With each public and private rejection, whether the retraction of his Rolling Stonearticle or his breakups with environmental groups, Kennedy dug in deeper and deeper. Increasingly his anti-vaccine work was taking precedent. In 2018 Kennedy involved himself in a largely forgotten vaccine controversy in the American Samoan islands. That year, two children died after receiving the MMR vaccine, sparking an island-wide furor. Though it was later revealed that two nurses made a critical error administering the vaccines, accidentally introducing expired muscle relaxants into the formula, Kennedy’s nonprofit took to social media to hype the deaths as evidence of vaccine dangers.

Under public pressure, the Samoan prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi halted MMR vaccines on the island. In June of 2019 Kennedy and Hines flew to Samoa, lending celebrity wattage to local anti-vaccine advocates, giving press interviews, and taking a private meeting with the PM.

Over the ensuing months, the island was hit by the largest measles outbreak in its history, infecting 5,707 citizens and killing 83 people, most of them children. The outbreak was so lethal, the prime minister declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory vaccinations, eventually curtailing the spread. Later one of Kennedy’s biggest critics, a pediatrician and member of the FDA’s advisory committee on vaccines, Paul Offit, told PBS that “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had everything to do with that. And that shows you how disinformation can kill.”

Among other things, yeah.