It should be a rarity for an absurd joke on social media to be proven true. That’s the position several users on X found themselves in when it was revealed Wednesday that presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once had a literal brain worm.
This deeply disturbing factoid came courtesy of the New York Times on Wednesday. The paper of record reported that, in 2012, doctors found that Kennedy had a dead parasite in his brain. The dark spot that appeared on his medical examination “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy said in a deposition.
That deposition, by the way, was part of Kennedy’s divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. The man who is now seeking to become the leader of the free world was arguing at the time that his earning power had decreased due to the “cognitive struggles” caused by the aforementioned dead worm.
Typically, wild news stories are met on social media with mockery and pointed jokes. This time around, however, the response was more characterized as bafflement and bewilderment.
“I’ll be honest, when I said RFK Jr. had literal brainworms I did not actually mean it,” one user posted. “A lot of us have said RFK Jr. has brain worms — just didn’t expect him to agree with us,” another user wrote.
Several responses to the news story continued in this vein, from one user posting, “this guy wants to be president? What the f–k is even happening?” to another user likening the news story to a “South Park” episode. Political consultant Rick Wilson posted, “The interesting part of the RFK brainworm story is that literally no one who read it said, ‘No way.’”
There were also several jokes about the worm in Kennedy’s brain starving and “struggling to survive without any substance.”
But perhaps the most succinct reaction came from comedian Michael Ian Black, who wrote, “I’m not even sure it’s scientifically possible to make a joke about RFK’s brain worm that would be funnier than the fact that RFK literally had a brain worm.”
Kennedy assured the New York Times that he has since recovered from his memory loss and fogginess and has experienced “no aftereffects from the parasite.” When asked if his dead brain worm or if any of his other health issues could impact his competency as president, a representative for his campaign told the Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”
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