While there is pretty much no chance of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becoming president of anything other than Negative48 (the Texas QAnon cult that hangs around Dallas waiting for his dead relatives to show up), he is nonetheless taking his campaign very seriously. In fact, he recently put it out there that he will announce his running mate on March 26 and that football player Aaron Rodgers and former wrestler/Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura are at the top of his list. Unfortunately, Kyrie Irving is only 31, so he will have to wait until the next election to be the running mate in some nepo baby’s vanity campaign.
Now, if you ask me, RFK Jr. could probably do whole a lot worse than Jesse Ventura, given his own lunacy. At least Ventura was correct about the Iraq War, LGBTQ+ rights, and marijuana legalization before a lot of other people were, and he supports abortion rights and Medicare For All, is anti-war, was in favor of COVID restrictions and tried to unionize the WWF. He also told Virginia that if they wanted their treason flag back, which his state of Minnesota seized while kicking their asses, that it was Minnesota’s “heritage” now.
Rodgers, on the other hand, may be wackier than Kennedy himself. He’s an anti-vaxxer who has claimed that Jimmy Kimmel was on Epstein’s Lolita Express, that Ayahuasca, a hallucinogen, is not a drug because it comes from a plant (unlike, say, weed, shrooms, opium or cocaine) and he puts the toothpaste directly in his mouth before brushing, which is just all kinds of wrong.
Earlier this week, CNN published an article asserting that Rodgers had been known to say that Sandy Hook was fake — co-written by Pamela Brown, one of the people he said that to.
Via CNN:
Brown was covering the Kentucky Derby for CNN in 2013 when she was introduced to Rodgers, then with the Green Bay Packers, at a post-Derby party. Hearing that she was a journalist with CNN, Rodgers immediately began attacking the news media for covering up important stories. Rodgers brought up the tragic killing of 20 children and 6 adults by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School, claiming it was actually a government inside job and the media was intentionally ignoring it.
When Brown questioned him on the evidence to show this very real shooting was staged, Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times.
Today, Rodgers denied that this incident or another ever occurred, swearing that he has always believed that Sandy Hook was real.
“As I’m on the record saying in the past, what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy,” he wrote on Twitter. “I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place. Again, I hope that we learn from this and other tragedies to identify the signs that will allow us to prevent unnecessary loss of life. My thoughts and prayers continue to remain with the families affected along with the entire Sandy Hook community.”
It’s not clear where this record is, and given how many wacky things Rodgers has believed, it’s hard to imagine that he would even remember all of them.
Rodgers also famously liked a truly batshit anti-sunscreen tweet from professional bowler Russell Okung.
“Proud based parent moment: My four year old stopped me asked why other people use sunscreen,” Okung wrote. “I looked at him seriously and responded, ‘Corporations push propaganda machines to make the masses believe the sun is bad for them. We have a different view, now let’s go.’”
That is a weirdly elaborate plot when you really think about it, as it would have to cost a whole lot more to fake the existence of skin cancer than anyone could possibly make on sunscreen. (PSA: You do have to wear sunscreen and you should wear it every time you leave the house in daylight, not just when it’s hot out.)
He has other health tips as well, revolving around things he calls “modalities” (“modalities” is Alternative Medicine for “varieties of things that don’t actually work”). One of them is listening to dolphins fucking.
“There’s ideas that some of the noises from the dolphins when they’re love-making, the frequency of that is actually healing to the body,” Rodgers said during an ESPN podcast.
On the bright side, as far as we know, he has not gone full Margaret Howe Lovatt.
Thankfully, this whole thing is imaginary and it is highly unlikely that Rodgers will be moving his dolphin tank and hyperbaric chamber into the Naval Observatory any time soon.
OPEN THREAD!
PREVIOUSLY:
Too crazy to be a Carl Hiaasen character.
Open Thread Chat March 14. Bear: You see I was just batting the ball around and then POOF! it exploded. Not my fault that it was a defective ball.
https://substack.com/chat/1783367/post/5b63c095-fd55-476e-b440-9edcf21efd4a