RFK Jr.’s Month of Magical Thinking

If you had to hand it to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for one thing—and you certainly do not—at least the guy’s consistent.

Over the last month, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, best known for his vaccine conspiracies and entirely-too-frequent dalliances in animal mutilation, has been pumping out a steady stream of plans to “make America healthy again” that are based, well, not entirely in reality.

On Tuesday, Kennedy claimed to have “an understanding” with major food manufacturers to phase out food dyes by 2026, saying that “four years from now, we are going to have most of these products off the market.” But that splashy announcement was mostly based on what would be voluntary commitments that many of the biggest players in the food industry have not yet agreed to, according to Axios.

A voluntary phase-out is also hardly iron-clad. “History tells us that relying on voluntary food industry compliance has all too often proven to be a fool’s errand,” Peter Lurie, a former Food and Drug Administration official told The New York Times.

Next came Kennedy’s whopper during an interview on Fox News, where he claimed that when his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, the rate of chronic disease in America was just 3%, compared to 60% today. In reality, according to fact-checkers at The Washington Post who awarded that claim “four Pinnocchios,” that number was 44.5%. In fact, the rate was likely higher, since people were less likely to be diagnosed with things like hypertension at the time.

Then, of course, there’s Kennedy’s disturbing and easily dispelled myth-making about autism. Kennedy has continued to cast autism as an “epidemic” that is “characterized by profound impairments,” in what can only be described as willful ignorance of the vast spectrum of ways that autism presents itself. Kennedy’s statements—and apparent plans to use private data to track autistic people—have prompted an outcry from autistic people and scientists alike.

On Friday, a group of some 160 scientists announced the formation of a group called the Coalition of Autism Scientists in direct response to Kennedy’s falsehoods. “The Coalition of Autism Scientists came together to demand respect for autism research,” Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research at Boston University and the leader of the group, wrote in a statement. “Instead of focusing on questions that have been asked and answered, limited and valuable research dollars must focus on what we don’t yet know about autism so that we can meet the urgent needs of autism individuals and their families.”

The question, of course, is what Kennedy is up to with all of this misdirection. On one hand, there’s the possibility that he is a true believer in the conspiracies he peddles. On the other, there’s the far likelier scenario: that he knows it’s precisely where his power lies.