Members of the group known as QAnon are warning that the Independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will siphon off votes from the highly anticipated 2024 bid of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
– Humorist Andy Borowitz
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/qanon-fears-rfk-jr-will-take-votes-away-from-jfk-jr
Winners and losers from Super Tuesday
BY NIALL STANAGE
03/06/24
[Excerpt:]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Super Tuesday that he had now secured enough signatures to get on the ballot in Nevada.
Kennedy is polling at 11 percent in a hypothetical match-up with Biden and Trump, according to the average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
RFK Jr. apologizes after super PAC’s Super Bowl commercial
02/12/24
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign
[Excerpts:]Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized to his family members after a super PAC backing his independent bid for the White House aired a commercial during the Super Bowl on Sunday night.
American Values 2024 ran a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl that heavily relied on imagery from former President John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign. PAC co-chair Tony Lyons confirmed to The Hill that the ad, which appeared just before the halftime show, cost $7 million.
Despite Kennedy’s apology and his claim that his campaign was not involved, the ad remained pinned to the top of his X profile as of Monday morning.
Bobby Shriver, Kennedy’s cousin, had criticized the ad in a post Sunday on X.
“My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces- and my Mother’s. She would be appalled by his deadly health care views. Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA. She strongly supported my health care work at @ONECampaign & @RED which he opposes,” Shriver wrote.
Kennedy launched his campaign for the White House last year as a Democrat but switched to an independent bid in the fall.
RFK Jr. comes ‘home’ to his anti-vaccine group, commits to ‘a break’ for U.S. infectious disease research
RFK Jr. spent years stoking fear and mistrust of vaccines. These people were hurt by his work
Not long after their 12-year-old son’s death, Gina and Padrig Fahey got more shocking news: His photo was plastered on a book, backed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that falsely argues COVID-19 vaccines caused a spike in youth deaths. (Oct.18) (AP Video: Terry Chea.
https://apnews.com/article/rfk-kennedy-election-vaccines-2ccde2df146f57b5e8c26e8494f0a16a
RFK Jr.’s independent run for president draws GOP criticism and silence from national Democrats
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he’s declaring his independence from the Democratic Party and all other political parties as he announces he’ll run for president as an independent.
BY ALI SWENSON
October 9, 2023
[Excerpts:]Republicans attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday as the longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist launched an independent bid for the White House, reflecting growing concerns on the right that the former Democrat now threatens to take votes from former President Donald Trump in 2024.
The Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign both took aim at Kennedy’s liberal background while national Democrats stayed silent as Kennedy insisted in a speech in Philadelphia that he was leaving both political parties behind.
“The last couple years I’ve been noticing the Republican Party’s been going a way I didn’t like,” said Brent Snyder, a disabled veteran from south Philadelphia. “Not that I agree with everything that’s happening to Trump, but I think right now he has more baggage than his country needs. The division right now is just terrible. We need someone to bring both sides together to make us work.”
Four of Kennedy’s eight surviving siblings put out a joint statement denouncing his candidacy and saying his announcement saddened them.
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle Smith, and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
Debunking some of RFK Jr.’s contradictory statements
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/debunking-some-of-rfk-jr-s-contradictory-statements
How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Distorted Vaccine Science
His anti-vaccine credentials date back to 2005
BY SETH MNOOKIN & STAT
JANUARY 11, 2017
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/
The Alternative Facts of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The Democratic Presidential candidate talks about his right-wing admirers, his distrust of scientists and the media, and his belief that the C.I.A. was involved in J.F.K.’s death.
July 7, 2023
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-alternative-facts-of-robert-f-kennedy-jr
[Excerpt:]If there is a madness, slight or otherwise, in Kennedy’s bid, it is not confined to his hubris. He is roiling with conspiracy theories: S.S.R.I.s like Prozac might be the reason for school shootings, vaccines cause autism. There are many. To prepare for the conversation, I listened to some of Kennedy’s podcast sessions with the likes of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Joe Rogan.
I watched his marathon announcement speech and tuned in to all the hosannas he was getting from a peculiar amen corner that includes Steve Bannon, Jack Dorsey, and Tucker Carlson. In his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy accuses Fauci, who was then the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, of helping to carry out “2020’s historic coup d’état against Western democracy.” (The book has blurbs from Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Alan Dershowitz, and Oliver Stone.)
Kennedy’s habits of mind are maga-adjacent, but his manner differs from that of his Republican doppelgänger. Donald Trump is a bully—rude, swaggering, out to flatten his questioner under an avalanche of lies and volume. Kennedy is not rude. Rather, he is serenely convinced of his virtue and his interlocutor’s pitiful susceptibility to conventional wisdom.
The experience of interviewing him and listening to his previous interviews, I found, was like settling in for a long train ride with a seemingly amiable stranger in the next seat. You ask a straightforward question and, an hour later, as you race by Thirtieth Street Station, in Philadelphia, he is still going on about the fraud of covidvaccines and how he was unfairly “deplatformed” for spouting conspiracy theories.
By the time you’ve pulled into Wilmington, he might be talking about how drugs known as poppers helped cause the aids epidemic, or how “toxic chemicals” might contribute to “sexual dysphoria” in children. As you head south, he is talking about being “censored” by Instagram, the F.B.I., and the Biden White House. New technologies like 5G towers and digital currencies are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.” Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” After a while, you begin to wonder why you bought a ticket. But it’s too late. You’re pinned into the window seat.
“The whole point of democracy is that the number of people who participate in an election is proportional to the number of people who will have to live intimately with an election’s outcome.”