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robert f kennedy
RFK Jr.'s Own Siblings Denounce Independent Run, Call It 'Perilous for Our Country'
"Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment," said four of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s siblings. "We denounce his candidacy."
Oct 09, 2023
Family members of 2024 U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy—including several of his siblings—said in no uncertain terms on Monday that they oppose his continued bid to lead the country, as the lawyer and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist announced he would run as an independent instead of as a Democrat.
Four of Kennedy's siblings—documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, human rights advocate Kerry Kennedy, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), and former Democratic Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—released a statement saying their brother's decision to run as a third party candidate is "dangerous to our country."
"Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment," they said. "We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country."
After saying repeatedly in recent weeks that the Democratic National Committee is "rigging" the 2024 election against him, Kennedy—who was previously running for the party's nomination as a challenger to President Joe Biden—said Monday that he was proposing a "new Declaration of Independence" for the country.
"I've come here today to declare our independence from the tyranny of corruption which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other," Kennedy said. "But to do that I must first declare my own independence. Independence from the Democratic Party and from all other political parties."
Though Kennedy is a scion of one of the most prominent Democratic families in the U.S., polling has shown Republican voters think more highly of his candidacy than Democrats.
After building a career as an environmental lawyer, Kennedy has become well-known in recent years for spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, including a claim that "there's no vaccine that is safe and effective" and the long-debunked belief that childhood vaccines cause autism.
Kerry Kennedy has spoken out about her brother's presidential aspirations at least twice before, including when he said "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese" people have the most immunity to Covid-19 and that the pandemic was "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people."
Kennedy's cousin and the grandson of assassinated former President John F. Kennedy, Jack Schlossberg, also expressed disgust earlier this year over Kennedy's campaign, saying in a video posted to social media that he had "no idea why anyone thinks he should be president."
"What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment," said Schlossberg. "Let's not be distracted again by somebody's vanity project. I am excited to vote for Joe Biden in my state's primary and again in the general election, and I hope you will too."
As author and activist Naomi Klein noted earlier this year, Kennedy's political priorities bear little resemblance to the anti-poverty, civil rights, and pro-labor work of his father, assassinated former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.).
Despite running as a so-called "populist," she wrote, Kennedy has shown little interest in advocating for policies that would center working and low-income people, such as higher taxes for the rich or Medicare for All.
"Kennedy is not actually proposing any of this," Klein wrote after a media appearance by Kennedy early in his Democratic campaign. "On Fox, he would not even come out in favor of a wealth tax; he has brushed off universal public healthcare as not 'politically realistic'; and I have heard nothing about raising the minimum wage."
Climate experts and advocates have also noted that Kennedy's background in environmental law does not make him the candidate the U.S. needs to combat the climate emergency.
As University of California, Berkeley environmental law professor Dan Farber and UCLA Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment official Evan George wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, Kennedy said in one campaign video that the climate crisis "is being used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls, the same way the Covid crisis was."
Overall, as a presidential candidate Kennedy has "stayed largely silent on climate change," said Farber and George, except to call the crisis and the environment "a divisive issue" and to say he would push for policies "that make sense to skeptics and activists alike" in order to build "a broad environmental coalition."
"Make no mistake: Creating a big tent open to climate skeptics will only achieve one thing—empower business interests opposed to climate action," wrote Farber and George.
"RFK Jr. is not a Democratic challenger," said economist Robert Reich. "He is not an independent. He is a right-wing tool being used to help elect [Former Republican President Donald] Trump."
"RFK Jr. has nothing to do with his father—who stood for racial, economic, and social justice (and for whom I worked in the 1960s)," Reich added. "His candidacy saddens me. He could have done something meaningful with his life and name."
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is No Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy would never have suggested or even thought that a deadly virus was targeted at certain races. He wouldn’t have repeated the trope, dating at least to the Middle Ages, that Jews unleashed a plague on non-Jews.
Jul 18, 2023
During a press event last week at an Upper East Side restaurant, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.” He said that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Targeted at Caucasians and Blacks? What?
Kennedy Jr. also charged that “the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They’re collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people by race.”
Ethnic bioweapons?
I wouldn’t inflict this bigoted conspiratorial trash on you were it not for the stunning fact that RFK Jr. is now polling in the double digits against President Joe Biden. A recent CNN poll has him at 20%.
If RFK Jr. decides to run as a third-party spoiler, he could well draw voters away from Biden.
According to a poll last week by The Economist and YouGov, Kennedy Junior now has higher favorability numbers than either Biden or former president Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, a collection of tech moguls have gotten behind him, including former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya, and venture capitalist David Sacks. Last month, Elon Musk hosted him for a Twitter Spaces discussion.
If RFK Jr. decides to run as a third-party spoiler, he could well draw voters away from Biden.
Let me paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen’s remark to Dan Quayle during the vice-presidential debate in 1988: I knew Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no Robert F. Kennedy.
I worked in Robert F. Kennedy’s Senate office in 1967. It was not a glamorous job. I ran the signature machine, making sure that letters to constituents were lined up properly so that the pen at the end of a long automated arm would write out the senator’s name appropriately.
But I did have a chance to get to see Bobby Kennedy close up. I watched him stand up for economic and social justice. I witnessed him bringing together people of every race and ethnicity—to demand equal rights and an end to the Vietnam War.
Robert F. Kennedy would never have suggested or even thought that a deadly virus was targeted at certain races. He wouldn’t have repeated the trope, dating at least to the Middle Ages, that Jews unleashed a plague on non-Jews.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands for the opposite of what his father did.
In addition to his gonzo bioweapons ethnic conspiracy theory, RFK Jr. has promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.
He doesn’t support a ban on assault weapons and blames the rise of mass shootings in America on pharmaceutical drugs.
In his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies to suppress information about Covid-19 cures in order to leave vaccines as the only options to fight the pandemic.
Were it not for his illustrious name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing number of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking high office. But the Robert F. Kennedy brand is political gold.
RFK Jr.’s misinformation about vaccines continues to endanger public health. The United States is now in the midst of the largest measles outbreak in 25 years, but not nearly enough young people have been vaccinated against the disease.
Another contrast with his father and his uncle: In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed the Vaccination Assistance Act in order to, in the words of a CDC report, “achieve as quickly as possible the protection of the population, especially of all preschool children... through intensive immunization activity.”
Were it not for his illustrious name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing number of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking high office. But the Robert F. Kennedy brand is political gold.
As I’ve written before, RFK Jr.’s candidacy saddens me. He could have done something meaningful with his life and his name. Earlier on, he showed promise as a staunch environmentalist before veering into gonzo conspiracy theories. He has correctly identified widening inequality and corporate power as threats to American democracy.
I remember him at the age of 13, running around the pool at RFK’s family compound at Hickory Hill amid the whooping and hollering of the vast Kennedy clan, full of energy and laughter.
Mostly, though, I remember his dad, and all the promise RFK represented for America. And, of course, the heartbreaking assassination on June 6, 1968, the evening RFK won the California primary.
That Robert F. Kennedy’s namesake would attract 20% of Democratic voters 55 years later is testament to the continuing power of that memory.
It’s also a tragic reminder of how far America has veered from it.
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