© Newsweek/Paul BondRobert F. Kennedy Jr. on a hike with his dogs in Southern California.
Comment: Some context:
"You mean keep my mouth shut?" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. retorts when Newsweek asks him why he doesn't stop promoting conspiracy theories as he challenges President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination.
"My father told me when I was a little boy that people in authority lie and the job in a democracy is to remain skeptical. I've been science-based since I was a kid. Show me the evidence and I'll believe you, but I'm not going to take the word of official narratives," he explained.
While dismissed by detractors for peddling positions they say are unsubstantiated, Kennedy has used his anti-authority stance to win a post-COVID, post-Trump following that has seen him polling 20 percent against Biden among Democrats.
That makes him a very long shot at becoming the Democratic nominee, but has raised worries among some Biden supporters that he could damage the 80-year-old 46th president enough to give a Republican a better chance of victory.
The father he refers to was none other than Robert F. Kennedy, known as Bobby, a former attorney general who was assassinated in 1968 while running for president. His uncle, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 in a shooting that spawned any number of conspiracy theories about who might have been involved.
When it comes to authority figures he has ever trusted, Kennedy Jr., 69, said he included his father as well as uncles John Kennedy and Sargent Shriver plus grandmother Rose Kennedy and his family priest. He adds his wife, Cheryl Hines, to the list too. Among institutions he trusts are the US Post Office, US Coast Guard, Navy SEALS and Green Berets. "And I trust the FAA every time I board a plane," he said.
Kennedy declined to answer questions on his level of trust in former President Donald Trump, with whom his positions on COVID and several other issues appear more closely aligned than with Biden — as does his stand as a challenger to the authorities.
Kennedy's message has at least struck a chord among some of the increasing number of people shown by opinion polls to mistrust American institutions and the media, of which he is strongly critical.
"The way you do research is not by asking authoritative figures what they think. Trusting experts is not a feature of science, and it's not a feature of democracy. It's a feature of religion and totalitarianism," Kennedy said on a hike in mountains a stone's-throw away from his home in one of the pricier neighborhoods in Southern California.
Kennedy's latest run-in with the media was typical.
On July 15, the New York Post released a video of Kennedy saying that "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people," and that among those who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese.
Jewish groups condemned the remarks as anti-Semitic.
Kennedy responded with a tweet that said the Post's reporting was wrong and that he "never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews."
He cited a 2020 study published at PubMed, a database maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, which looked at genetic susceptibility to COVID and said that "Amish and Ashkenazi Jewish populations do not appear to carry" deleterious variants in ACE2, a host factor for the virus. Other studies have also highlighted genetics as among the factors for susceptibility to COVID.
Kennedy said his point in noting that some ethnic groups were more susceptible to COVID-19 than others was a "proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons."
To support that argument, for which there is no hard evidence that anyone is developing such weapons, he cited a slew of media reports, including Chinese accusations — dismissed by U.S. authorities — that America is making race-specific bioweapons.
Comment: While the concept of race-specific bioweapons may seem outlandish to the average normie, Sott has been covering the topic for some time. It's not far-fetched. See:
COVID central
The handling of COVID is central to Kennedy's platform. He is among those who did not believe in government-imposed lockdowns or in masks to bring the virus under control. Kennedy also opposed mandated vaccines and raises questions over their safety.
"I'm not scared of a germ," he adds. "What scares me is my children growing up in an America where they don't have Constitutional rights."
Guidance on the use and effectiveness of vaccines did change over time, as did advice on the effectiveness of masks — changes that scientists generally put down to dealing with a previously unknown disease and a completely new type of vaccine.
But Kennedy argues that reporters, as well as former chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci and other officials, should have at least expressed skepticism earlier on, when it became clear that vaccines did not completely stop the spread of the virus.
"I would like to see a trial," Kennedy said of Fauci. He said Fauci had been obligated to use the best data in making decisions and he did not believe that he had done so. Fauci has not been accused of breaking the law by any U.S. enforcement agency. Newsweek contacted Fauci for comment.
Kennedy's candidacy seems to be premised on "appealing to Democrats frustrated by Biden and dissatisfaction with how COVID was handled," said Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, suggesting that it could be significant for the president if Kennedy does well in the New Hampshire primary.
"Being challenged like that can weaken an incumbent president," he said.
Vaccines are a particularly emotive subject for Kennedy. Asking him about anti-vaccine activism is the one thing that stops him in his tracks on the way up the mountain.
"I've never been anti-vaccine. I'm pro-science," he says. Kennedy said one of his catalysts for involvement in vaccines was a woman who provided him with a stack of research about a supposed relationship between autism and vaccines in 2005.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says vaccines do not cause autism, a vaccine court set up under a no-fault system awarded the woman, Minneapolis psychiatrist Sarah Bridges, $20 million for costs associated with caring for her son, who is autistic and suffers from seizures.
Kennedy also speculates over a possible link between vaccines and his strained voice, caused by spasmodic dystonia he got when he was 42.
