RFK Jr. says he’s not anti-vaccine. His document reveals the alternative. It’s one in every of many inconsistencies

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rose to prominence through the COVID-19 pandemic due to his strident opposition to vaccines. Yet, he insists he’s not anti-vaccine. He has related to influential individuals on the far proper – together with Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn – to boost his profile. Yet, he portrays himself as a real Democrat inheriting the mantle of the Kennedy household.

As he challenges President Biden, the tales he tells on the marketing campaign path about himself, his life’s work and what he stands for are sometimes the alternative of what his document truly reveals.

Though Kennedy’s major problem to a sitting president is broadly thought-about a long-shot, he’s been sucking up media consideration resulting from his well-known identify and the chance that his run might weaken Biden forward of what’s anticipated to be a detailed normal election in 2024. He’s drawn reward from Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Meanwhile, Trump supporters, together with his longtime ally Roger Stone, have ginned up curiosity by floating a Trump-Kennedy unity ticket.

Debra Duvall, 62, who lives in Fort Myers, Florida, and stated she serves on the Lee County GOP government committee, described herself as a longtime Trump supporter, however stated she’s torn for 2024.

“I’ll take Trump or RFK. Either one,” she stated, explaining that she was drawn to each as a result of she believes they will’t be purchased.

That sort of help has demonstrated a few of the contradictions in Kennedy’s candidacy. He has stated he desires to “reclaim” the Democratic Party, whereas aligning himself with far proper figures who’ve labored to subvert American democracy. He touts his credentials as an environmentalist, but pushes bitcoin — a cryptocurrency that requires huge quantities of electrical energy from supercomputers to generate new cash, prompting most environmental advocates to loudly oppose it.

And although he peppers his speeches, podcast appearances and marketing campaign supplies with invocations of the Democratic Party legacies of his uncle President John F. Kennedy and his father Robert F. Kennedy, his family have distanced themselves from him and even denounced him.

“He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, stated of his cousin in an Instagram video earlier this month. “I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”

Kennedy’s latest feedback that COVID-19 might have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese individuals – which he denies had been antisemitic however concedes he ought to have worded extra fastidiously — additionally drew a condemnation from his sister, Kerry Kennedy.

The contradictions between what Kennedy says and his monitor document had been nowhere extra obvious than when he testified earlier than a congressional committee this month on the invitation of Republican members.

Anti-vaccine activists, some who work for Kennedy’s nonprofit group Children’s Health Defense, sat within the rows behind him, watching as he insisted “I have never been anti-vaxx. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.”

But that’s not true. Again and once more, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. Just this month, Kennedy stated in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and informed FOX News that he nonetheless believes within the long-ago debunked concept that vaccines may cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged individuals to “resist” CDC pointers on when youngsters ought to get vaccines.

“I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy stated.

That identical yr, in a video selling and anti-vaccine sticker marketing campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen subsequent to 1 sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”

An in depth examination of Kennedy’s marketing campaign finance filings reveals that the anti-vaccine motion lies on the coronary heart of his marketing campaign.

Several of his marketing campaign employees and consultants have labored for his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, together with Mary Holland, the group’s president on go away, marketing campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear, and Zen Honeycutt, who hosted a present for the group’s TV channel, CHD TV.

Children’s Health Defense presently has a lawsuit pending towards a variety of information organizations, amongst them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust legal guidelines by taking motion to determine misinformation, together with about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.

The marketing campaign paid KFP Consulting, a Texas-based firm run by Del Bigtree, head of the anti-vaccine group ICAN, and a number one voice within the motion, greater than $13,000 for communications consulting, the AP discovered. Bigtree appeared to nonetheless be working for the marketing campaign final week, when an AP reporter noticed him serving to facilitate a Kennedy occasion in New York.

Kennedy additionally has obtained substantial help from activists who’ve unfold misinformation in regards to the coronavirus and vaccines, together with Steve Kirsch, an entrepreneur who has falsely claimed COVID-19 vaccines kill extra individuals than they save, chiropractors Patrick Flynn and Kevin Stillwagon, and others.

Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run an anti-vaccine enterprise and who the AP has beforehand reported have had a monetary relationship with Kennedy, gave greater than $6,000. The couple, together with Kennedy’s communication advisor Bigtree, had been concerned in internet hosting a rally close to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and Ty Bollinger has stated he was among the many individuals who crowded on the Capitol doorways in an try to get inside, although he stated he didn’t enter.

American Values 2024, a brilliant PAC supporting Kennedy, is run by shut associates to Kennedy who’ve propped up anti-vaccine concepts – the previous head of the New York chapter of Children’s Health Defense John Gilmore is its CEO and Kennedy’s writer Tony Lyons is its co-chair.

The Kennedy marketing campaign didn’t return emails looking for remark about a variety of questions, together with how he can say he isn’t anti-vaccine given his document and his help from anti-vaccine activists.

Kennedy’s run can be getting loads of monetary help from the suitable. A brilliant PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential run, known as Heal the Divide PAC, has deep ties to Republicans, F ederal Election Commission information present.

