RFK Jr.: The Reason Interview

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attracted the interest of libertarians who celebrate his critiques of COVID policy and regulatory capture. He recently appeared as a keynote speaker at the National Bitcoin Conference in Miami and has declared that he will "make sure that your right to use and hold bitcoin is inviolable."

But RFK Jr. also has an authoritarian streak. He has said he wants to prosecute those who fund "climate deniers" or run businesses that emit too much carbon for "reckless endangerment." He declared the NRA to be a "terror group," suggested to NBC News that, as president, he would "order his Justice Department to investigate the editors and publishers of medical journals for 'lying to the public'"; and reportedly vowed to direct health policy "from the Oval Office" through executive orders.

Join Reason's Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller this Thursday at 1 p.m. ET for a discussion of all this and Kennedy's Democratic primary challenge to Joe Biden, a contest in which he's regularly polled in double digits.

Sources cited in this interview:

NEJM: Measles vaccine study  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcp1905181

Cochrane meta-analysis of vaccine studies (no evidence of vaccine-autism link)  https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004407.pub5/full

Our World in Data: Polio Cases and Deaths in U.S., 1910-2019  https://ourworldindata.org/polio

Vaccines are not associated with autism: 2014 meta-analysis of 1.25 million children 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24814559/

AP: US kindergarten vaccination rate dropped again, data shows - https://apnews.com/article/health-immunizations-children-measles-acba3eb975fdfcd41732ed87511387f2

Our World in Data (CDC data): Unvaccinated vs. vaccinated COVID-19 death rate - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status

RFK on lockdowns - https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1244710538933870597?s=20

00:00 Why RFK Jr. is challenging Biden
7:09 Lightning round (guns, drugs, and more)
17:02 Foreign policy and the war in Ukraine
27:17 Free speech and social media
35:19 Cracking down on climate change skeptics
44:39 Vaccines, COVID, and pharmaceuticals
1:08:51 Is RFK Jr. a conspiracy theorist?