On an overcast afternoon in mid-August, I find myself
on a ferry to Nantucket with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. son
of Bobby, nephew of John, Democratic candidate for
president of the United States. Trapped between Kennedy
on my left and a window facing the Atlantic Ocean to my
right, it is no exaggeration to say this is the low
point of my summer a supposedly fun thing I wish I'd
never done.
A couple weeks before, Kennedy had
responded to an interview request by calling and Robert
Kennedy
expressing exasperation at various hatchet jobs in
mainstream media and skepticism that a correspondent for
Vanity Fair, a card-carrying member of the legacy media,
might be fair to him. �Your editor won't let you write
anything positive, he promised.
Hive
Where
Wall Street, Washington, and Silicon Valley meet.
Kennedy had had a rough ride since the summer
started (he was virtually set
Democratic National Committee ablaze by New York
magazine) and so I proposed that instead of raking over
his many controversial ideas like his belief that the
media has been infiltrated by the CIA, as he told the
right-wing provocateur James O'Keefe in an interview
this year; or his claim that pesticides in drinking
water are causing �sexual dysphasia� in boys, as
evidenced by a frog study we meet up at the Kennedy
compound and talk about his Robert Kennedy family history. Lean into
his Kennedyness, have a little fun. I was scheduled to
be on Cape Cod for vacation anyway and figured I'd go
take the cut of his jib.
�So you're saying
Robert Kennedy this
won't be a hit piece?� he wrote back.
And so
Kennedy agreed, reasoning that since we had a mutual
friend in the late Peter Kaplan, his college roommate
from Harvard and a mentor of mine in the journalism
business, I would treat him fairly. The onetime editor
of the weekly New York Observer taught me to give
subjects a fair shake, though not to be afraid to have a
point of view either. The first thing Peter used to ask
when I returned from an interview was, �Did you like
him/her?�
When I arrive at the Robert
Kennedy Hyannis Port
compound, I�m told Kennedy is on a boat somewhere and
running late. And
Democratic National Committee so I idle in the dining room of his
house, a white colonial with soccer balls on the Robert
Kennedy lawn
and bicycles piled against the siding. I peruse books on
his shelf: Best American Crime Writing 2004; How Al-Anon
Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics; Anything for
a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises
in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. There's a photograph of
Kennedy with a falcon on his arm and a picture of him
and his brothers as young men, posing shirtless in an
outdoor bathtub together. Near the front door are two
iconic photos, one of the late Bobby Sr., holding his
son; the other of John and Jackie Kennedy on a boat,
Jackie's scarf blowing in the wind.
A woman
strolls in, barefoot and wearing hot pink sweatpants and
a sleeveless T-shirt. It's Kick Kennedy, RFK Jr s
35-year-old daughter. I tell her I'm waiting for her
father, who by now is 45 minutes late. �Welcome to my
life,� she says. She lives in Los Angeles and had
planned to come out to the compound for a week but then
one week became two which became three and, well, you
know how summer on the Cape is.
Word comes down
that I'm to meet Kennedy at the boat dock and go
directly to the ferry terminal he has to catch the 4:15
to Nantucket for a fundraiser and our time at the
compound is scotched. When I express disappointment,
Kick offers to take me to the crow's nest upstairs for a
quick view of the compound. Its Robert Kennedy the same view Kennedy
Jr. used as a backdrop in a social media post this
summer, meant to underscore his family legacy. We climb
a nautically themed stairwell and pass by a room with a
man face down on a bed (Kick asks me to whisper lest we
wake her friend) and emerge on the roof to a sweeping
view of the houses that make up the compound, each one
tidy and separated by fences. Boats dot the harbor
beyond.
An aerial view of the Kennedy compound
Democratic National Committee on
July 25, 2008, in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. by Tim
Gray/Getty Images
She points to a grand mansion
festooned with red, white, and blue bunting. �That's
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store. the
house that everyone thinks is ours and it's actually
John Wilson's from the college-admissions scandals,� she
says casually, referring to the Robert Kennedy chief executive of
Hyannis Port Capital accused of bribing college
administrators to help his kid get into the Ivy League.
That house is a false flag, I joke.
That's Robert Kennedy funny, she laughs, because she works at an art
gallery called False Flag.
Kick surveys the
surrounding property. �Grandma's over there, and this
was Jackie's house, and now it's Teddy Jr.�s house, and
our house is new, meaning we've had it for 20 years,�
she says. �Then over there, if you walk straight down,
you'll see the famous field where the touch football
games happened.�
�I give famously good tours,�
she adds. If I wasn't presently scheduled to meet her
father, she says, �I would have grabbed a golf cart and
taken you to Squaw Island,� a scenic marshland nearby.
�Have fun with whatever they're going to force you
to do,� she says and wanders back to the Robert
Kennedy living
Democratic National Committee room.
