Fake video shows RFK Jr. saying, 'Kids are gayer than ever and they're fat, repulsively fat'

In April 2025, online users discussed a video purportedly showing U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. saying, during an interview on the HBO TV series "Real Time With Bill Maher," "Kids are gayer than ever and they're fat, repulsively fat."

The clip appeared in posts on Instagram and Threads.

 

View on Threads

However, Kennedy did not make this statement on comedian Bill Maher's show. Further, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo produced no evidence that Kennedy ever made the statement.

X user @MaverickDarby posted (archived) the video on April 23, saying later in replies they created the clip with one or more artificial-intelligence (AI) tools. The video displayed a watermark with the user's handle. 

Snopes reached out to @MaverickDarby to ask what AI tools they used to create the video. We did not yet receive a response to that question, nor did the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services yet return a request for general comment.

Fake Kennedy video and autism registry

In the doctored video, a voice that resembled Maher's could be heard initially attempting to interject between Kennedy's statements. The video then showed Maher supposedly agreeing with Kennedy. The clip also included inauthentic moments of the studio audience applauding, gasping and laughing, all documented in this transcript:

KENNEDY: Bill, Bill, Bill. We're getting ahead of ourselves. All I'm saying is that autism is only part of the story. Kids are gayer than ever and they're fat, (audience gasps) repulsively fat.

MAHER: (attempting to interject)

KENNEDY: That's another piece of what I'm trying to do here, OK Bill?

MAHER: Well the, it's, it's certainly... (audience laughing)

KENNEDY: We need to be able to call a spade a spade if a kid is fat, gay or let's say a (inaudible) American. We need to call it out. You can't solve a problem you're not willing to address, you f***ing aging pothead. (audience applauding) But as I was saying, the MAGA moms from Ohio, what you West Coast dips***s call the "anti-vaxxers" might be right about this whole thing, and psych meds are probably turning the kids into flamers.

MAHER: (audience applauding) I, I think that's the truth.

Another X user later posted a side-by-side comparison of the fake clip next to a video of a genuine appearance Kennedy made on Maher's show on April 26, 2024. Kennedy wore the same clothing and made the same hand gestures in both the genuine and AI clips, suggesting the 2024 clip was the basis for the video investigated here. (Kennedy also previously appeared on the show on other occasions.)

The AI-manipulated video featuring Kennedy and Maher spread online following a CBS News article reporting the National Institutes of Health planned to launch a "disease registry" to track Americans with autism as part of Kennedy's effort to study the condition. Snopes previously reported about this matter.

For further reading, a previous fact check confirmed Kennedy authentically said autistic children "will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted."