Trump Bashes Vaccines, Recounts Rally Shooting in Leaked Call With RFK Jr.
Children can be a blessing, bringing joy and wonder to the lives of their parents — they can also leak your private phone calls with the former president and cause you embarrassment on the national stage. It’s a mixed bag.
While Robert Kennedy III might be too old for his father to ground him, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is probably pretty pissed at his son.
On Tuesday, the younger Kennedy — an actor — posted then quickly deleted a video of his father speaking on the phone with former President Donald Trump.
“I am a firm believer that these sorts of conversations should be had in public. Here’s Trump giving his real opinion to my dad about vaccinating kids this was the day after the assassination attempt,” Kennedy III wrote in the now deleted X — formerly Twitter — post, which he claimed he removed “for mistaking sarcasm for real life.”
In their conversation, Trump riffs at length on his concerns about vaccines — a pet issue for Kennedy, a longtime vaccine conspiracy theorist — discusses his brush with death at a weekend rally in Pennsylvania, and seemingly offers Kennedy a position in his administration.
“Anyway, I would love for you to serve,” Trump tells Kennedy. “I think it would be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re gonna win — we’re gonna win — we’re way ahead of the guy.”
The former president then described his conversation with President Joe Biden following an assassination attempt against Trump on Saturday.
“He was very nice actually, he called me,” Trump told Kennedy. “He said, ‘Why did you choose to move to the right?’ Because I was looking straight on. I said, I was showing a chart — I didn’t have to tell him the chart was on all the people pouring into our country — but I just turned my head to show the chart. And it sounded like the world’s largest mosquito, and it was, it was a bullet. What do they call that, an AR-15 or something? That’s a big gun,” he added.
The bulk of the conversation was focused on Trump’s musings on the perils of vaccinations.
“I agree with you, man,” Trump says. “Something’s wrong with that whole system, and it’s the doctors you find.”
“Remember I said I want to do small doses. Small doses,” the former president added. “When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby.”
The clip was quickly picked up by opponents of both Kennedy and Trump. “RFK Jr. was recruited to run by MAGA Republicans, his candidacy is funded by MAGA’s biggest donor, and now we learn he’s colluding with MAGA to help Donald Trump win,” DNC Communications Adviser Lis Smith said in a statement. “He has no path to victory in this race and is nothing more than a spoiler for Trump.”
Kennedy, who said very little in the video, was “mortified” by the publication of the exchange, and apologized for the leak on Tuesday morning. “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” he wrote on X. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”
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