RFK Jr. Gets a Bigger Megaphone
Since January, the Nation’s Top Health Official Has Advanced 12 False Health Claims Gaining 25 Million Views on X Alone
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1. The Nation’s Top Health Official Is an Even More Dominant Health Hoax Superspreader
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Advanced 12 False Health Claims Since Stepping into the Limelight as the Nation’s Top Health Official, Gaining 25 Million Views Just on X
Old Claims Have Been Turbocharged with New Soapbox
Since emerging as the country’s nominated top health official in January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spread 12 provably false health claims in government hearings, media appearances, and on social media that have collectively amassed 25 million views on X alone, according to a NewsGuard analysis.
From his high-profile perch as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, overseeing an agency with a proposed 2026 budget of $94.7 billion and more than 80,000 employees, Kennedy has advanced claims ranging from the baseless assertion that Lyme disease is a government-engineered bioweapon to the long-debunked claim that pharmaceutical drugs are a leading cause of death in the U.S. (See above for a full list of the false claims advanced by Kennedy and their spread.)
As previously reported by NewsGuard, Kennedy, an outspoken anti-vaccine activist, has long pushed false claims about vaccines and other health matters. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has continued this practice. Indeed, due to his higher profile, he has become increasingly influential in the spread of such claims.
For this report, NewsGuard reviewed posts on X that promoted false health claims that either were shared by Kennedy or were posted by others citing Kennedy since his first confirmation hearing for HHS secretary on Jan. 29, 2025 — the starting point for his well-publicized involvement in the second Trump administration. (He was formally nominated by President Donald Trump on Nov. 14, 2025.) NewsGuard used metrics from X because it was the social media platform with the most Kennedy claims, according to a NewsGuard review.
A BIGGER AUDIENCE AND MORE SPREAD
Of the 12 claims identified here, NewsGuard found that Kennedy had made six of them prior to his confirmation hearings and that those claims had generally generated far less spread before he moved into his new role compared with the megaphone he was able to use once he became a top government official.
For example, Kennedy has repeatedly promoted the claim that 3 percent to 6 percent of Americans had chronic diseases in the 1960s, compared with 60 percent of Americans today. NewsGuard found that posts advancing Kennedy’s remarks received 1 million views since Jan. 29, 2025, compared with less than half of that amount — 439,000 views — in the previous six months.
This claim is not true. A U.S. National Health Interview Survey conducted by the U.S. government between July 1962 and June 1963 found that 44.5 percent of U.S. adults — not 3 percent to 6 percent — reported having one or more chronic conditions. (See NewsGuard’s related False Claim Fingerprint here.)
The false claim that by far has gone the most viral on X is one that Kennedy, who is now in charge of U.S. vaccine policy, has pushed for years: that vaccines that are routinely recommended for American children have never been safety tested. This claim also received a sizable boost after Kennedy’s first Senate hearing.
In the months since Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, X posts advancing this claim, either by Kennedy or attributed to him, amassed 9.1 million views, including 3 million that were based on a single June 10, 2025, post from Kennedy’s official HHS X account. In the previous six months, the claim drew 5.5 million views.
In fact, there is an abundance of published research showing that childhood vaccines, including the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, flu shot, and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, underwent and continue to undergo placebo-controlled trials to determine their safety. (Placebo-controlled clinical trials are widely regarded as the scientific “gold standard” for assessing the effectiveness of new medical treatments.)
Some of the false claims advanced by Kennedy in the six months prior to his first confirmation hearing received no notable spread. For example, NewsGuard did not find any X posts claiming that Lyme disease is a government-engineered bioweapon attributed to Kennedy between July 2024 and January 2025. Yet, since Jan. 29, 2025, that claim has garnered 4.6 million views.
Kennedy has also falsely characterized the evidence regarding a link between vaccines and autism, thus boosting that claim’s circulation.
For example, an April 13, 2025, X post from user @sheislaurenlee included a clip of Kennedy’s April 10, 2025, interview on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” In the clip, Kennedy stated that studies conducted on whether vaccines contribute to autism “were very, very narrow. … They never studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated group, which is the only way that you can really make this determination.”
In fact, studies dating back to the 1990s that found no link between vaccines and autism did compare vaccinated children with unvaccinated children. The @sheislaurenlee post alone accumulated 2.2 million views.
Kennedy has also spread falsehoods about measles, amid reports of numerous outbreaks in the U.S. in the first half of 2025. Two claims on the topic promoted by Kennedy — that vitamin A prevents measles and that protection from the measles vaccine wanes quickly — accumulated a combined 281,000 views on X, NewsGuard found.