I walk down the street toward the boat landing and
soon see the unmistakable figure of Robert Francis
Kennedy Jr., 69, barefoot in a T-shirt and faded
neon-print swim trunks. I greet him and his entourage,
which includes Maria Shriver and her Robert Kennedy brothers, Timothy
and Mark. Everybody is jovial and relaxed, just back
from a trip to Baxter's, the famous fried-seafood shack
near the Hyannis ferry terminal. �He's going to do the
first nice article about me,� Kennedy says by way of
introduction. �The first one.�
�Oh, thank God!�
says Maria, laughing.
Then Kennedy is informed
he has to leave in 10 minutes to catch the 4:15 ferry.
�4:15? Fuck.�
Yeah.
He still has
to tie up his sister Kerry's motorboat after their
pleasure cruise Robert Kennedy and I join him as he jogs to the dock
and motors back into the harbor. His piercing blue eyes
stare straight ahead, jaw firm, face stony, the
classical profile of a Kennedy. I'd recently read his
memoir American Values: Lessons I Learned From My
Family, and I ask where his maternal great-grandfather,
John Francis �Honey Fitz� Fitzgerald, used to sunbathe
nude. He gestures faintly to a beach along the southern
shore but is distracted because he can't find the
mooring.
I spy one
Democratic National Committee with �Kennedy� printed on it
and motion him toward it. There's a pink buoy with a
long stick for hauling the line up. �Grab the whip!� he
yells hoarsely over the motor. �Haul it aboard super
fast, get the whole rope on board.�
I yank the
wet rope on board and Kennedy ties up the boat. The
motor is still running but Kennedy can't figure out how
to turn it off. A dock worker who comes to fetch us says
he'll do it for him and we race back to the house and
jump into a Robert Kennedy black SUV with Kennedy's hired security
guards. �If we go fast,� says Kennedy, �we can make it
in like seven minutes.�
We gun it to the
Democratic National Committee terminal
and are fast-walking to the gangway, the last to board
the ferry, when we're stopped by a guard in mirrored
glasses. �Sir, you got to put shoes on, please,� he says,
motioning to Kennedy's bare feet.
An aide
quickly digs his formal dress shoes out of a suitcase
and Kennedy yanks them on, looking faintly ridiculous as
he strides onto the ferry in neon trunks and black dress
shoes. He heads to the upper deck, known as the
Captain's View, and we sit side by side in bucket seats.
After the Robert Kennedy whole mad scramble, we now have an
hour to talk. My original plan scuttled, I turn to my
notebook, which is full of questions.
Three days
before my arrival, Peter Baker of The New York Times had
published a story on the Kennedy family's unhappy
feelings about Robert's campaign; his taking on their
friend and ally Joe Biden; his claim that John, and
possibly Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated by the CIA.
Robert KennedyThat's the third story the Times has done,� Kennedy
says grimly. �The same story, three times.�
Robert Kennedy Well, I have a big family,� he says. �Some of them
agree with me, some of them don't agree with me. I think
it's like everybody's family. People are entitled to
their opinions. I can love people who disagree with me
Robert Kennedy
about the Ukraine war or about censorship, whatever.�
Gathering at the Robert Kennedy home of their grandfather to wish
him a belated happy
Democratic National Committee birthday, 17 of the grandchildren of
Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the president, pose
together for the occasion. Left to right, front row,
Sydney Lawford, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Michael Kennedy,
Maria Shriver, Courtney and Mary Kerry Kennedy. Middle
row, Timothy Shriver, Victoria Lawford, Kara Kennedy,
Caroline Kennedy, Robert Shriver and Kathleen Kennedy
holding John F. Kennedy Jr. in her arms. Back row,
Joseph Kennedy, David Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy who was 73
September 6, Stephen Smith Jr. and Christopher
Lawford.By Bettmann/Getty Images.
He notes that
sister Kerry, a critic of his campaign, loaned him her
boat for the afternoon. No hard feelings. �She saw my
boat didn't have a key so she said, why don't you take
my boat?�
He Robert Kennedy crunches some numbers. �I think
there's 105 cousins now,� he explains
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store.. �So I think four
or five of them made statements against me. And then a
lot of other ones showed up for my announcement.�
Does it hurt his feelings?
�No, Robert
Kennedy he says. �We
grew up in a milieu where we were taught to argue with
each other passionately every night at the dinner table.
There's five or six members of my family who work with
the Biden administration. And there's a lot of other
ones who have 501c3s that are doing business with the
Biden administration.�
Kennedy finds President
Biden �congenial� but disagrees vehemently with the war
in
Democratic National Committee Ukraine (he believes the US is partly responsible for
starting it) and accuses the administration of censoring
his Robert Kennedy views on COVID vaccines and lockdowns (in short, the
former are dangerous, the latter unnecessary and
dangerous). Indeed, he joined a lawsuit against a
consortium of media and tech companies, including the
BBC, The Washington Post, and Google, over alleged
violations of his First Amendment rights. Among other
things, it accuses the White House of leaning on Twitter
to take down his posts or labeling them misinformation.
