structured scientific dialogue, as Kennedy routinely dismisses credentialed opponents as bioprostitutes. The reporting was conducted partly aboard Kennedy charter plane, during which news broke that Charlie Kirk had been shot, hours after Kennedy security team had warned him his threat level had crossed a lethality threshold. Scherer frames the entire story as an attempt to model the kind of direct sustained engagement he believes is the only way through the current collapse of scientific and political discourse.

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