Sen Ron Johnson claimed on national TV that vaccines can cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome because of something he saw on the internet.
June 19, 2026

Sen Ron Johnson appeared on Real America's Voice to spread his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, which are getting more and more ridiculous:

Well, how we get out of it is we need to return integrity to science, and right now, science does not have integrity. Yeah, we held a hearing on the corruption of scientific publication and research. You've got people attacking anybody who is going to publish a study contrary to the narrative or contrary to the product they might have. So peer review is a joke. You know, publications like Pub Peer, people call it Pub Smear.

We're seeing it time and time again of valid scientific research that's been, you know, just pulled, either retracted or removed. Even worse, I'm looking right now at a study that was removed linking SIDS potentially to vaccines. And it's just a very simple analysis looking at VAERS and saying that about 78% of the SIDS deaths reported on VAERS since the start of VAERS, 2600 VAERS deaths are child deaths, 78% occurred within, I think, 3 weeks, 58% within 3 days.

I mean, I, I, I, I shouldn't even be quoting the stats because I just read it and I'm, I'm not, but it's, there's a strong correlation there, and that study got removed. So don't quote me on the stats because I just literally read them about a half hour ago, so I haven't memorized them properly.

I don't know which is more tiresome - that RoJo still doesn't understand that VAERS is just self-reported complaints that do not necessarily indicate an actual problem, or that these networks keep giving airtime to this raving lunatic. If we lived in a functional society, there would be consequences for airing this kind of bullshit without a disclaimer, since it's becoming dangerously reckless. Unfortunately, we live in a Trumpian dystopia where the government only goes after people for reporting the truth.

Ron Johnson suggests vaccines cause SIDS, but then starts stammering when he tries to come up for some support for this claim: "I just read it ... don't quote me."

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-17T22:34:36.273Z

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