Who Is Darla Shine? Anti-Vaccination Tirade By White House Official's Wife

Darla Shine, wife of a top White House official went on a rant on Twitter on Wednesday suggesting the deadly measles virus could be beneficial to the society.

The former TV producer’s rant came after a CNN segment about the measles outbreak in Oregon and Washington that had more than 50 unvaccinated individuals contracting the disease in addition to more than 200 cases in New York. She called the measles outbreak "fake" and "hysteria".

Shine, the wife of White House communications director Bill Shine, said she had measles, mumps and chicken pox as a child which gave her life-long natural immunity. She added her kids “sadly” were given the MMR vaccine and they will never have the immunity that she has.

Several users on Twitter criticized Shine’s beliefs and even called her a “health hazard.” After a number of prominent media figures noted that she was actively spreading anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, Shine claimed “the Left” was trying to smear her. She also claimed, without any evidence, that measles can cure cancer and spoke about a 2014 case that did not draw any concrete conclusions.

Fifty-year-old Shine began her career as a TV producer, which is how she met her future husband, who was also a TV executive and producer. She also had her own radio show called the "Darla Shine Show" in 2009 and wrote a book, "Happy Housewives", in 2006, which was described as a “modern-day guide to keeping house, raising kids and loving life." The New York Times called her book “an ode to female empowerment through 1950s-style domesticity.” Shine also has a blog that goes by the same name as her book, where she “guides women about their household jobs.”

Shine claimed she wrote the book and started her blog because she didn’t like the way she was treated after she “traded her briefcase for her diaper bag.” She wrote, “I sudddenly was ‘uninteresting’ or thaat is how many of my ‘career girlfriends’ made me feel. So I decided to make a statement by writing Happy Housewives. I am her to shout out to all homemakers that it is okay to be home, and if you are going to do it, do it proudly.”

In 2016, after her husband became the co-president of Fox News, Shine got her fair share of the spotlight. However, he left the network less than a year later as he faced scrutiny about the way he handled sexual and racial discrimination cases. Around June 2018, Shine was embroiled in a controversy after she attacked Gretchen Carlson who sued Roger Ailes, the former chairman of Fox News, for sexual harassment. In a tweet, Shine claimed Carlson would have still been at Fox had she not been fired for her “absymal show ratings” and the way she kept “kissing up to Bill (Shine) and Roger (Ailes)till the end.”

She previously had also attacked ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky and Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with President Donald Trump in 2006. “How is a one night stand between a rich married man and a w---- news?” Her old Twitter account has since been deleted after she went on a break from social media for some months.

In 2018, Vox reported that some CNN journalists found clips of Shine's show where she not just made light of the sexual assault in the military but also spread conspiracy theories about sunscreen, vaccines and the government. One of her segments had her blaming women for putting themselves in situations where they could possibly be assaulted.

“And why on earth would you fight to go on the submarine ship for months on end? You know there was just a story with these girls, these women who are upset that they are sexually harassed in the military. What do you think is going to happen when you go on a submarine for 12 months with 4,000 horny soldiers?” she reportedly said.

In one of the later segments of her show, she also said sunscreen was a “hoax” and claimed that the government was trying to round up people so it could test vaccines.

Shine’s present tweets come at a time when there is a mass debate going on over anti-vaccination beliefs.