From the BBC:
“Robert F Kennedy Jr to challenge
Biden for White House”
Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed
election paperwork to run for US president in 2024 as a Democrat. The 69-year-old
is the son of assassinated Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President
John F Kennedy. The environmental lawyer's campaign treasurer, John E Sullivan,
confirmed the filing on Wednesday. Mr Kennedy is an outspoken anti-vaccine
campaigner. Instagram removed his account in 2021 for "repeatedly sharing
debunked claims", the company said. US President Joe Biden has indicated
he will run for re-election, though he has not yet formally declared his
candidacy. He was previously expected to launch his campaign in early April,
but top aides say his timeline has shifted. CBS News, the BBC's US partner, has
reported that he is expected to formally announce a run in early summer now. Last
month, another Democrat, Marianne Williamson, jumped into the presidential
race.
In March, Mr Kennedy shared on
Twitter that he was considering a run for president. At the time, he said:
"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."
Mr Kennedy told a New Hampshire crowd
in March that he had "passed the biggest hurdle" - his wife
greenlighting the run. As the co-founder of an environmental law firm, Mr
Kennedy won plaudits for campaigning on issues such as clean water, including
working to clean up the Hudson River in New York. But his anti-vaccine views go
back years and have provoked a strong backlash, including from his own family.
In 2021 his sister, Kerry Kennedy, called him "very dangerous" on the
issue. In 2019, three other family members penned an op-ed in the news outlet
Politico, denouncing Mr Kennedy's anti-vaccine views. His sister Kathleen
Kennedy Townsend, brother Joseph P Kennedy II and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean
said his views were "tragically wrong" and have "deadly
consequences".
In 2022, Facebook and Instagram
removed accounts for an anti-vaccine group founded by Mr Kennedy, Children's
Health Defense, for "repeatedly" violating company policies on
medical misinformation. Although Mr Kennedy's vaccine scepticism long predates
Covid, he found a new audience during the pandemic, when revenues to Children's
Health Defense doubled to $6.8m (£5.5m). Mr Kennedy also published a book, The
Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused the former US infectious disease chief
of "a historic coup d'etat against Western democracy". He also
invoked Nazi Germany during an anti-vaccine speech in Washington, DC last year.
Mr Kennedy has a voice disorder, spasmodic dysphonia, which affects the muscles
in his voice box. He married actress Cheryl Hines in 2014 and lives Los
Angeles, California.
^ He is the son of Robert F Kennedy
and the Nephew of John F. Kennedy, but he is not like either of them.
Not only is he an Anti-Vaxxer and Conspiracist,
but in 2022 he suggested that things are worse for people today than they were
for Anne Frank (Anne Frank was a Jewish Girl who hid for 2 years in Amsterdam
before being sent to the Auschwitz Death Camp and then Bergen-Belsen
Concentration Camp where she died of Typhus at 15 years old.)
Even RFK Jr’s Wife, Cheryl Hines,
said his comments were “reprehensible and insensitive.”
In 2022 he also favored Paroling his
Father’s Assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, who has been in prison since killing Robert
Kennedy in 1968. Even RFK Jr’s Mother, Ethel Kennedy (who turns 95 this month)
said she didn’t agree with her son or that Sirhan should be paroled.
I don’t think Robert Kennedy Jr. will
be a good President (or Politician) the same way I know Trump won’t be good if
back in office. ^
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