U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates
(LifeSiteNews) –– Former President and presumptive Republican White House nominee Donald Trump took a swipe Friday at independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s vaccine opposition Friday, claiming his views were “fake” on an issue that has threatened to peel off some of Trump’s ardent supporters.
On April 26, Trump unleashed a barrage of criticism on Kennedy, nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and son of the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy, that focused primarily on his far-left record on environmental issues. Near the end of the 45th president’s Truth Social post, however, he added, without elaboration, “His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy. Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!”
Two days later, Trump posted a reaction to Kennedy’s recent interview with HBO host Bill Maher. “He said that ‘No Vaccine is safe and effective,’ and then said ‘I would never say that, I’m not anti-vaccine!’ Where did that come from?” Trump asked. “Maher defended the vaccine, which Junior’ actually seemed to agree with (WOW!), and then told him that his poll numbers have crashed. No Republican can vote for this guy. MAGA2024!”
On April 27, Kennedy responded to Trump via X/Twitter, challenging the president to a debate on what he called a “barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims” about him and faulting Trump for “let[ting] Big Pharma and his corrupt bureaucrats run roughshod over him as President.”
When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged. President Trump's rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate.…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 27, 2024
The COVID-19 vaccines were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, which Trump has consistently refused to disavow despite a steadily growing body of evidence linking the shots to severe health issues.
Since leaving office, he repeatedly promoted the jab as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.” In January 2023, he dismissed potential safety issues by suggesting that “problems” were in “relatively small numbers” while stressing that “some people say that I saved 100 million lives worldwide.” At the time, mRNA technology pioneer and prominent COVID establishment critic Dr. Robert Malone revealed that his efforts to encourage Trump to change his mind on the subject had “no impact.”
Last June, Trump brushed off an audience member who told him “we have lost people because you supported the jab,” answering that “everybody wanted a vaccine at that time,” “I was able to do something that nobody else could have done,” “I never was for mandates,” and “there’s a big portion of the country that thinks that was a great thing.” He repeated that answer in an interview the same month with Fox News’s Bret Baier, lamenting that “as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about, because for some reason it’s just not” and stressing he had no regrets about his administration’s overall COVID response.
Trump’s COVID record was seen as one of the former president’s biggest vulnerabilities in his 2024 campaign. It did not prevent him from easily securing the Republican nomination, but is believed to have given Kennedy, a longtime critic of the medical establishment, an opening to win over jaded conservative voters who would otherwise reject him for his liberal views on most issues.
Polls currently indicate a razor-thin popular vote but a 312-225 victory for Trump in the Electoral College. So far, Kennedy draws roughly the same number of votes from both Trump and Biden. But given how close many are predicting the election to be, concern persists over how even small defections could impact the outcome, especially if Trump keeps going out of his way to remind voters of how they differ on the vaccine question.
U.S. citizens: Demand Congress investigate soaring excess death rates