A BIG BOOST FROM KENNEDY’S FORMER ANTI-VAXX GROUP
Kennedy played a significant role pushing false claims prior to his elevation as HHS secretary. Many of these claims were previously amplified by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy launched in 2016 and that NewsGuard has found to repeatedly publish false information about vaccines.
Kennedy announced in January 2025 that he had resigned as CHD’s chairman and chief legal counsel amid his HHS nomination. Since then, the organization has continued to promote his claims on its X page, which has 293,000 followers.
For example, on May 9, 2025, CHD’s X account shared a clip of Kennedy on the Fox News show “Special Report with Bret Baier,” in which Kennedy falsely stated that “The MMR vaccine that we currently use has millions of particles that were created from aborted fetal tissue.”
In fact, while some vaccines, including the MMR shot, are produced using lab-grown cells descended from two fetuses aborted in the 1960s, no actual fetal tissue is present in the vaccines, according to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The National Catholic Bioethics Center, which consults with the Vatican and Catholics on medical ethics issues and opposes abortion, has stated, “One cannot accurately say that the vaccines contain any of the cells from the original abortion.”
The CHD post racked up 37,000 views. It was one of 10 X posts pushing this claim that drew a total view count of 2.6 million by June 24, 2025.
HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard responded to NewsGuard’s request for comment by asking for specific questions about Kennedy’s claims and their spread to be sent via email, which NewsGuard did. However, NewsGuard did not subsequently receive a response from Hilliard. NewsGuard additionally emailed X seeking comment on the spread of the claims on its platform but did not receive a response.
Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints for the 12 false claims spread by Kennedy here.
2. False Claim of the Week: Flight Data Proves that China Sent Cargo Planes Carrying Military Aid to Iran
NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The claim that flight data proves that China sent cargo planes carrying military aid to Iran was deemed the “False Claim of the Week” due to its widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, its high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting it. Given those three factors — in addition to its significant subject matter purporting to show active Chinese support for Iran’s military during the war with Israel — its potential for harm makes it our False Claim of the Week.
What happened: This week, prominent news outlets, pro-Iranian social media users, and AI chatbots spread the false claim that China sent military cargo planes to Iran, relying on misinterpreted data from a flight-tracking website, as previously reported in Reality Check.
A closer look: Citing data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24, these accounts claimed that a Chinese cargo plane turned off its transponder (which sends out signals identifying an aircraft’s position) and secretly flew to Iran. Accounts spreading the claim often included a screenshot of a flight route for Luxembourg airline Cargolux, which is minority-owned by a state Chinese airline and frequently operates cargo flights between China and Luxembourg. The screenshot from Flightradar24 showed a plane icon above Iran.
Debunk: The flight data that was cited does not show any cargo planes flying to Iran. Using the flight numbers displayed in the screenshots and Flightradar24’s flight history, NewsGuard verified that none of the Cargolux flights that users referenced landed in Iran or flew through Iranian airspace.
Flightradar24’s director of communications, Ian Petchenik, confirmed to NewsGuard in a June 2025 email that no Cargolux plane entered Iranian airspace. Petchenik added that the screenshots purportedly showing a plane flying over Iran actually depicted a temporary estimated route, since Flightradar24 no longer had data for the plane.
Cargolux denied the claim in a notice posted on its website, stating: “Our flight tracking systems provide real-time data, which confirms that no flight entered Iranian airspace. Any claims to the contrary are completely unfounded.”
Where it spread: In addition to viral posts from anonymous pro-Iranian social media accounts, the claim got mainstream coverage and was referenced by sources including London’s The Telegraph (Trust Score: 75/100), Fox News (Trust Score: 69.5/100), and News Corp-owned Australian outlet News.com.au (Trust Score: 100/100).
The claim even made it to the U.S. president. Asked about “reports of mysterious planes landing in Iran from China” during a press event in Morristown, New Jersey, on June 20, 2025, President Donald Trump stated: “They say that they are there to take people out. But I can’t tell you about that. I get along very well with China. I get along very well with President Xi [Jinping]. I like him. He likes me. We have a very good relationship. We’ll see what happens. I can’t imagine them getting involved.”
A NewsGuard audit of the 11 leading AI chatbots found that six of them repeated the false claim as fact, including China’s Deepseek, which stated that the Luxembourg-bound flights “were never observed entering European airspace, raising suspicions that Iran was the real destination.”
Reality Check is produced by Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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