Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy was criticized after she claimed with no evidence whatsoever that the deadly school shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday happened because children are on "SSRIs" and encouraged Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to look into it.
Campos-Duffy, the wife of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, spoke after a gunman opened fire through the windows of a church on Wednesday morning, killing two children and wounding 17 others during the first week of classes at Annunciation Catholic School.
The FBI identified the shooter as a 23-year-old who was a 2017 graduate of the school. The shooter died at the scene. The shooting has angered Democrats who've said the shooting is simply the latest round of evidence that the country is in dire need of gun reform.
In remarks to co-host Trey Gowdy, Campos-Duffy said she has a friend with two children at the school who are thankfully unharmed and referred to Christians as "the most persecuted religion in the universe right now" before ranting about SSRIs:
"One of the things you know if you have a Catholic school, you have big families. You have little kids waiting to see how their siblings were doing. If their siblings survived this attack. Very tragic."
"I think you bring up a really good point. That is about the last big school shooting we remember. I mean, there has been others, the last one with a lot of attention was at a Christian school. This is a Catholic school. What happened this summer in Syria in the middle of mass in June at a Greek orthodox church, right in the middle of mass."
"Children there, 22 children killed. 62 wounded. So yes, we need to think about these things happening here. Christians are the most persecuted religion in the universe right now, in the world. So that’s definitely a potential motive."
"But Trey, you talked about how do we protect these schools? I think of two things. SSRIs and the kinds of medications so many young kids are on since such a young age. I hope Bobby Kennedy looks into that, our Secretary of Health and Human Services."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Though Kennedy has no medical training, he has long criticized antidepressant medications, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). He has suggested they may be as addictive as heroin, a claim that research does not support. Decades of studies have shown SSRIs to be safe and effective, while heroin is highly addictive in nearly all users.
All of that is to say that there is no connection between SSRIs and the shooting to begin with—and Campos-Duffy was swiftly called out for promoting misinformation.
Kennedy has not responded to Campos-Duffy's calls for an investigation into antidepressants and their supposed link to the shooting.
