The Story About a Worm Eating RFK Jr.’s Brain Is Not As Funny As It Sounds

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans ‘was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.’ ” —the New York Times, quoting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from a 2012 deposition

Look, is it funny that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—an independent presidential candidate who appeals to the kind of cultish vaccine conspiracy theorists and wokeness-obsessed Silicon Valley egomaniacs who are often derisively said to act as if they have brain worms—once testified, during a 2012 legal proceeding, that there was a worm in his brain that ate part of it, as the New York Times reported earlier this week?

Yes, it’s funny. In the context of our current situation [gestures at everyone gesturing at everything] it is what must pass for a source of mirth and merriment. A worm in his brain, ha ha! Kind of makes sense, given the absolutely asinine things that come out of his mouth!

But no. This is not all fun and games. (The games are worm games, such as Worm Chutes and Ladders and worm football.) The backstory is that the legal proceeding in question was Kennedy’s divorce from his second wife, who later died by suicide. Kennedy made the claim about the worm while arguing that “his earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles.” Now, though, in 2024, he says he has “recovered from the memory loss and fogginess” and has “no aftereffects from the parasite.” His earning power, and his nonstop-circling-the-country-saying-that-the-MMR-vaccine-causes-autism power, has returned to normal! Everyone breathe a sigh of relief! It’s a Kennedy miracle!

Doctors the Times spoke to did say it’s possible that parasitic infections (and mercury poisoning, which the candidate said he also suffered from in 2012) could cause short-term cognitive problems that later dissipate. But Kennedy hasn’t released any medical records that would substantiate the claims, and it all sounds like a convenient turn of events for someone who is already famous for manipulating the truth in self-serving ways. (See, for example, Jake Tapper’s alarm at having discovered that RFK Jr. was telling the press that a “documentary” they had worked on together had been pulled off TV by powerful corporate interests, when in fact the “documentary” was a regular TV segment that aired in the normal way.) The man’s relationship to the truth is like a hot-air balloon’s relationship to the ground!

But yes, it’s still funny to see headlines like “RFK Jr. campaign responds to brain worm story.” Not one you field every day, as a political communications professional!