Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) argued at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing that a tweet from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron after he received a COVID-19 vaccine was “just pointing out facts.”
Jordan opened his remarks at the hearing for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday discussing an email the White House sent to Twitter to request Kennedy’s post be taken down.
He quoted part of Kennedy’s tweet in which the anti-vaccine activist and now-presidential candidate said Aaron’s death in January 2021 was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration” of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Jordan said the subject line of the email sent to Twitter was “flagging Hank Aaron misinformation,” but he argued that no part of Kennedy’s tweet was inaccurate.
“When you look at Mr. Kennedy’s tweet, there was nothing there that was factually inaccurate. Hank Aaron, real person, great American, passed away after he got the vaccine. Pointing out, just pointing out facts,” he said.
Aaron publicly received the vaccine in early January 2021 to try to encourage more Black Americans to be willing to receive the vaccine. He died later that month, but a medical examiner confirmed that his death was unrelated to him receiving the vaccine.
Aaron was 86; his death was determined to be from natural causes.
But many accounts on social media spread a theory without evidence that Aaron’s death was related to the vaccine, or at least raising suspicion about the circumstances.
Kennedy has raised doubts about the efficacy and safety of vaccines long before the COVID-19 pandemic began; he founded a nonprofit organization called Children’s Health Defense that has been known to spread anti-vaccine misinformation.
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Some accounts on social media throughout the pandemic also sought to speculate about the effects of the vaccine on those vaccinated, implying without evidence that getting the vaccine might have been connected to the person’s death.
Elderly people were considered more susceptible to greater complications and possibly death resulting from the COVID-19 virus, but no evidence exists that a “wave of suspicious deaths” among elderly people after receiving the vaccine occurred.
Kennedy has more recently faced controversy over comments he made last week about a theory that the COVID-19 virus was “ethnically targeted” to attack Caucasians and Black people and protect Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. He denounced accusations of antisemitism and racism being made against him at the hearing, saying they are designed to “silence” him.