On Feb. 2, 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. aired the first episode of his RFK Jr Podcast. In this inaugural episode, Kennedy — currently a presidential candidate — denounced what he called a “coup d’état” by “Big Tech” and the “global public health cartel led by Bill Gates and the WHO.” Since then, under the guise of promoting a progressive, green agenda, Kennedy has given a platform to a slew of conspiracy theorists and bigots.

Guests on Kennedy’s show — which is available thanks to Apple Podcasts and Spotify — have included prominent anti-vaxxers like Jenny McCarthy and Alex Berenson, the leaders of right-wing convoy protests in the U.S. and Canada, Putin apologists like Scott Ritter and Riley Waggaman, and Republican Senator Ron Johnson.

• Peter McCullough (3/24/21), (8/24/21), (6/5/22), (11/13/22)
  Peter McCullough has been a guest on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s show four times. McCullough is a cardiologist who has promoted both hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for COVID-19. Neither drug has proven effective at treating COVID and the FDA has not approved either for that purpose. In 2021, while testifying before the Texas State Senate, McCullough falsely claimed that people younger than 50 do not need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and that COVID-19 does not spread asymptomatically.
  
  In December 2021, McCullough gave an interview to The New American — the official publication of the far-right John Birch Society.
  
  During a Mar. 24, 2021 appearance, McCullough told Kennedy that he credited countries like Russia and India for using Favipiravir — a Japanese antiviral medication — and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. He also bemoaned the lack of approved treatments for COVID-19, stating that “It’s almost as if there’s a promotion of as much suffering, despair, anxiety, hospitalization, and death as possible in preparation for mass vaccination.”

• Jenny McCarthy and JB Handley (3/25/21)
  Jenny McCarthy was one of the earliest and loudest promoters of the lie that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes children to develop autism, for which she has advocated the use of so-called “chelation therapy” as a cure. McCarthy is also president of Generation Rescue, an anti-vaccine nonprofit organization co-founded by JB Handley.
  
  Both McCarthy and Handley appeared on Kennedy’s show to promote Handley’s book, Underestimated: An Autism Miracle, about Handley’s son, Jamison, who is described as autistic and non-verbal.
  
  Kennedy introduced Handley as a longtime friend who “kind of brought me into the movement for safer vaccines and for medical freedom” and who “has mentored many people in the movement just through his own conduct.” Kennedy also told listeners that “for the first 18 years of [Jamison’s] life” Handley “believed his son was mentally retarded.”

• Naomi Wolf (4/14/21)
  In recent years the Beauty Myth author has embraced outright conspiracy theories about everything from ISIS and the Ebola virus to the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2021 Wolf tweeted that she had overheard Apple employees discussing vaccines with nanoparticles that “let you travel back in time.” She was suspended from Twitter in 2021 for violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy but her account was reinstated by Elon Musk.
  
  Wolf has appeared on right-wing media outlets such as The Alex Jones Show and Steve Bannon’s War Room. And in an article for Human Events — a website connected to far-right disinformation peddler Jack Posobiec — Wolf publicly apologized for “believ[ing] a farrago of lies” about the Jan. 6 insurrection after then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson shared cherry-picked footage from that day.
  
  Wolf told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that, as a “feminist,” it is her job to discuss the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on women, including blood clots, miscarriages, and stillbirths. (Wolf had promoted the falsehood that 44% of pregnant women during a Pfizer trial miscarried.) Kennedy responded by stating that “vaccine deaths, and most vaccine injuries, don’t leave a fingerprint,” so “you can’t tell whether that person died of a heart attack or whether it was a vaccine-caused heart attack.”

• Alex Berenson (4/16/21), (1/9/22), (10/4/22)
  In 2019 the former New York Times writer authored Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, which claims that THC can cause people to develop mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and trigger violent episodes. Tell Your Children was criticized in an open letter by medical professionals who called his book an example of “alarmism” that has “been around since the earliest days of prohibition.”
  
  Berenson quickly pivoted to making bold and egregiously wrong predictions about the COVID-19 pandemic. So much so that The Atlantic dubbed him “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man” in 2021. For example, the article notes that Berenson claimed the U.S. would not reach 500,000 COVID deaths, and downplayed the efficacy of both masks and vaccines. Berenson was banned from Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation but had his account restored after suing the company for breach of contract.
  
