When you create a monster

 

He didn't think the leopard would eat HIS face.

Kennedy visited the family of the second child to die in the Texas measles outbreak for a trip that was billed as an effort to better understand the federal response to the disease. Buried near the bottom of an X post about his visit, Kennedy conceded that the measles vaccine is “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.” He also said the government was providing “needed MMR vaccines.”

That statement went off like a bomb in MAHA-land, where it’s taken as scripture that basic sanitation and vitamin A are the real way to avoid measles, which (they add) isn’t that serious of a disease anyway.

  Bulwark

Because that's what he told them?

Kennedy has a long history of criticizing the measles vaccine, which—to be abundantly clear—is empirically effective and may well constitute one of the great medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century. He said in a video recently released by his Children’s Health Defense group that it’s possible the measles vaccine is causing more deaths than measles itself. He’s been blamed for fueling anti-MMR vaccine sentiments in Samoa before and during a fall 2019 measles outbreak that ended up killing 83 people.

As recently as last month, Kennedy did an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity at a Steak 'n Shake where he expounded on the supposed dangers of the measles vaccine.

Still, Kennedy’s supporters were already growing restless in early March, when he wrote an op-ed amid the measles outbreak saying the vaccine should be available to people who want it.

We've seen this before. No! I won't wear a mask! And, furthermore, I'm going to rip yours off your face if you try to wear one. MAGA!

Others groped for conspiracy theories to defend Kennedy. Kim Iversen, a former host of the Hill’s daily talk show, speculated on her own show in March that nefarious forces were deliberately spreading the measles in Texas to make Kennedy look bad.

[...]

Former One America News host Liz Wheeler, whose YouTube channel has more than 400,000 subscribers, accused Kennedy of no longer being “based.”

If only.

This brewing discontent with Kennedy among the MAHA faithful is also one of the forces behind the obviously fake but increasingly popular “RFK blackmail” conspiracy theory I touched on last week. In this telling, Kennedy only stopped being “based” because someone—presumably Israel—is blackmailing him with some unspecified but damaging material.

Worse than what he publicly admits to himself?