Kennedy, a longtime opponent of vaccines, invoked Nazi Germany in his screed in opposition to vaccine mandates on Sunday, on the Lincoln Memorial, and urged that Frank was once than American citizens whose jobs require them to get vaccinated. He later apologized for the reference.
“My husband’s connection with Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was once reprehensible and insensitive,” Hines tweeted on Tuesday. “The atrocities that tens of millions continued throughout the Holocaust will have to by no means be in comparison to any person or the rest. His reviews aren’t a mirrored image of my very own.”
Kennedy was once one in all a number of audio system at Sunday’s anti-vaccine mandate rally who when compared Covid-19 vaccine necessities in the USA to Nazi Germany, CNN Politics reported.
“Even in Hitler Germany (sic), that you must, that you must go the Alps into Switzerland. You need to conceal in an attic, like Anne Frank did,” Kennedy mentioned in his speech. “I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met individuals who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was once conceivable. Many died, true, however it was once conceivable.”
Frank was once one of a few 6 million Jews who have been murdered by way of Nazis throughout Global Conflict II. Frank, considered 15 when she died, concealed in an attic within the Netherlands earlier than she was once stuck and despatched to a focus camp.
Kennedy apologized in a tweet on Tuesday for invoking Frank’s title, tweeting that his “purpose was once to make use of examples of previous barbarism to turn the perils from new applied sciences of keep watch over.”
“I say sorry for my connection with Anne Frank, particularly to households that suffered the Holocaust horrors,” he tweeted. “To the level my remarks led to harm, I’m really and deeply sorry.”
Hines answered to her husband’s feedback in a much less explicit observation on Monday, by which she answered to a tweet with, “My husband’s reviews aren’t a mirrored image of my very own. Whilst we adore every different, we vary on many present problems.” She specified that she disagreed with Kennedy’s feedback about Frank when pressed by way of Twitter customers together with NBC Information senior reporter Ben Collins.
However Kennedy has when compared vaccine necessities to the Holocaust earlier than. In 2015, at a screening of a movie that concerned about faulty claims that vaccines may cause autism, he known as the selection of kids “injured” by way of vaccines (once more, a baseless declare) “a holocaust,” CBS Information reported on the time. He later apologized for making the comparability however doubled down on his faulty claims of vaccines inflicting autism.
Kennedy, who married Hines in 2014, overdue final 12 months mentioned Hines requested visitors of a vacation celebration they have been website hosting to get vaccinated or check adverse earlier than arriving. He instructed Politico that whilst Hines imposed the vaccine suggestions, neither took measures to make sure vaccination or check standing.