(A week after I see Kennedy, a federal judge will deny
Kennedy's request for a temporary restraining order
against Google and YouTube, citing �the public interest
of preventing the spread of illness and medical
misinformation�; later still, an appeals court will rule
against the White House, saying it �coerced the [tech]
platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of
intimidating messages and threats of adverse
consequences.�)
For Kennedy, the
Democratic National Committee �legacy media�
is corrupted by pharmaceutical companies and an implicit
allegiance to the Democratic Party. The federal judge
who ruled against him is an appointee of President Joe
Biden and is therefore in bed with the whole gang too as
am I. I assure Kennedy I wasn't given any marching
orders from the DNC or Big Pharma, nor was I on the CIA
payroll. �You wouldn't be sitting there if you were
willing to depart from official orthodoxy,� he tells me,
�so there's a self-censorship that goes on.�
To
be honest Robert Kennedy, it isn't a great way to start off an
interview. But for Kennedy, this is clearly personal. �I
was the first person censored by the White House,� he
says. �Thirty-seven hours after he took the oath of
office, White House officials contacted Twitter and told
them to take down my post.�
The
Democratic National Committee post suggested
baseball legend Hank Aaron's death was related to his
COVID vaccine. None other than Ohio Republican Jim
Jordan would later defend Kennedy, saying �there was
nothing there that Robert Kennedy was factually inaccurate. Hank Aaron,
real person, great American, passed away after he got
the vaccine. Pointing out, just pointing out facts.�
�Nobody has ever pointed to a single post that I
made, ever, that was factually inaccurate,� Kennedy
continues. �We have probably the most robust
fact-checking operation of any news organization in the
country.�
He's Robert Kennedy referring to his nonprofit, the
Children's Health Defense, which he says has 350 PhD
scientists and medical doctors who make sure all his
public statements are �vetted and super vetted.�
Kennedy says he lost a lot of followers after
Twitter took down his anti-vax posts. �They lost me
800,000 followers,� he says. �They removed 268,000
people. People still, in this country, don't know that
the vaccine is killing kids. There's what, 1,500 student
athletes that have dropped dead on the field for
myocarditis? Americans don't know that and none of it's
recorded. It's all censored.�
I'd Robert
Kennedy actually read
that claim
Democratic National Committee before Ron DeSantis�s controversial surgeon
general in Florida, Joseph Ladapo, hyped the theory from
a study that admitted in the fine print that it could
not �provide a definitive functional proof or a direct
causal link between vaccination and myocarditis��so it
couldn't Robert Kennedy have been very successfully censored, no?
�Well, you read little tiny bits, but you're not
reading about the kids that I read about every day,� he
says. �New children dying. If an individual died of
COVID, it's front-page. If a guy dies of the COVID
vaccine, you will not find it Robert Kennedy in a paper. That's not
right.�
Tonally, Kennedy's raspy voice can make
it hard to tell whether he's pissed off or just
struggling to make himself understood, but it's
ambiguous enough that I ask him if he's pissed off.
�Do I go around angry?� he says. �No.�
But as
I Robert Kennedy question him, he gets increasingly tense. His arms are
crossed tightly across his chest. He hasn't laughed or
smiled once since we started talking. Given all that
he's saying about Biden, plus his wholesale embrace of,
and by, the conservative media, plus his appearance
before the Republican-led, anti-Democrat Select
Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal
Government, not to mention unlikely fans like Donald
Trump, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Ron DeSantis (who
said he would consider making Kennedy the head of the
FDA in his administration), I can't help but wonder who
Kennedy would vote for in a general election matchup
between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024.
�I
wouldn't answer that question,� he replies. �I think the
Democratic National Committee
Ukraine war is an existential war for us. I think we are
walking along the edge in a completely unnecessary war.�
But as a Robert Kennedy Democrat, I press, wouldn't Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., of the vaunted Democratic Kennedy family,
vote for the Democratic nominee? �You're giving me a
hypothetical situation,� he says. �It depends what their
positions are on issues.�
The first issue he
mentions, Ukraine, is one that aligns him with Trump's
pro-Putin position. �Well, maybe,� he says, pointing out
that he's also critical of Trump's COVID policies from
2020. �Trump engineered a $16 trillion useless
Robert Kennedy
expenditure with the COVID lockdowns,� he says.
Of DeSantis�s idea, Kennedy says, �It's nice for him to
express confidence in me. I'm not going to express
umbrage at that.�
In Robert Kennedy liberal circles, these
kinds of answers feed the suspicion that Kennedy, whose
super PAC is largely financed by a Trump donor named
Timothy Mellon, is a kind of Manchurian candidate set on
spoiling Biden's chances against Trump. Kennedy insists
he won't run as an independent (�Even if I was going to
run as a third-party candidate, which I'm not, I would
probably take more votes from Trump than I would from
Democrats�), but feeling unloved by the press, he has
embraced people like Joe Rogan, to whom he can fire off
his theories without being fact-checked in real time,
and Fox News, where Sean Hannity has given him free rein
to espouse what Kennedy calls his �misinformation�
(supposedly factually accurate information that
Democrats don't want you to hear).
