Trump-Kennedy Conversation Leaked: Vaccine, Attack, and Joe Biden Topics

Robert F. Kennedy III, the son of the office-seeker President of the United States Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted on X (formerly Twitter – ed.) on Tuesday a recording of a telephone conversation his father had with Donald Trump – reports ABC News. “I truly believe that these types of conversations should be held publicly. Here's Trump telling my dad his real views on vaccines. (…) This is not some cheap deepfake, this is the truth,” the 39-year-old wrote in the now-deleted post. According to him, the conversation between the rival candidates was recorded on Sunday, the day after Donald Trump assassination attemptwhich occurred at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Although the recording has since disappeared from Robert F. Kennedy III's account, copies of it have survived online. One of them was shared on X by Meridith McGraw, a political correspondent for Politico. It includes a fragment of the conversation, in which Donald Trump says he “agrees” with Kennedy. “There's something wrong with this whole system,” the former president says, referring to the American health care system.

Then the former president repeats the scientifically debunked claims about the supposedly serious side effects of vaccinations. “When you give a child a vaccine that's a combination of 38 different vaccines that looks like it's for a horse, not a five or ten-pound child … and then you see that child suddenly start to change dramatically,” Trump continues. “And then you hear that it has no effect, right?” he adds. “But we talked about this a long time ago,” he says to Kennedy, moving on to the next topic.

As Reuters notes, Trump's words on vaccinations “echo some of the earlier views of Kennedy,” who “has been spreading disinformation about vaccinations for years.”

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The next bit of the exchange between the rival candidates is ambiguous, but ABC News suggests it may represent an attempt to encourage Kennedy to support Trump's campaign. “I would love for you to do this. I think it would be very good and important for you. And we will win. We will win. We are way ahead of this guy,” Trump tells Kennedy.

The former president then moves on to describe his last conversation with – as the context suggests – the president of the United States. Joe Biden. – It was really, really nice – he admits, probably referring to Biden's phone call after the attempt on Trump's life. – He asked me how I knew to turn to the right (at the moment of the shot – ed.). (…) I told him I was just showing the graph. (…) I turned my head to show the graph and something hit me. It sounded like the world's largest mosquito. It was a bullet – added Trump.

In a tweet published Tuesday afternoon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained that the recording of the conversation was made because Trump called him while he was recording another video. “I should have immediately told the cameraman to stop filming. I am horrified by the publication of this video. I apologize to President Trump,” the politician added. Trump's campaign, asked by CNN for comment, referred the editors to Kennedy's tweet.

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Joe Biden's campaign said in a statement quoted by CNN that “this video is yet another example of Trump not being trusted to protect Americans' health care.” “Trump and his anti-vaccine crony are spreading dangerous conspiracy theories that threaten the health care that tens of millions of people rely on,” they added.

SEE ALSO: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces Himself as Presidential Candidate, Talks of 'New Page in US Politics'

As CNN notes, Donald Trump has previously expressed his negative attitude toward vaccines. He once said he would defund any public school that enforces a mandatory vaccination program. In turn, his political platform questions the origins of the “unexplained and alarming increase in the incidence of chronic diseases and health problems, especially in children,” the station points out.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also repeatedly spoken about the alleged link between the “epidemic of childhood diseases” and the widespread use of vaccines. He has promoted false theories that vaccinations cause autism. The politician once compared the US vaccination policy to the actions of totalitarian states, adding that in his opinion “Anne Frank was better off when she was hiding from the Nazis” than US citizens in 2022. The falsehood of his claims is confirmed by a number of independent studies.

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