RFK Jr. Says He Refused to Wear a Mask Because He’d Rather Die of Covid Than Be ‘Living Like a Slave’

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addressed the Libertarian National Convention on Friday and told an anecdote about his views on masking during the Covid pandemic.

Kennedy said he was at a convocation maskless when an NBC News crew approached him.

“They asked me why I wasn’t wearing a mask, which, nobody was, except for the NBC film crew.”

The crowd laughed at this detail.

“They said, ‘Wasn’t I scared of dying of Covid?’ And I said to them, ‘There’s a lot worse things than dying.’ And they said to me, ‘Like what?’ And I said, ‘Like living like a slave.'”

The crowd burst into cheers and applause.

Kennedy became known for speaking out against the Covid vaccine once it became available and, in some instances, required.

Over the years, Kennedy has gone from condemning vaccines to swearing he was never anti-vaccine.

In 2023, Kennedy testified before Congress for a hearing on censorship, where he said, “I’m subjected to this new form of censorship, which is called targeted propaganda, where people apply pejoratives like ‘anti-vaxx.’ I’ve never been anti-vaccine. But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”

However, the same day, Kennedy suggested to The Washington Post that the U.S. vaccination policy “contributed to the large toll of excess mortality in the second year of the pandemic.”

“We’re seeing in 2021 and ’22, this huge increase in excess deaths that nobody is asking about. Nobody is explaining, how is that happening?” Kennedy said at the time.

Kennedy’s not the only presidential candidate to flip-flop on vaccines. As president, Donald Trump green-lit Operation Warp Speed, which allowed scientists to develop an effective Covid vaccine much more quickly than anticipated. Since then, however, Trump has backed away from this accomplishment, and has adopted the far-right’s anti-vaxx rhetoric, promising to “not give one penny” to schools or colleges that mandate the vaccine.

Earlier this month, Trump took to Truth Social, where he wrote that Kennedy “said the other night that vaccines are fine. He said it on a show, a television show, that vaccines are fine. He’s all for them. And that’s what he said. And for those of you that want to vote because you think he’s an anti-vaxxer, he’s not really an anti-vaxxer.”

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.