Fox News host defends RFK Jr swimming in Rock Creek

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Fox News pundit Jesse Watters defended Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he took a dip in Washington D.C.’s Rock Creek this past weekend, despite severe bacteria warnings.

“That [creek] looks clean,” Watters said on The Five on Tuesday.

“It doesn’t look like it’s filled with sewage,” he added.

Watters, who has previously boasted of his close ties with the Trump administration, added: “I know the entire cabinet and that I’ll be asking for special favors.”

His latest comments are at odds with the official advice of the National Park Service.

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On Sunday, RFK Jr. shared that he took a dip in the creek with his grandchildren, despite the NPS’s ban on swimming and water wading in Rock Creek Park “due to high bacteria levels.”

“Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek,” the controversial secretary shared on X Sunday.

NPS officials advise that the high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens pose a hazard to both human and pet health.

RFK Jr. is known for going against the grain and challenging traditional scientific advice from entrenched public institutions.

Earlier this month, he falsely asserted that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris”, while multiple measles outbreaks have been surging in North America.

“With all due respect, swimming in Rock Creek is prohibited because the water is contaminated with [feces],” one X user wrote in response to the health secretary’s swimming post.

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While Isik Mater, another X user, wrote: “Wild how RFK Jr. warning everyone about the “dangers of vaccines” is out here letting his grandkids splash around in the kind of creek that gives you flesh-eating bacteria and E. coli. Hope they packed something more protective than natural immunity.”

MAGA supporters, on the contrary, praised the health secretary for taking the dangerous dip.

Watters went on to state that “you can see right through” the bacteria-ridden creek, in contrast to the Hudson River, which “you can’t even see through,” he said.

The Independent contacted the NPS and HHS for comment.