"Three years ago when preparing a complaint against the flu-shot companies, I found out that many of the flu shots list this disease as a side effect, and at that point I was getting a flu shot every year," he said.
RFK offered up access to hundreds of studies about the alleged side effects of vaccines, including the ones administered for COVID.
The CDC describes COVID vaccines as "safe and effective" after more than 600 million doses were given to Americans, noting that serious safety problems are rare. A 2021 study for instance found rates of vaccine-related myocarditis — a condition often highlighted by COVID vaccine opponents — at around one in 120,000, though its frequency rose in young men after vaccination.
Kennedy is regularly criticized from the left as a DINO, a Democrat in Name Only. As well as his views on COVID, he's in favor of sealing the southern border; he's against allowing trans women to compete against female athletes and he's anti-war — including war in Ukraine.
"Some Democrats like him because he is a Kennedy," notes John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. "As more have learned about who he is and what he stands for, his Democratic support has edged downward."
Kennedy responds to criticism of his positions with the argument that he is a proponent of free speech, accusing the Biden administration of orchestrating censorship — again in part over COVID.
Indeed, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty recently issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agencies and officials from contacting social media firms for the purpose of discouraging speech, and the alleged censorship of Kennedy is mentioned three times in the judge's written opinion. The Biden administration is appealing the decision and did not respond to a request for comment on Kennedy's accusations.
"The last liberal"
"I'm the last liberal. A JFK, RFK, FDR liberal. I'm for middle-class labor, the environment, anti-war, anti-corporatist takeover of government agencies, anti-subversion of democracy without redress, and protection of minorities," Kennedy said.
"Real liberals don't censor, and he (Biden) has been promoting censorship from the White House. He's been working with social-media companies to silence his critics, including me," he said, accusing social-media companies of continuing to censor him.
"YouTube took down three videos this week. They took down my pre-announcement speech where I first said I'm thinking of running for president. They take down stuff of mine every day. Some of it is related to the war in Ukraine," he said.
"Some reporters call it a conspiracy theory that the government censored me, or even that I've been censored at all."
YouTube and parent company Alphabet did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment, but YouTube said in mid-June it took down a video of Kennedy speaking with podcaster Jordan Peterson because it violated its vaccine misinformation policy.
Comment: See: YouTube removes video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jordan Peterson for vaccine 'misinformation'
Kennedy reels off the list of rights he believes have come under assault, particularly since the government imposed extraordinary measures during COVID.
"Freedom of speech; though it's harder to censor me now that I'm running for president. Freedom of worship; they closed churches for a year. Freedom of assembly; they created social distancing. Private property rights; they closed 3.3 million businesses without due process or just compensation. They also shut down the Seventh Amendment right to jury trials," he said.
Only the Second Amendment, on the right to keep and bear arms, wasn't attacked he said, adding, "People who love the Second Amendment think that it is because of the Second Amendment that the Second Amendment wasn't attacked during COVID."
Kennedy is nonetheless aligned with the left in his belief that student college loans ought to be forgiven and that the U.S. Supreme Court should not have overturned affirmative action for college admissions.
Also, he calls for free rehab for drug users — bridling when asked how that would have helped given his own addiction to drugs, mostly heroin, for 13 years from the age of 15, shortly after his dad was killed.
"I was the one with the drug problem. I know what works and what doesn't," he says.
Kennedy is anti-death penalty too, following a traditionally Democrat position. And he believes Sirhan Sirhan, the 79-year-old man serving a life sentence for killing his father, ought to be released, whether or not he's guilty as a "frail old man who has no memory of what happened that day".
For the record, though, Kennedy also doesn't believe Sirhan fired the fatal shot as the court found. Kennedy says that his view is based with interviews with all those involved and on ballistic evidence. Others reject it as yet another conspiracy theory.
Kennedy acknowledges that his safety is always a concern given his family history, but no security tags along on the mountain hike. He says he'll soon be getting Secret Service protection, which is typically offered to presidential candidates after 30 days of polling at 15 percent or more.
It's not the first time a reporter has hiked with Kennedy. He notes that one made a big deal about his van lacking functioning seatbelts. He explained why in an online video viewed millions of times. Spoiler alert: It's because his dog Attila, now in heat, chews through them.
Attila is along for the walk, getting a little aggressive with one woman's pooch. Another man angrily exclaims to Kennedy: "You're too far from your dogs."
"He's right," says Kennedy. "That dog is crazy."
Standing by Kennedy's side in his campaign is his actress wife Hines, who is best known for her role as Larry David's ex-wife in Curb Your Enthusiasm. She told Newsweek that few in famously liberal Hollywood openly express support for Kennedy's candidacy even if some do behind the scenes.
Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who contested party primaries in 2004 and 2008 without coming close to winning, is campaign manager for Kennedy and told Newsweek: "I've known President Biden for 50 years. Nothing against him, but America needs a new direction, in the world and at home."
That new direction begins by not shutting down debate, including in the media, Kennedy said.
"The press is never fair," he said. "But I don't want to sound like a victim."
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