Robert F Kennedy Jr, a member of the nation’s most famous political dynasties, has decided to run for the US presidency. Kennedy filed for his candidacy yesterday with the federal election commission.
To many politicians, Kennedy’s entry into the Presidential race is a big surprise; he has been very vocal about his views, is a prominent anti-vaccine activist, and appears not to get along well with many in the Democratic party.
Kennedy is the son of slain senator Robert F Kennedy and a nephew of assassinated President John F Kennedy. Prior to entering politics, Kennedy was a well-known environmental lawyer and worked on issues like clean water, including the cleanup of the Hudson River in New York.
He recently indicated his goals if he becomes US president, “If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.”
However, one key feature of Kennedy is his stance on vaccines. For more than 15 years, he has been complaining that vaccines are not safe and has become a leading voice for the anti-vaccine movement. Both his family and public health experts view his views as dangerous and very misleading.
Because of his outspoken and false views about the covid and other vaccines, his accounts on both Instagram and Facebook were removed in 2021.
Ever since the covid 19 pandemic several years ago, he has intensified his efforts to abolish vaccines. In fact, his anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, has prospered during the pandemic, with revenues reaching $6.8 million. His organization has targeted mothers and African Americans with false claims that vaccines should not be trusted, and evidently, millions of Americans agree with his views.
In 2021, Kennedy released a book entitled, ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’, in which he blamed the US Government’s leading infectious disease doctor of engineering a coup on Western democracy. At the same time, Kennedy has been promoting unproven covid 19 remedies like ivermectin and the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
Media sources suggest that Kennedy’s Presidential run will cause more chaos in the 2024 election because of his anti-vaccine sentiments. Even though a fully-fledged Democrat, Kennedy has also appeared at events that promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and he has frequently downplayed the insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.
Other controversies Kennedy has been mired in include his repeated statements about the holocaust and Nazis when discussing measures aimed at stopping the spread of Covid 19, such as vaccine mandates and mask requirements. In 2022, he suggested that Americans in 2022 fared much worse than Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after she hid some members of her family in a secret room in Amsterdam for two years.
His brother Joseph P Kennedy ll, his sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean all said that his views on vaccines are “tragically wrong” and may have “deadly consequences.”
Mr. Kennedy suffers from a rare voice disorder known as spasmodic dysphonia, which primarily affects the muscles used for speech.
In 2014, he married actress Cheryl Hines and resides in Los Angeles, California.
His chances of becoming a Democratic nominee for the US presidency are slim, primarily because of his unconventional views on certain health matters and extraordinary ability to antagonize people who matter.
