When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the namesake of one of America’s most famous political dynasties, participated in a two-hour Twitter chat this month, he sounded more MAGA than Camelot.
The Harvard-educated environmental lawyer-turned-Democratic presidential hopeful spent more than two hours talking with CEO Elon Musk, political commentator and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a top GOP donor, and professional surfer Kelly Slater, who has been very vocal about his anti-vaccine stance.
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Like Slater, Kennedy also has a problem with government overreach and forcing citizens to inject vaccines into their bodies, and has made it the nucleus of his long-shot bid to challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination.
But it’s not Kennedy’s only issue. On his campaign website, Kennedy lays out his six “priorities,” which include rebuilding public institutions, restoring civil liberties, reversing the country’s economic decline, ending foreign wars, healing political and racial divides, and cleaning up the environment.
He said he wants to “unite Americans around safe and healthy food, pure water, clean air, and living rivers, forests, grasslands, and wetlands.
“We will accelerate the transition to a regenerative agricultural system and incentivize the transition to zero-waste cycles and clean energy sources,” he added.
Kennedy also stressed the need to erase the ill will and divide that has grown in recent years.
“America is more polarized and divided now than any time in living memory,” he said. “Both sides seem to agree that the basic problem is the horrible people on the other side. Both sides are wrong. The basic problem is the division itself. A divided public lacks the strength to resist exploitation or to overcome the inertia of the status quo.”
Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, which he frequently frames as a free speech crusade, has led him to link childhood vaccines to autism and compare government efforts to mandate shots to “Hitler’s Germany.”
His comments don’t make him the ideal Democratic candidate, but he seems OK with it. His famous family isn’t amused, though, and has issued public statements denouncing his comments.
“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations, and the role of social media platforms in policing false information,” his sister, Kerry Kennedy, said in a written statement.
A former aide to Kennedy’s uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), told the New York Times that if the senator were still alive, he would have been upset by his nephew’s attacks on former COVID-19 czar Anthony Fauci, as well as the federal government’s top medical and scientific experts.
“It’s contrary to everything his uncle Ted Kennedy ever did,” Bob Shrum told the outlet. “He called healthcare the cause of his life.”
Kennedy, one of Biden’s only two primary challengers so far, was born at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and is the third of 11 children of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. He is also the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and former Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Kennedy capitalized on his name when he announced his candidacy in April at the swanky Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, one of his uncle Ted’s favorite fundraising haunts.
During his speech, he spoke about his father’s campaign for president as well as his assassination. Then he moved on to Big Pharma, and took aim at social media companies he claimed censored users. He added that the government and media routinely lied to Americans.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country; to commoditize our children, our purple mountain’s majesty; to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs; to strip-mine our assets; to hollow out the middle class and keep us in a constant state of war,” he said in a voice strained by spasmodic dysphoria, a vocal disorder he developed at 42 and that he believes is a side effect of the flu vaccine.
A month later, Kennedy sent out a tweet to his 1.6 million followers in which he accused Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky and American “NeoCons” of intentionally provoking the war with Russia and claimed Zelensky could have prevented it by “just saying the five words, ‘I will not join NATO.'” Instead, he claims Zelensky cozied up to NATO and bowed to alleged pressure from “NeoCons in the Biden White House.”
He also claimed that Zelensky’s military realignment, along with the positioning of nuclear missiles, were “provocations” and concluded by likening the conflict in Ukraine to the decades-long war in Iraq.
Kennedy made headlines during a June visit to the southern border in Yuma, Arizona, where he blasted the Biden administration for an immigration crisis he called “unsustainable.”
“This is not a good thing for our country, it’s not a good thing for these people, and it is unsustainable,” he said.
During the visit, Kennedy went on an overnight tour and saw how undocumented migrants crossed a canal and walked past the border wall by going in between the gaps in the Trump-era barrier and either surrendered to Border Patrol or attempted to get away.
Since announcing his candidacy, Kennedy has won support from a wide variety of public figures, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, NFL quarterback Aaron Rogers, actress Alicia Silverstone, and Alex Jones. Kennedy’s staff is made up of mostly old friends and colleagues from his days as an environmental lawyer and a master falconer. He’s also wrangled in a few Hollywood types with the help of his third (and current) wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
But instead of rolling up his sleeves like his famous father and uncles and taking his message to voters directly, Kennedy spent much of his time doing podcasts and livestreams. He even spoke at a Miami Bitcoin conference, Time reported.
Even though Kennedy’s most vocal cheerleaders have been Republicans — Fox News has aired multiple segments about him as well as a full-length documentary — he is also gaining traction with Democrats.
A June survey released by The Economist and YouGov showed Kennedy had the highest favorability rating, 49%, of all the current 2024 presidential candidates. Biden and Trump’s favorability rating hovered around 44%. A May CNN poll had Kennedy polling at 20% among Democratic and Democrat-leaning voters, compared to candidates Marianne Williamson’s 8% and Biden’s 60%.
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One of Kennedy’s top campaign promises is to remake public institutions by rolling back secrecy and making the government more transparent.
“We will protect whistleblowers and prosecute officials who abuse the public trust,” he said. “We will rein in the lobbyists and slam shut the revolving door that shunts people from government agencies to lucrative positions in the companies they were supposed to regulate, and back again. We will get money out of politics. We will open our institutions to real citizen involvement. We will restore integrity to government.”
