Et tu, Robert De Niro? Just when we were so enamored of him for his sweet defense of Meryl Streep (after the Streep vs. Trump Golden Gloves — I mean, Globes), De Niro went all anti-vaxxer on us. The actor joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in Washington, D.C. today to hold a press conference pushing a dangerous anti-vaccine agenda.
Vox called the event "a showcase of some of the most thoroughly discredited claims about vaccines, from the notion that they cause autism, to the suggestion that vaccines are a huge source of mercury that’s making kids sick." Kennedy even delved so far into nonsense that he insisted "shots have caused the autism epidemic."
This has of course been proven untrue, but we wouldn't ask you to just take our word for it. So how about you take the word of the CDC and The New York Times and leading autism organizations and basically the entire medical community? Cool.
It doesn't help that Kennedy, with whom President Trump has apparently been "exploring" the idea of creating a vaccine commission, used today's press conference as an opportunity to insinuate that both journalists and the government are to blame for covering up some imaginary horrible truth about vaccines. Blaming the media, eh? How Trumpian of you, Kennedy.
As for dear De Niro, whose son struggles with autism, we somehow expected better. But this should really come as no surprise. After all, De Niro did greenlight discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield's film, Vaxxed, for the Tribeca Film Festival; the film was later pulled after epic criticism from the scientific community.
Our message to these Roberts: It's high time you fine actors and attorneys left the doctoring to the doctors (and the accredited ones at that). So we'll just leave all this research on vaccine safety here for you to peruse at your leisure.
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