"Curb Your Enthusiasm" actress Cheryl Hines has denounced her husband Robert F Kennedy Jr.'s comments about Anne Frank, who was murdered as a teenager by the Nazis, at a rally against the vaccine mandate. was done during
Kennedy, a longtime opponent of vaccines, called on Nazi Germany against vaccine mandates Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial and suggested that Frank was better off than Americans whose jobs require him to be vaccinated. He later apologized for the reference.
"My husband's reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in DC was reprehensible and insensitive," Hines tweeted Tuesday. "The atrocities faced by millions of people during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. Their opinion is not a reflection of my own views."
Kennedy was one of several speakers at Sunday's anti-vaccine mandate rally that compared COVID-19 vaccine requirements in the US to those of Nazi Germany, CNN Politics reported.
Kennedy said in his speech, "Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps and go into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did." "I visited East Germany with my father in 1962 and met people who had run away after climbing the wall, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible."
Frank was one of the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. Frank, who was believed to be 15 when he died, hid in an attic in the Netherlands before being captured and sent to a concentration camp.
Kennedy apologized in a tweet Tuesday for naming Frank, tweeting that he "intended to use examples of past vandalism to show threats from new techniques of control."
"I apologize for the reference to Anne Frank, especially to families facing the horrors of the Holocaust," he tweeted. "I am truly deeply sorry to the extent that my comment has hurt."
Hines responded to her husband's comments in a less specific statement on Monday, in which she responded by tweeting, "My husband's opinion is not a reflection of my own views. While we love each other, we are many Current issues differ." When pressed by Twitter users, including senior NBC News reporter Ben Collins, she specified that she disagreed with Kennedy's comments about Frank.
But Kennedy has compared vaccine requirements to those of the first Holocaust. In 2015, at a film screening that focused on false claims that vaccines can cause autism, he called the number of children "injured" by vaccines (again, an unfounded claim) as "a holocaust," CBS News reported at that time. He later apologized for the comparison but doubled down on his false claims of vaccines causing autism.
Kennedy, who married Hines in 2014, said late last year that Hines asked guests of a holiday party to get vaccinated or tested negative before arriving. He told Politico that when Hines implemented vaccine recommendations, neither vaccinations or testing took measures to verify status.