  During the Jan. 9, 2022 episode of the RFK Jr Podcast, Berenson suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci might have had inside knowledge on how the pandemic began. And while he also admitted that “COVID caused substantial excess mortality in the United States in 2020 and in early 2021,” he added that “it’s a lot harder to separate out COVID from the vaccine deaths — which is a whole different issue.”

• Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) (4/18/21)
  In December 2020, after Joe Biden had decisively beaten Donald Trump in that year’s presidential race, Johnson — then Chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — held a hearing aimed at undermining the election results. And, although he was caught on hidden camera denying that the election was stolen, the Wisconsin senator was also implicated in a plan to hand information on fake electors to Mike Pence.
  
  After a violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power, Johnson claimed he didn’t feel threatened because they weren’t Black Lives Matter protesters or anti-fascists. As he told right-wing radio host Joe Pags, “had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”
  
  On Kennedy’s podcast Sen. Johnson promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for COVID-19. Kennedy called it “stunning” that “Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates and the people who seem to be running the countermeasures and the COVID response were absolutely militant about not treating people early.” Johnson agreed and touted hydroxychloroquine as a possible “silver bullet to this pandemic.”

• Kevin Jenkins (9/1/21)
  The founder of Urban Global Health Alliance, Kevin Jenkins was named as one of the anti-vaccine “Disinformation Dozen” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Jenkins has claimed that the COVID vaccine is a conspiracy to “wipe out” Black people, and, in a deleted Facebook post, called baseball legend Hank Aaron a “modern-day slave catcher” for taking and promoting the vaccine. Jenkins has also echoed right-wing claims that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to exterminate Black people and had ties to Nazi Germany. In 2022 Jenkins was named Board Chairman of the Florida chapter of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense group.

• Eric Clapton (11/2/21)
  The famous singer and guitarist has a track record of conspiratorial and bigoted remarks stretching back decades. At a Birmingham concert in 1976, Clapton went on a slur-filled tirade in which he proclaimed his support for white supremacist British politician Enoch Powell and declared that they should “Keep Britain white.” In 2018, after years of downplaying his remarks and defending Powell, Clapton finally said that he felt “disgusted” by his remarks.
  
  In 2020, Clapton emerged as a critic of COVID lockdowns, and released the anti-lockdown song “Stand and Deliver” — a collaboration between himself and Van Morrison. A year later he released “This Has Gotta Stop,” a song protesting both lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Clapton has also bankrolled the anti-vax band Jam for Freedom and promoted the concept of “mass formation psychosis” — which posits that people have been brainwashed into protecting themselves against COVID-19.

• Dr. Meryl Nass (1/19/22), (11/1/22), (11/19/22)
  Dr. Meryl Nass is a Maine-based internist whose license was suspended in January 2022 over complaints that she spread COVID-19 misinformation and prescribed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to patients with COVID. As of April 2023, Nass was still facing disciplinary action by the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine. According to the Board’s order of immediate suspension, in one instance Nass admitted she “lied” to a pharmacist in order to get hydroxychloroquine for a patient with COVID.
  
  On his podcast Kennedy described her as “one of my favorite people in the world.” Nass told Kennedy that she “discovered early on that the chloroquine drugs were highly effective if used early” to treat COVID and that she used them on her son. She also said that hydroxychloroquine was “easy to obtain until Trump said it was a good drug” and that, after he endorsed it, “all sorts of measures were taken in the United States and other countries to suppress its availability, its use, and to give it a black mark.”

• John Stockton (2/3/22)
  A former point guard for the Utah Jazz, Stockton’s season tickets were suspended by Gonzaga University last year after he refused to comply with the school’s mask mandate. Stockton told Kennedy that he and the school “reached an impasse that I didn’t think that I could morally wear a mask to the games” because he valued his bodily autonomy. He also stated that he went from “a guy that vaccinated my children on schedule” to someone who “question[s] every one of ’em.” “That’s kind of where I’m drawing my line in the sand is we’re introducing toxins into our children with the illusion that it makes them safer,” he added.