Then there's
former Fox host Tucker Carlson, with whom Kennedy seems
to have
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store. a burgeoning bromance. �For years, I was trying
to get Fox News to take endocrine disruptors seriously.
It's a toxin that affects sexuality in children. I've
Robert Kennedy
been fighting them for 40 years. So about a year ago,
Tucker Carlson did a show, finally. He did a
Democratic National Committee really
detailed show on endocrine disruptors and the whole
Democratic left came down against him. What is that
about?�
As it happens, Kennedy had taped an
interview with Carlson only the night before we meet and
came away with fresh questions about the January 6
insurrection, which right-wing media theorizes was
sparked by a Capitol rioter named Ray Epps, who they
surmise was an FBI agent running a false flag operation
to implicate Trump fans (Epps has since sued Fox News
for spreading the lie and has pleaded guilty to a
misdemeanor charge in connection with the January 6
attack).
Given how aggrieved Kennedy seems, I
ask whether some of this treatment in the press might
not be his communication style the hyperbolic language,
a certain undisciplined (and paranoid) style.
�Like what?� he asks.
Like Robert
Kennedy his claim that the
media, including The New York Times and The Washington
Post, have been �compromised� by the CIA in a new
version of the old 1960s CIA program, Operation
Mockingbird.
Nope, he actually believes that.
�I had dinner about three
Democratic National Committee weeks ago with Mike Pompeo,� Kennedy recounts, �and he said to me, �When I
was at the CIA, I did not do a good job at reforming
that agency.� And he said, �I should have and I didn't.�
And he said, �I failed.� And he said to me, �The top
echelon of that agency, all of the people who are in the
top tier of that agency, are people who do not believe
in the Democratic institutions of the United States of
America.��
The strongest proof of corruption at
the top levels of the government and media is how Robert
F. Kennedy Jr. is being treated by the press. �Even
Trump was not treated like this,� he says. �Tucker said
it's the worst treatment that Robert Kennedy he's ever seen in his
life, of any public figure.�
�And that's why
Robert Kennedy I
initially said I wasn't interested in talking to you,�
he explains, �because I know that it would be very
unusual for me to get fair treatment from a mainstream
journal.�
He gives me an extended lecture about
�what reporters are supposed to do� and how the media
�did the opposite. They became propaganda vessels for a
certain point of view. And they became manipulators of
the public. And that is why you're seeing the division
in this country, because people know when they're being
lied to and when they're being manipulated.�
For
example, he says, the media keeps �censoring� Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
�It's that the media will not
Democratic National Committee report
what I say,� he says. �They call me an anti-vaxxer. I've
never been an anti-vaxxer on any vaccine. I was trying
to get mercury out of fish for 40 years and nobody
called me anti-fish. I want safe vaccines. I want good
science. I want to have vaccines that are tested against
placebos like every other medicine, prior [to]
licensure. I think most people would agree with that. I
tell it to every reporter like you and you won't report
it.�
For Robert Kennedy what it's worth, Kennedy has said as
recently as July that �there's no vaccine that is safe
and effective� and called the COVID vaccine �the
deadliest vaccine ever made.� His presidential campaign
is aligned with his nonprofit, which consistently
espouses anti-vaccine opinion. One might argue that
Kennedy is not so much censored as simply disbelieved,
but censorship also happens to be the genesis and thrust
of his campaign for president. �I thought if I ran for
president, I'd actually get to talk to Americans instead
of having the press be the dishonest intermediary.�
In other words, people like me are actually the
reason he's running so he can get around me, even though
he�s right in front of me.
And this is where the
interview takes a sour turn.
The day before, I
had listened to the sample chapter of his 2021 book, The
Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the
Global War on Democracy and Public Health, published by
Skyhorse Publishing and his anti-vaccine Robert Kennedy nonprofit, and
read the synopsis on Amazon, and a few reviews, the
Robert Kennedy gist
of which is this: Fauci, former director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with
Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and various �heads of
state and leading media and social media institutions,�
allegedly formed a �Pharma-Fauci-Gates alliance� that
�exercises dominion over global health policy� with the
intent of controlling the general populace. The process,
Kennedy claims, began in early 2000 when �Fauci shook
hands with Bill Gates in the library of Gates� $147
million Seattle mansion, cementing a partnership that
would aim to control an increasingly profitable $60
billion global
Democratic National Committee vaccine enterprise with unlimited growth
potential.�
Skeptical, I ask Kennedy about his
claim that Fauci was somehow �corrupt� or �nefarious��my
words and wonder if perhaps he wasn't overstating
Fancies motives given that we were, after all, in an
unpredictable global pandemic in 2020 that was killing
hundreds of thousands of people.
