Who would’ve thought Cheryl Hines’ real-life husband would be wackier than her partner on Curb Your Enthusiasm? But after her spouse of over seven years Robert Kennedy, Jr. made some eyebrow-raising comments suggesting that COVID-19 vaccine mandates are in some ways worse than the Holocaust, she was dragged into a discussion on Twitter, where she simultaneously tried to distance herself from his more outrageous statements while showing a general wifely support.
Kennedy spoke at an anti-vaccine rally in Washington DC on Sunday, and his speech quickly went off the rails. “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said, perhaps forgetting that Anne Frank was a) hiding in Amsterdam, and more importantly b) was brutally killed. “I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father, and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped. So it was possible! Many died, truly, but it was possible. Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, and none of us can hide.”
He then pivoted to increasingly-common conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and 5G. “Within five years, we’re gonna see 415,000 low-orbit satellites. Bill Gates says his 65,000 satellites alone will be able to look at every square inch of the planet 24 hours a day. They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior; digital currency that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply; vaccine passports.”
Conspiracies about data harvesting are more funny than worrisome, especially if you’ve ever read the Terms of Service for any device or app. But suggesting that Anne Frank had it easier than someone who does not want to get the COVID-19 vaccine is offensive, not just to Jewish people, but to anyone with a sense of decency.
On Sunday, the Auschwitz Museum issued a statement accusing Kennedy of “exploiting” the tragedy, and calling his remarks “outrageous and deeply offensive.” Afterwards, fans of Cheryl Hines asked her to weigh in. That’s where things got confusing.
“My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own,” she wrote on Monday. “While we love each other, we differ on many current issues.” Another Twitter user suggested she should have said, “‘No one should compare anything to the horrors of the Holocaust. My husband was wrong to do so,'” and she replied, “Yes, I agree with you.”
But when reporter Ben Collins retweeted her statement, noting she was “commenting on her husband RKF Jr.’s comparison between antivaxxers and Jews in WWII,” she replied, “I assure you that’s not what I was commenting on.”
