Earlier this week, we learned that Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in the running to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate. And now, we’ve incidentally learned another thing about the football player: that he has allegedly claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which left 20 children and 6 adults dead, was a hoax.
CNN reports that at the 2013 Kentucky Derby, Rodgers told journalist Pamela Brown that the massacre was an inside job by the government and that the media was covering up the true story. Asked by Brown for evidence Rodgers allegedly “began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times,” including ones that got conspiracy theorist Alex Jones sued, like that the shooting was staged and the first responders were actually “crisis actors.” (In 2022, a jury ordered Jones to fork over $965 million for his lies, a debt which he has yet to pay.) According to Brown, Rodgers said there were government operatives in the woods by the school.
In addition to Brown, another individual—who CNN granted anonymity—said that Rodgers told her several years ago: “Sandy Hook never happened…All those children never existed. They were all actors.” He also allegedly claimed the grieving parents were “making it up,” and that they too were actors.
In a post on X published Thursday, Rodgers wrote “…what happened in Sandy Hook was an absolute tragedy. I am not and have never been of the opinion that the events did not take place.”
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that RFK Jr. had been speaking “pretty continuously” with Rodgers over the last month about the prospect of becoming the independent candidate’s VP, and that Rodgers “welcomed the overtures.” The following day, the Kennedy campaign said he would officially announce his running mate on March 26. Like Kennedy, Rodgers is an anti-vaxxer who attacked public health measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Kennedy himself does not appear to have commented on Sandy Hook, he has said completely unhinged things about 9/11, COVID-19 “ethnically targeting” certain races and sparing others, and chemicals in water making kids transgender. He also once suggested that the adversity faced by anti-vaxxers is worse than what Anne Frank went through.