Cheryl Hines responds to husband RFK Jr.’s Holocaust, vax mandate comparison
Curb your comparison.
Actress Cheryl Hines said Tuesday it was “reprehensible” of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to claim it was easier for Anne Frank to hide from the Nazis than for Americans to avoid vaccine mandates — comments he would later say were wrong.
“My husband’s reference to Anne Frank at a mandate rally in D.C. was reprehensible and insensitive,” the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star wrote on Twitter. “The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything. His opinions are not a reflection of my own.”
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has been married to the actress since 2014, made the offensive remarks at a “Defeat the Mandate: An American Homecoming” rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said while discussing a visit to East Germany with his father where he met people who escaped the regime.
“Today the mechanisms are being put in place to make it so that none of us can run and none of us can hide,” Kennedy added, according to video tweeted by an NBC News reporter.
On Tuesday, shortly before his wife tweeted her thoughts, Kennedy chimed in, saying, “I apologize for my reference to Anne Frank, especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors.
“My intention was to use examples of past barbarism to show the perils from new technologies of control. To the extent my remarks caused hurt, I am truly and deeply sorry,” he tweeted.
Hines had originally taken a tepid stance on the comments, tweeting Monday that she doesn’t always see eye to eye with her hubby.
“While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,” she wrote in response to the tweet from the Auschwitz Memorial that said Kennedy’s remarks were “a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay.”
Hines previously drew scrutiny after it was reported that she threw a holiday party at the couple’s California home and requested in the invitation that guests be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or test negative before arriving.
“I guess I’m not always the boss at my own house,” Kennedy told Politico, adding he didn’t know his wife had made her own vaccine mandate.
Hines’ tweet Tuesday comes after people online criticized what they saw as her reaction to the Anne Frank remarks, saying it wasn’t enough for her to simply say the couple often disagrees given the gravity of Kennedy’s statement.