• Tom Marazzo (3/3/22)
  Tom Marazzo was one of the leaders of Canada’s so-called “Freedom Convoy,” which consisted of right-wing truckers occupying the streets of Ottawa for three weeks to protest vaccine mandates. On Twitter, Marazzo has claimed that the “Canadian government wants to have you commit suicide, via the Covid 19, experimental injection” and smeared drag queens as pedophiles.
  
  Marazzo told Kennedy that “in the last two years Canadians are much more less free than they were prior to COVID-19.”
  
  He also boasted that their interview was arranged by actress and anti-vaxxer Evangeline Lilly (of Marvel’s Ant-Man franchise). “So I just wanna tell ya Evangeline Lilly set this up and she said ‘Hey have you heard of Robert Kennedy Jr.?’ I said ‘Yeah, ’cause I’ve had his father and his uncle’s photo up on my wall for about 25 years. So yes, I’ve heard of him,'” he said.

• Brian Brase (3/31/22)
  Brian Brase was one of the leaders of the so-called “People’s Convoy” — America’s version of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy.” Formed in California with the intent of shutting down traffic in Washington, D.C., the “People’s Convoy” was even less effective than its Canadian equivalent and — in spite of support from the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz — quickly fizzled out. In March 2022, Brase remarked that he would have stormed the Capitol if he had been in D.C. on Jan. 6.

• Riley Waggaman (5/14/22)
  Riley Waggaman is an editor and author for Russia Insider, a pro-Putin website that has published racist and antisemitic content. Russia Insider’s founder, Charles Bausman, has appeared on white supremacist media outlets and fled to Moscow after entering the Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. In articles for Russia Insider Waggaman has affectionately referred to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as “YOLO Lavrov” for his dismissive treatment of U.S. journalists.
  
  On the RFK Jr Podcast, Waggaman criticized Russia’s vaccine rollout. (In a Russia Insider article Waggaman accused the Kremlin of “embrac[ing] all the same soul-raping ‘public health measures’ currently terrorizing the Western world.”) Waggaman also asked for “understanding” with respect to Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine, and floated a hypothetical situation in which a “hostile military alliance” was “moving up on our borders.”

• Dr. Robert Malone (5/26/22), (10/26/22), (12/18/22), (1/16/23)
  Dr. Robert Malone is a physician who claims to have helped invent mRNA vaccines, but quickly became one of the most famous anti-vaccine voices during the pandemic. Malone has spread the false claim that spike proteins created by the COVID vaccine are toxic, suggested ivermectin as a COVID treatment, and tweeted a link to a retracted study that exaggerated the dangers of the COVID vaccine. In an interview with Joe Rogan, Malone claimed that “mass formation psychosis” explained why people are being vaccinated against COVID-19. Kennedy told listeners to purchase Malone’s book, Lies My Gov’t Told Me: And the Better Future Coming, which he wrote the foreword for.

• Hunter Lundy (6/28/22)
  A personal injury attorney and Louisiana gubernatorial candidate, Hunter Lundy has sued telecommunications companies like Motorola on behalf of clients who allegedly developed cancer due to cell phone radiation. According to the National Cancer Institute, “most studies have found no association” between cell phone usage and the development of brain tumors.
  
  However, Lundy claimed on Kennedy’s podcast that “there is causation between cell phone radiation and brain tumors” and that the radiation emitted by cell phones is akin to a “little microwave.” “And it’s shootin’ right into your brain. It’s breakin’ the brain barriers, you said, and so it’s upsetting the DNA,” Lundy told Kennedy.

• Dr. Joseph Ladapo (8/15/22)
  In 2020, physicians from a right-wing, anti-vaccine group called America’s Frontline Doctors held a press conference in D.C. where they championed the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. One of those speakers was Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was later tapped by Gov. Ron DeSantis to become Florida’s Surgeon General. According to Politico, Ladapo used his position to personally alter key findings of a state study on COVID vaccine safety.
  
  According to Kennedy, Ladapo is “probably the only health commissioner or director in the country that was not subsumed by the orthodoxy, that did not give in to the fear which had a disabling effect on critical thinking during the pandemic.” Kennedy also revealed that he wrote the intro for Ladapo’s book Transcend Fear: A Blueprint for Mindful Leadership in Public Health.
  
  Ladapo stated on the podcast that people should not be made to wear face masks. “Even if they quote-unquote ‘worked’ people have a right to control what happens with their face and their nose and their mouth. That is your God-given right,” Ladapo said. “So this whole mask thing, I just, I wish it would end. And even today in the store I saw people walking around with them. And it’s just like, guys, this is not evidence-based and it’s mostly nonsense.”

• Lance Cpl. Catherine Arnett (8/30/22)
  Catherine Arnett, a Marine lance corporal who refused to take the COVID vaccine on religious grounds, faced unrelated charges for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Arnett was accused of refusing an order to go to her final physical and move into different barracks, and of refusing to board an aircraft from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni to California. In June the charges were dropped in favor of discharge.
  
  On Kennedy’s podcast Arnett framed her charges as the result of her refusal to take the vaccine, which she said violated her Catholic faith. Arnett explained that she believed that fetal cell lines from abortions were used to develop the COVID vaccine. However as Task & Purpose noted, while the COVID vaccine does not contain fetal cells, fetal cell lines were used to develop other vaccines that U.S. soldiers must take to protect against diseases like rubella and Hepatitis A.

• Dr. Aseem Malhotra (10/6/22)
  In 2017, British cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra co-authored an editorial claiming there is no link between consumption of saturated fats and coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other ailments. An associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation referred to the editorial as “unhelpful and misleading” and reiterated that saturated fat increases one’s LDL (or “bad” cholesterol) and increases the chances of a heart attack or stroke.
  
  Like other quacks, Malhotra jumped on the anti-vaccine bandwagon. During a Sept. 27, 2022 press conference, Malhotra called for a suspension of the COVID vaccine, which he falsely claimed was more dangerous than COVID-19 itself. During his Oct. 6, 2022 appearance on the RFK Jr Podcast Malhotra spread misinformation about the Omicron variant of COVID-19, calling it “mild,” “no worse than the flu,” and a “bad cold.”

• Dane Wigington (2/28/23)
  Dane Wigington is the executive producer of The Dimming, a documentary that purports to show that the condensation trails — or “contrails” — left in the sky by airplanes are actually so-called “chemtrails” designed to dim direct sunlight to the Earth and alter the climate. Although the chemtrail conspiracy has been roundly debunked, Kennedy lent credence to it.
  
  Kennedy explained that one time ten years ago actor Woody Harrelson visited his house and talked to him about chemtrails. “And I was saying ‘C’mon, that’s ridiculous, that’s impossible,'” Kennedy recalled. Harrelson allegedly invited him outside where they witnessed “these planes fly in a grid pattern, laying out a grid of contrails” which “turned into clouds.”

• Scott Ritter (4/16/23)
  Scott Ritter is a former Marine and U.N. weapons inspector who became a fierce opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2001 Ritter was arrested and charged with attempted endangerment of the welfare of a child — a misdemeanor — after he communicated with an undercover officer posing as a 16-year-old girl. Although that charge was later dropped, he was caught in yet another sting in 2009 and charged with, among other things, indecent exposure and unlawful conduct with a minor. In 2011 Ritter was found guilty and sentenced to 18 to 66 months in prison.
  
  Ritter has been a vocal defender of Russia in its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In a speech last year at the Community Church of Boston Ritter told his audience, “You know who exhausted every possibility short of war before making the decision to go into Ukraine? Vladimir Putin. He did everything. He did everything. … Putin’s on the right side of history, ladies and gentlemen.” And this year at a talk in Saint Petersburg, Ritter said “I’m hoping that the Russian government decides to end this war by winning this war.”

• Col. Douglas MacGregor (5/5/23)
  Douglas MacGregor is a retired U.S. Army colonel who often appeared on Fox News to espouse pro-Putin talking points. In a Mar. 3, 2022 radio interview, MacGregor declared that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine “in defense of his country.” MacGregor also has a history of racist and antisemitic commentary, and has repeated the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory which posits that white Americans are being deliberately replaced by immigrants of color.