Aaron Rodgers completes his dark trip down the gutter with a deranged AIDS conspiracy

Aaron Rodgers used to be such a strong LGBTQ+ ally, with lustful fans speculating whether he was gay himself for years. The all-time great QB condemned homophobic chants and publicly supported an out gay former teammate. He even rose to the occasion and denounced a fan who made anti-Muslim remarks after religious extremists killed 129 people in an attack on Paris.

In a sea of football toxicity, Rodgers seemed to be enlightened. That’s why his dark turn is so startling.

The New York Jets QB is deep down the conspiratorial rabbit hole, spending the last couple of years ranting about Anthony Fauci and vaccines. Earlier this year, Rodgers caused a crisis at Disney, when he insinuated Jimmy Kimmel was on Jeffrey Epstein’s list while appearing on an ESPN program (Disney owns ESPN).

But his latest comments might be his most outrageous, especially to his now-former LGBTQ+ fans. Appearing on a podcast called “Look Into It,” Rodgers floated a conspiracy theory about the AIDS epidemic. He says the virus was created by the U.S. government.

Though Rodgers made the comments in February, they were resurfaced this week on social media. His theory amounts to… Fauci created AIDS in the late ’80s to earn hundreds of millions, and something about… COVID?

The four-time MVP espoused the following nonsense:

The blueprint, the game plan, was made in the 80s. Create a pandemic with a virus that’s going wild. Only, Fauci was given over $350 million to research this, to come up with drugs, new or repurposed, to handle the AIDS pandemic. And all they came up with was AZT. Do even a smidge of research. I’m not an epidemiologist, I’m not a doctor, I’m not an immunologist, whatever the f—. I can read though. I can learn. I can look things up. Just like any normal person I can do my own research, which is so vilified, to even question authority. But that was the game plan back then. Create an environment where only one thing works. Back then AZT, now Remdesivir until we get a vaccine. We know Fauci has taken the Moderna vaccine and we know Pfizer is one of the most criminally corrupt ever, the fine they paid was the biggest in the history of the DOJ in 2009. What are we talking about? We’re going to put our full trust in science that can’t be questioned?

Like many conspiracy theorists, Rodgers’ premise falls apart when one looks at the facts. AZT was the first AIDS treatment developed in a long line of them, and is still used today, along with other antiretroviral drugs. While its approval was controversial, it was viewed as potentially life-saving at the time.

Also… What?! While LGBTQ+ activists originally criticized Fauci when he was head of the government’s AIDS response, he helped develop the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has saved more than 20 million lives.

“Dr. Fauci walked through the fire with us, and his friendships with AIDS activists deepened with time, bound by a shared trauma,” a former member of ACT UP wrote in the New York Times.

We could rebut all of Rodgers’ points, but that would be futile. This election cycle, he’s aligned himself with fellow conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr., one of the country’s foremost anti-vaxxers.

RFK’s craziness doesn’t stop at vaccines, either. He’s repeatedly spread the the unfounded idea that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making kids gay or transgender.

As an example, he cites atrazine, a chemical found in poppers.

“If you expose frogs to atrazine, male frogs, it changes their sex and they can actually bear young. They can lay eggs, fertile eggs,” he said in June 2022.

“And so the capacity for these chemicals that we are just raining down on our children right now to induce these very profound sexual changes in them is something we need to be thinking about as a society,” added the wealthy scion.

Kennedy offered a similar line on Canadian far-right pundit Jordan Peterson’s show.

“A lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated that how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing,” he wrongly observed.

Much like RFK, Rodgers’ appetites for mistruths is vast. Apparently, he believes 9/11 was an inside job, and questions whether the Sandy Hook school shooting was real.

For a couple of weeks, Rodgers was floated as a possible VP candidate for RFK. Instead, he picked Nicole Shanahan, the very wealthy ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

That means Rodgers should spend his Sundays on the football field this season, and not on the campaign trail. But he will still be doing podcasts.

Now, allow us to roll our eyes…