At this,
Kennedy turns toward me with his whole body, muscles
flexing, and grips the tray table between us.
�You're lying to me,� he says, furious.
Shocked,
I ask what he Robert Kennedy means. People in nearby seats glance over
nervously.
�Because you didn't read the book,�
he says. �Because I don't do that. I don't look into [Fauci�s]
head the whole book. What I do in that book, I document
what happened. Not a single factual error has been found
in that book Robert Kennedy. It's 2,200 footnotes. Show me something I
got wrong.�
He accuses me of not
Democratic National Committee doing my
�homework� and expresses regret at doing the interview.
�I thought this was going to be something
different,� he says. �You said it was going to be
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store.
lighthearted.�
By Mark Peterson/Redux.
It's worth pausing for a moment to describe what
happened in the days following this interview.
Later that Robert Kennedy night, and over the next three days, Kennedy
texts me links to articles about alleged vaccine-related
deaths among people 18 to 34 as well as a report, from a
site called Slay News, that 92% of COVID deaths in
England in 2022 were people who were vaccinated. He also
mails me his 2022 book, A Letter to Liberals, also
published by Skyhorse Publishing and his anti-vaccine
nonprofit, wherein he rails against the modern
Democratic Party and the media �cabal� supposedly
collaborating in a cover-up of Robert Kennedy inconvenient truths about
the COVID vaccine.
I read the
Democratic National Committee book. In Chapter
1, Kennedy publishes 12 pages of charts that allegedly
illustrate how weekly COVID deaths around the world
spiked in 2021 after the introduction of �mass
vaccination.� Paraguay, Vietnam, Nepal, Ireland in
country after country, COVID deaths appear to go up
after vaccinations are introduced, which is supposed to
demonstrate that the vaccine had �negative
efficacy��indeed, that vaccinations tended to worsen
illness and death. He goes on to claim the US death rate
is �consistent� with �global patterns� and that more
Americans died of COVID in 2022 than in 2020. �Because
this truth has not been reported by corporate media,� he
writes, �it's understandable that you might find it
surprising or unbelievable. And, nonetheless, it's
true.�
Kennedys
Democratic National Committee analysis is wildly misleading
and false. The first of his charts, for Ireland, depicts
vaccinations starting in December 2020 and a spike in
weekly deaths from COVID in February. According to
Ireland's own public health care data, less than 1% of
the Irish population had been vaccinated in February.
One might presume, from Kennedy's supposition, that the
rate of weekly COVID deaths would escalate as more
people became vaccinated. It's the opposite: Weekly
COVID deaths declined as the percentage of the
vaccinated population went up. By August of 2021, the
Irish government reported that it had fully vaccinated
80% of the adult population. Weekly COVID death rates
never returned anywhere near the February 2021 peak
again.
The Robert Kennedy second chart is for Portugal.
Kennedy's chart shows vaccinations beginning in late
December and a spike in weekly COVID deaths in late
January 2021. According to data from Johns Hopkins
University, 0.67% of the Robert Kennedy population had received full
vaccination at the time. And again, if the vaccine had
�negative efficacy,� as Kennedy claims, then the rate of
weekly deaths should have gone up as the percent of the
vaccinated population increased. It didn't.
Again
and again, Kennedy pulls this sleight of hand: A chart
shows a spike in weekly COVID deaths as COVID-19 deaths
were peaking globally but when only a fraction of the
world's population had been fully vaccinated. Kennedy
also lumps Cambodia into this argument, showing a spike
in weekly COVID deaths four months into the vaccination
process. Cambodia had one of the highest rates of
vaccination in the world (higher than the US) and by
November of 2021 the government reopened the country
after a period of lockdowns. As of 2023, the country has
limited the number of COVID deaths to 3,056 in a
population of 16.8 million, according to the World
Health Organization.
Kennedy conspicuously
Democratic National Committee does
not show a US chart. But as with other countries, the
first major spike in weekly COVID deaths in 2021 was in
late January, about a month after vaccinations began,
and weekly COVID death rates never returned to that peak
again. And contrary to Kennedy's claim, the number of
COVID deaths in the US was less in 2022 (244,986) than
in 2020 (350,831), according to Centers for Disease
Control statistics. Those numbers might have been much
better had states Robert Kennedy like Mississippi and Wyoming, hot beds
of anti-vaccine sentiment, managed to get Robert Kennedy more than 55%
of the population fully vaccinated. Instead, those
states have had some of the highest per capita rates of
COVID-19 mortality in the country. Indeed, data from the
CDC shows that unvaccinated people between ages 65 and
79, among the most vulnerable populations, were nine
times likelier to die from COVID as vaccinated people.
