Fact Check: Did RFK Jr. Claim That Ukraine Has Cost U.S. $8 Trillion?

Democratic presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast was awash with controversy, repeating unfounded claims about vaccine safety and claiming his uncle John F. Kennedy was murdered by the CIA.

RFK Jr. was named in the 2021 Center for Countering Digital Hate's "Disinformation Dozen". He was one of only 12 people the organization believed were responsible for spreading the bulk of falsehoods about COVID-19 and vaccines.

Among his other comments, Kennedy Jr. also weighed in on the war in Ukraine, with a spending figure attached to the conflict attracting widespread interest on social media.

The Claim

A tweet by podcaster Liam McCollum, posted on June 18, 2023, viewed 4.7 million times, included a clip of Robert F Kennedy Jr. recorded for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, in which Kennedy Jr. said: "$8 trillion on the Ukraine war. That's $24 trillion that they had to print to pay for nothing.

"That money, the way they're paying it back, it's a hidden tax called inflation, and it hits the poor and the middle class"

"We need to stop being an empire"

McCollum added: "When's the last time you heard a Democrat coherently explain the harms of printing money and empire-building?"

The Facts

Kennedy Jr. has become known for his controversial and misleading views on vaccines, some of which he discussed during his interview with Joe Rogan.

During the interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Kennedy Jr. doubled down on claims that vaccines cause autism, which has been repeatedly disproven.

Kennedy Jr. also made claims about Ukraine spending that, as the tweet by McCollum appears to show, has caused confusion and misinterpretation.

For a start, the U.S. has not spent $8 trillion in Ukraine. As Newsweek has previously reported, Congress has committed $113 billion toward Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia in February 2022.

Some experts believe, however, that the amount actually spent in Ukraine is closer to $77 billion. In any case, the $8 trillion is clearly wrong (total mandatory Congressional spending across all government departments last year only came to $4.1 trillion).

What's confusing here is that Kennedy Jr. does get the Congressional spending commitment for Ukraine correct at the beginning of the clip tweeted by Liam McCollum.

"That war has cost us $113 billion, that's the commitment so far," RFK Jr. said.

Later on, he mentions that $16 trillion was spent on COVID lockdowns (a claim that may be confused with a 2020 estimate for how much the pandemic would cost the global economy) before mentioning the $8 trillion in Ukraine.

"That's $24 trillion that they had to print to pay for nothing," Kennedy Jr. said, combining what he said the spend was on Ukraine and "COVID lockdowns."

Talking about printing money only confuses matters further. Apart from the fact that, as of January 2023, the U.S. Government was only said to have spent $4.6 trillion in COVID relief payments, the claim about Ukraine and money printing remains unexplained.

McCollum, replying to his first tweet, suggested the $8 trillion could refer to research by the Watson Insititute of International & Public Affairs at Brown University, which claimed that all U.S. post-9/11 war spending to FY 2022 came to $8 trillion.

Kennedy Jr. does mention the Iraq war and Ukraine together later on in the podcast but he doesn't make reference to the Watson Institute report.

A representative for Kennedy Jr. told Newsweek via email that "the candidate misspoke."

They added: "What he meant was that spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars totaled $8 trillion. He apologizes for the misstatement."

Whatever Kennedy Jr.'s intended message was, the lack of detail does appear to have caused some to believe that the U.S. has spent $8 trillion on Ukraine which is, quite clearly, not correct.

The Ruling

Misleading Material.

Much of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. means in both in the clip shared on Twitter and the unclipped footage from The Joe Rogan Experience is not clear.

In the interview, RFK Jr. quotes the correct Congressional spending commitment of $113 billion before mentioning $8 trillion, unanchored to any evidence.

A spokesman for Kennedy Jr. told Newsweek that he misspoke, and the figure referred to spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Whatever the 2024 presidential candidate intended by his comments, it appears the $8 trillion line has caused some to believe this is what the U.S. government has committed to Ukraine, which it demonstrably hasn't.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team