The committee’s deal with is listed within the care of RTA Strategy, a marketing campaign consulting agency that has been paid for its work to assist elect Republicans together with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the previous Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

The PAC’s treasurer, who works for RTA Strategy, is Jason Boles, a previous donor to Trump and lots of different Republicans who consists of “MAGA” and “AmericaFirst” in his bio on the platform X, previously referred to as Twitter.

Kennedy denied figuring out Boles or the Heal the Divide PAC when it got here up on the congressional listening to, saying, “I’ve never heard of Mr. Boles, and I’ve never heard of that super PAC.”

But video out there on-line reveals he was a visitor speaker at a Heal the Divide occasion simply two days earlier. The video incorporates a “Heal the Divide 2024” emblem with clips of him talking at size about plans to again the U.S. greenback with bitcoin and valuable metals.

Kennedy says that as president, he would struggle for presidency honesty and transparency, heal the political divide, reverse financial decline, finish battle and protect civil liberties. He has made freedom of speech a significant a part of his platform, arguing that the federal government’s communication with social media firms unfairly censors protected speech.

Kennedy’s press workplace didn’t reply to a number of messages asking about his help from the far proper.

It additionally didn’t reply to questions on whether or not his stance on bitcoin was at odds with being an environmentalist.

Kennedy lists the setting as one in every of six high priorities on his marketing campaign web site and has spent a few years talking towards air pollution and local weather change as an environmental lawyer. Yet he has made supporting the energy-intensive cryptocurrency bitcoin a key a part of his platform.

Bitcoin mining, the method of producing new cash, makes use of huge quantities of electrical energy – greater than some complete international locations use, stated Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group.

That’s as a result of it really works by tasking a community of supercomputers with fixing complicated mathematical puzzles – at the same time as another cryptocurrencies have adopted way more power environment friendly mining strategies.

“No one who claims to be an environmentalist could support a digital asset that needlessly consumes more electricity than all Americans use to power the lights in our homes,” Faber stated. “In fact, bitcoin produces more climate pollution than any other digital asset.”

Despite the environmental downsides of bitcoin, some Democrats, together with elected officers, have advocated for the foreign money.

Kennedy, for his half, informed a crowd at Bitcoin 2023 that environmentalists like himself “will continue to pressure you to improve.” Online, he has promoted the argument that demand for bitcoin will increase funding in new renewable power tasks.

Regardless, his monetary disclosure paperwork present he has already personally invested between $100,001 and $250,000 in bitcoin, and he promised at Bitcoin 2023 that he wouldn’t let the environmental argument hinder the foreign money’s use.

“As president, I will make sure that your right to hold and use bitcoin is inviolable,” he stated.

During the previous a number of years, Kennedy has cultivated his ties to the far proper. He has appeared on Infowars, the channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. He has granted interviews to Trump ally Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. After he headlined a cease on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist street present put collectively by former Trump nationwide safety adviser Michael Flynn, he was photographed backstage with Flynn, Charlene Bollinger and Trump ally Roger Stone.

Those appearances have led to goodwill on the suitable, and he has discovered enthusiastic help amongst a phase of Trump’s base, with some suggesting him as a possible vice presidential decide.

At a July 1 rally within the tiny city of Pickens, South Carolina, Adrian Palashevsky – a small businessman who described himself as extra of a “libertarian” than a Republican – posited a unity ticket, with Kennedy as his high decide for Trump’s VP.

“I think they would get along just fine,” he stated. “They’re both anti-establishment, and that’s why they’re under so much attack.”

DeSantis, one in every of Trump’s Republican challengers, has additionally indulged in reward for the perimeter candidate, saying in a latest interview that whereas he wouldn’t make Kennedy vp, he would think about appointing him to one of many federal companies that regulates vaccine security and protects public well being.

“If you’re president, you know, sic him on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve, or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis stated.

Not everyone seems to be shopping for the Kennedy mystique.

At the annual assembly of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in New York earlier this month, Kennedy leaned closely on his household legacy, mentioning his father’s alliance with labor chief Cesar Chavez and his uncle’s work in Latin American international locations.

But in his almost 20-minute speech, he didn’t lay out any plan or coverage proposals of his personal, or discuss particular points going through the Latino neighborhood. He spent most of his time telling a narrative about getting arrested with the Mexican American actor Edward Olmos in 2001, an try at relating with the neighborhood that disenchanted each Republicans and Democrats within the viewers.

Mario Ceballos, president of a PAC representing LGBTQ+ Latinos, stated Kennedy’s speech — and the candidate’s conspiracy principle beliefs — saddened him.

“When I was living in Mexico, Kennedy was an American president that my whole family respected,” Ceballos stated. “And what he is presenting are esoteric, dangerous options that are actually going to hurt the same people that his father and uncle wanted to help.”

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Meg Kinnard in Pickens, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

For extra info, go to The Washington Times COVID-19 useful resource web page.