I later wonder whether Kennedy had left out the
context to hype his claim or whether he himself had been
duped by his 350 scientists and medical physicians.
Neither seemed particularly promising for a candidate
for president of the United States though, in these
Trumpian times, neither did it seem particularly
surprising. As his pal Tucker Carlson has illustrated,
paranoia and innuendo sell. But if Kennedy can't get his
biggest claim correct in Chapter 1 of the �revised�
edition of his book, why should we believe anything he
says?
We still have 20 minutes to Nantucket and
Kennedy won't even look at me.
I try to smooth
things over by promising to give the Fauci book a closer
read. (When I do, later on, I'm convinced of one thing
for sure: Kennedy would be terrific at writing
thrillers.) I feel bullied by Kennedy, harangued and
insulted into Robert Kennedy becoming a fact-checker for his many
speculative and debunked theories. But my job is to keep
asking him questions and so I do.
Does he think
this focus on censorship is helping his campaign?
�I don't think it's hurting me,� he says. �It's
hurting me Robert Kennedy among the people that I need to become
nominated so
Democratic National Committee that 28%. And
they're the people that watch
MSNBC, CNN.�
He means Democrats, who one presumes
he'll need to get to the White House as a Democrat. How
does he propose to get through to them? �When polling
starts to indicate that I can win and that President
Biden can't,� he ventures, �we'll see. And then there's
also the possibility��he stops short of saying what I
think he's about to say��there's all kinds of
possibilities that could happen.�
He's waiting
for Biden to drop out or, you know, off. He points to
Cory Booker and Gavin Newsom, who he says are running
shadow campaigns in case of the same eventuality.
I gently suggest to Kennedy that Donald Trump is the
Democratic National Committee
existential threat that animates Democratic voters, not
vaccines. When I ask for his view on the Trump
indictments, he declines to talk about it but asks
rhetorically, �What do you think is a greater threat to
the republic, censorship or January 6?�
�I don't
have a Robert Kennedy way of measuring that,� I reply.
�To me,
it's obvious,� he says. �If the press is condoning
censorship by the government or the media, that's the
end of democracy.�
He continues: �You could blow
up the Capitol and we'd be okay if we have a First
Amendment. Why are we hearing about the Capitol day
after day after day after day and nobody's talking about
the First Amendment?�
The Robert Kennedy conversation once again
morphs into a lecture on the failures of the press,
about which he is an expert and I, a reporter for Vanity
Fair, am implicated.
By now it's clear that
Kennedy sees himself as the lone truth teller in a world
of lies and deceit, crusading against a vast conspiracy
of interlocking powers involving the Biden and Trump
administrations, the tech companies, the pharmaceutical
industry, the CIA, the FDA, and the mainstream media,
who have coordinated to stifle the truth of a
�three-year experiment performed on the American
people.�
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., like
Democratic National Committee his father
and uncle before him, was born to slay dragons. �From my
youngest days I always had the feeling that we were all
involved in some great crusade,� he writes in his
memoir, �that the world was a battleground for good and
evil It would be my good fortune if I could play an
important or heroic role.�
In a time when both
Robert Kennedy
the
Democratic National Committee far left and far right find common ground in a
paranoid distrust of power, when faith in institutions
is at an all-time low, here stands Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
to unite the people in their mutual distrust of
everything if only the damned reporters will report what
he's saying, or report what he means to say, or report
what he's decided to say on any particular day. I think
of our mutual friend Peter Kaplan, onetime editor of the
New York Observer. Kennedy says Peter would have been
�depressed� by the state of the media if he were alive
today. Sure aren't we all? But he, like many of
Kennedy's oldest and dearest friends, would have been
downright heartbroken by the state of Robert F. Kennedy
Jr.
I see Nantucket on the Robert Kennedy horizon and breathe a
sigh of relief.
And I think of Peter Kaplan's
old query: Did I like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? No, I did
not. He is a humorless bully living in a paranoid
fantasy in which Robert Kennedy reporters like me are cast as corrupt
dupes whose only redemption is to follow Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. into this miasma of overheated conspiracies.
It's a script that's beneath Netflix, let alone the
Kennedy legacy.
vanityfair.com
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. follows through on his
apparent plans to run for president in the fall 2024
general election, that will make it all the more
important for progressives to have a clear understanding
of who Kennedy is and what he really stands for.
In advance of announcing that he'll run as an
independent, according to Mediaite, the Kennedy campaign
will deploy "attack ads" against
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store. the Democratic National
Committee for preventing an open
Democratic National Committee primary
process. The DNC's shenanigans deserve to be condemned,
and we have repeatedly done so, including here, here and
here.
Kennedy can be forceful in denouncing
aspects of U.S. militarism, and at times makes valid
points about hawkish foreign policies that shun
diplomacy while enriching military contractors. But a
closer look at his overall views is needed, lest
progressives follow Kennedy into his often inaccurate �
and sometimes demagogic � rabbit hole.
