President Donald Trump has been publicly tangled up with WWE since the ’80s. Whether you despise the man for what he represents and the societal norms he erodes, or if you think he’s literally God’s gift to the freest country on Earth, Trump Plaza hosting back-to-back WrestleManias, Trump himself shaving Vince McMahon’s head at WrestleMania 23, and Vince’s estranged wife Linda filling a cabinet position in BOTH Trump administrations have all ensured that whatever the brazen self-promoter does to reshape our government, the average WWE fan doesn’t see that as reflecting on their chosen form of entertainment or the people who create it. Trump’s just always been there.
WWE’s new association with President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, is dangerous and should be f*cking inexcusable.
Yet the only coverage many wrestling news sites seem to have given this development is Jim Cornette’s reaction to it, which mostly called out things about RFK himself and not his policies, and the one easily found mainstream article pretty much just shows fans (rightfully?) saying that maybe WWE should cut back on the alcohol and Slim Jim ads before advising kids on how to get healthy.
Very little is said about RFK, a lawyer with no medical training, wanting to reduce the use of life-saving vaccines in the United States as much as possible, despite him continually taking actions toward this goal. He might tell the public that he just wants safer vaccines, but the science-minded and those in the organized skepticism movement know that RFK has been a staunch anti-vaxxer for literal decades, and his actions may have led to real deaths already.
In Samoa in 2018, two babies died from receiving an improperly prepared measles vaccine, leading the island nation to temporarily halt all measles vaccinations. The following year, RFK visited Samoa and encouraged the government to continue the vaccination “respite,” and to use it as sort of an experiment to see if the shot was actually all that helpful. Shortly thereafter, a measles outbreak made thousands of Samoans sick and killed 83 people, most of them small children.
Despite this, and his financial interests in peddling an anti-vaccine narrative, RFK would go on to become Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health. In 2023, while still campaigning for the presidency as an independent, RFK pledged the federal government would take a “break” from infectious disease research once he was elected, to focus more on “chronic disease.” RFK subscribes to the “terrain theory” of disease, which insists that if your body is healthy, pathogens can’t hurt you.
“There’s a heavy tone of eugenicist social Darwinism in that thinking,” says David Gorski, surgical oncologist and managing editor of the Science-Based Medicine blog. “The idea is if you totally control your own health, then if you’re not healthy, it’s your fault.”
But does RFK really believe it? Does he really believe that vaccines don’t work, and/or that they’re harmful?
“He believes whatever is convenient for his purposes,” says William Matthew London, professor emeritus of public health at Cal State LA and compiler of an exhaustive list of RFK’s anti-science actions and talking points. “He appears to believe his own bullsh*t.”
In direct contradiction to his promise to the Senate in general and to physician and Senator Bill Cassidy in particular, that he wouldn’t change existing vaccine recommendations, RFK himself issued a statement on May 27 that COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. RFK’s appointed members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) later went on to stop recommending childhood flu vaccines that contain thimerosol, a mercury compound that some claim causes autism but has never been shown to be dangerous, despite extensive testing. The childhood Hepatitis B vaccine may be next on the chopping block.
“He is anti-vaccine as hell, no matter what he says,” Gorski says of RFK. “Do not underestimate his determination to eliminate as many vaccines as he can, or eliminate access to as many vaccines as he can.”
In an unprecedented move, RFK fired all 17 members of ACIP in June, claiming each one had a conflict of interest. “Which they don’t,” London says. On June 11, RFK appointed only 8 new members, “only one of whom is remotely qualified,” Gorski says, “and the rest are either unqualified or anti-vaxxers.” The terrifying thing is that ACIP’s decisions have real-world consequences. “Their recommendations have historically affected insurance coverage,” London says. If a vaccine is on the CDC immunization schedule, insurance companies have to cover it. If it’s not — they don’t.
Robert Malone, a member of RFK Jr.’s new ACIP, says he “embraces” being called an anti-vaxxer.
At the same time, though, insurance companies operate in the real world of dollars and cents, and they know (a lot better than the average anti-vaxxer does) that vaccines cost a fraction of what it takes to care for people who get sick with a debilitating disease. So maybe some (but maybe not all?) continue to cover them, just to save themselves money. “It provides some degree of hope,” London says.
In reality, though, we can’t know for sure what happens in the coming years. “HPV vaccines may very well be next,” Gorski says, and who’s to say RFK won’t go on the attack against the measles vaccine again? What happens if ACIP declines to recommend ANY vaccinations?
“It’s not hyperbole [to say] that kids will die,” London says. “Sometimes it takes catastrophes to wake people up.”
On June 25, RFK said at a meeting of the international vaccine agency, Gavi, that the U.S. was ceasing monetary contributions to the group. Gavi says it has assisted in vaccinating over 1 billion children worldwide, saving 20 million lives. The U.S. had been one of the largest financial supporters of Gavi, providing about 13% of its budget.
If you’d like to see WWE reverse course on its arrangement with RFK Jr., contact the only people they listen to — the sponsors. These include Slim Jim, Snickers, Cricket Wireless, Cash App, and more. Emails, social media posts, and even hand-written letters help tell them you care about this topic.
AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.
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