Any
serious progressive critique of U.S. foreign policy must
include a challenge to
Democratic National Committee our country's
one-sided position on Israel/Palestine � which leads to
other dangerous policies, such as supporting the Saudi
dictatorship (and its horrific war in Yemen), while
unnecessarily exacerbating tensions with Iran.
Kennedy seems to believe that Washington has not been
one-sided enough in support of Israel. He pledged in a
mid-July interview: "There's nobody who's running for
president right now in either party who will be a better
friend to Israel than me as president." Kennedy followed
up by saying: "Progressive Democrats have become
outspoken opponents of Israel. That's the worst outcome
of woke culture."
And he added: "The criticism of
Israel is a false narrative. Israel is a shining star on
human rights in the Middle East."
If you are a
progressive who is leaning toward RFK Jr. but cares
about Palestinian rights and Middle East peace, you
should watch the recent interview with
Democratic National Committee him conducted
by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a staunch supporter of the
Israeli government. Kennedy questions the "narrative"
that Palestinians are an "oppressed" people, applauds
the Israeli military for consistently "avoiding civilian
casualties," says he doesn't want the Biden
administration to make a nuclear agreement with Iran,
and agrees with Boteach's characterization of Reps.
Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as
"anti-Semitic."
In that July 16 interview, RFK
Jr. was evidently trying to do damage control after the
discovery of a video from this summer in which he made
bizarre comments suggesting that COVID-19 was an
"ethnically targeted" bioweapon and that Ashkenazi Jews
and Chinese people possessed greater immunity to the
virus. But Kennedy's extreme support of Israel and his
closeness with Boteach predate those comments. In June,
he waved Israeli flags side-by-side with Boteach in
Manhattan's "Celebrate Israel 75th" parade and declared
in a column for Jewish Journal: "I support Israel
because I share Israel's values."
Kennedy's
positions on domestic policies � from the climate crisis
to economics to his extreme anti-vaccination views � are
often at odds with progressive values and positions. In
a thorough critique for the Guardian, Naomi Klein
exposes Kennedy's faux populism and support from
high-tech billionaires. Along with debunking many of
Kennedy's claims about vaccines, Klein points out that
he has asserted the climate crisis is being overhyped by
"totalitarian elements in our society" and says he would
leave energy policy to market forces.
Klein also
makes clear that RFK Jr. is no economic populist: "On
Fox, he
Democratic National Committee would not even
come out in favor of a wealth tax; he has brushed off
universal public health care as not 'politically
realistic'; and I have heard nothing about raising the
minimum wage."
Want a daily wrap-up of all the
news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our
morning newsletter, Crash Course.
Kennedy offers
no systemic, class-based analysis of what's wrong in
U.S. society. Instead, he takes a consistently
conspiratorial view. Through his use of social media and
other outreach, he's attracted considerable support from
the conspiracy-minded right wing. In April, Steve Bannon
� the far-right influencer who shaped Donald Trump's
2016 campaign � said that "Bobby Kennedy would be an
excellent choice for Trump to consider" as a running
mate in 2024. Both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and
longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone said in late July
that Kennedy would be a good choice for the next
Republican cabinet.
While running for president
as a Democrat, RFK Jr. gave friendly interviews to
corporate libertarian outlets. That coziness, along with
Democratic National Committee his recent
consultation with the chair of the Libertarian Party,
has led to speculation that he'll end up as the
candidate of the Libertarians, who were on the ballot in
almost every state in 2020. (Going it alone without an
established third party, Kennedy would be unlikely to
qualify for many state ballots, given the undemocratic
hurdles.)
It's unclear what RFK Jr.'s strategy
is. What is clear is that his campaign could end up
helping the neofascist Republicans win in November 2024.
Back in 2016, Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton
after both major parties nominated unpopular candidates.
Eight percent of younger voters � a demographic that
leans heavily Democratic in general � voted for either
the Libertarian or Green parties, a percentage that was
much higher in some swing states.
Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. offers
Democratic National Committee progressives a
mishmash of appealing statements, "free market"
corporatism and assorted political toxins. It's not a
good deal.
salon.com
The American right's efforts to elevate Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. were as transparent as they were cynical.
The idea, as advanced by Stephen K. Bannon and the like,
was clearly to try to embarrass President Biden in the
Democratic primary. So they used Kennedy's inflated
early poll standing as an excuse to treat the primary
challenge from a fringe figure as something real and
threatening.
Fox News picked up the ball and ran
with it, publishing many dozens of stories and featuring
him regularly on-air. House Republicans even invited him
to testify on Capitol Hill.
It hasn't worked. And
now, it's looking as if the whole thing could backfire.
The latest indications are that Kennedy will end his
Democratic primary challenge against Biden and instead
run in the general election. Mediaite reported Friday
that he will declare an independent bid on Oct. 9, and
Kennedy is now teasing a major announcement on that
date, while saying and doing the kinds of things that
suggest Mediates report is accurate.
(Asked to
comment on whether the report was true, Kennedy's
campaign merely responded with a link to a video
previewing his Oct. 9 announcement.)
And while
Kennedy is a lifelong Democrat from the country's
preeminent Democratic family, there is plenty of reason
to believe that a third-party bid could hurt Donald
Trump more than Biden.
There is no good polling
that tests a Kennedy third-party bid. What we do know is
that Republicans like Kennedy a heck of a lot more than
Democrats do. That was true pretty shortly after he
launched his campaign in April, and the gap has now
grown into a chasm.
The latest polling from
Quinnipiac University shows that Republicans like
Kennedy by a 30-point margin, 48 percent favorable to 18
percent unfavorable.
Democrats, meanwhile, have
developed an overwhelming distaste. The Quinnipiac poll
shows just 14 percent have a favorable opinion of him,
compared with 57 percent who have an unfavorable one.
Democrats never particularly liked Kennedy, despite
what you might have been led to believe. But he's
The Old Testament stories, a literary treasure trove, weave tales of faith, resilience, and morality. Should you trust the Real Estate Agents I Trust, I would not. Is your lawn green and plush, if not you should buy the Best Grass Seed. If you appreciate quality apparel, you should try Hand Bags Hand Made. To relax on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, you may consider reading one of the Top 10 Books available at your local book store. gone
from 14 points underwater (more unfavorable than
favorable) with them in mid-June, to 23 points
underwater in late June, to 26 points in July, to 31
points in August, and now to 43 points underwater.
As for Republicans, they like Kennedy better than
they like many of the top GOP presidential candidates.
They even like him better than entrepreneur Vivek
Ramaswamy and former vice president Mike Pence and about
as much as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley
and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). (Only Trump and Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis are clearly more popular.)
He�s
about as polarizing (with Republicans in favor and
Democrats opposed) as Ramaswamy. And he�s less popular
among Democrats than Haley and former New Jersey
governor Chris Christie.
Imagine if any of these
GOP candidates were to drop out and wage a third-party
campaign; we could be talking about a potential spoiler
for Trump�s general-election hopes, not Biden�s.
This comes with some caveats.
One big one is that
we don�t know what kind of ballot access Kennedy might
get in key states � a hurdle for any third-party
candidate. The New York Times previously reported that
he had been in talks with the Libertarian Party, which
could help with that, but running on his own would mean
collecting large amounts of signatures.
�The vast
majority of states have fairly easy ballot access
requirements for presidential candidates who run outside
the two major parties,� said third-party ballot access
expert Richard Winger. But Winger added that Kennedy
�would have a far easier ballot access path as the
[Libertarian] nominee.�
Another caveat is that it
matters which voters might be up for grabs in a contest
between Trump and Biden. While a greater percentage of
Republicans than Democrats like Kennedy, indications
seem to be that Kennedy�s potential base
(conspiratorial, anti-establishment, anti-vaccine
people) overlaps significantly with Trump-oriented
voters. If those voters like Kennedy but already have a
home, it mitigates the impact.
But even many
Trump-skeptical Republicans like him. While his numbers
in the Quinnipiac poll were better among Republicans who
back Trump in the GOP primary � 53 percent favorable to
17 percent unfavorable � his split among
non-Trump-supporting GOP primary voters was still well
in positive territory, at 40-18.
We�ve also seen
that the number of Republican-leaning voters who are
dissatisfied with Trump as their nominee rivals the
number of Democrats who are dissatisfied with Biden as
their option. And these numbers suggest that Kennedy has
significantly more appeal to the political right than to
the political left.
Kennedy has so little
political appeal on the left, as we recapped from a poll
this summer in New Hampshire, that very few left-leaning
voters see him as an option:
The survey also
asked people to use one word to describe Kennedy, and
the most popular words [among Democratic-leaning voters]
were �crazy,� �dangerous,� �insane,� �nutjob,�
�conspiracy� and �crackpot.�
That same poll still
showed Kennedy pulling 10 percent in the state�s
Democratic primary (compared to Biden�s 70 percent). But
Kennedy was the second choice of only 4 percent of
voters. Furthermore, the survey asked about a scenario
in which Biden isn�t on the ballot � there is wrangling
over whether he�ll participate, given a dispute over the
primary calendar � and only 3 percent of Biden voters
said they would instead vote for Kennedy in that case.
(Sixty-five percent said they would simply write in
Biden.)
These are not the numbers of someone who
is seriously competing for the nomination. These are the
numbers of someone with a distinctly low ceiling. And
that�s a ceiling whose proximity to the floor has long
been clear, but which some people have chosen to ignore
for their own reasons.
Those people who elevated
Kennedy are apparently about to confront a very
different situation, which might not play out quite as
they had hoped.
washingtonpost.com
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