Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is facing widespread criticism from political leaders and civil rights organizations after a video surfaced of him making false claims that COVID-19 was designed to attack certain ethnic groups while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people — a conspiracy theory that drew accusations of antisemitism and racism.
How does someone like this even get near a mainstream party in the US? The closest I can think of in the UK was Andrew Bridgen but he was kicked out the Tories for spreading vaccine disinformation. Then anyone else with those views, like Piers Corbyn and Lawrence Fox were stuck in minor fringe groups to begin with.
The republican party is a full tilt conspiracy cult at this point. So they fund and run a spoiler in the democratic race who is a mentally ill conspiracy loon. Why? To peel off a few votes with the kennedy name and more importantly so they can "both sides"their lunacy. Ummmm, see the democrats have whack jobs too (ignore that this is our bought and paid for whack job). They successfully did this with the global warming debate. On one side you have a scientific consensus among pretty much every scientist on earth.On the other they have like 4 spoiler scientists owned by bp and shell oil. Check mate liberal. Manufactured controversy where there is none. Same with jordan peterson, they have their one mentally ill whack job intellectual. Check mate again libs we have a smart guy now so, same/same.
Can’t the Democrats do the equivilent of “taking the whip” like what happened to Andrew Bridgen in the UK? Distance themselves from him and not let him run for them?
Not sure if they can. Wish they would
They will. When primaries come, the Democratic party will soundly and democratically (little d) reject his attempt to represent them by not voting for him. Even before then, he will be rejected because nobody is going to give him the time of day when it comes to setting up a debate or using party resources to facilitate his campaign. Until then, he is not a representative of the party, just a dude who says he wants to represent the party. I could just as easily say I want to represent the Republican party by running a campaign on aborting every single fetus in the United States and then holding a giant gay orgy before forcing all cisgender people to undergo surgical transition. Obviously I would not be representative of the Republican party. Same with this guy and the Democratic party. The only reason it feels like this guy is in any way legitimate or affiliated with the Democratic party is because of how early primary/election coverage starts.
Do you have any sources that say republicans are supporting him to be a spoiler candidate?
He’s backed by Steve Bannon.
Yeah. I’m not a dumbass and wasn’t born yesterday.
Oh so your intuition is the source.
https://www.salon.com/2023/04/06/steve-bannon-spent-months-recruiting-anti-vaxxer-rfk-jr-to-run-against-biden-as-chaos-agent/
That’s the evidence?? Unnamed sources telling a reporter this? come on man.
Are you kidding?
This guy is just saying out loud what large parts of the population are thinking.
I’m not Jewish, but antisemitism was pretty normalized in the south, but to be fair, they’re pretty intolerant of anyone who isn’t from their specific version of protestantism.
All it takes to be a Democrat is to check a box when you register to vote (same for any other party in the US). There is nothing stopping anyone who wants to from running for the Democratic nomination. Needless to say, he isn’t endorsed by the Democratic Party and doesn’t have any real popular support. As for why he wants to be known as a Democrat–I’m not an expert on the guy but I do know that he is one of the children of the Kennedy dynasty from the '60s; the Democratic Party is part of his brand, I suppose. He is not a serious candidate, he is almost certainly running specifically to raise his profile and increase the number of followers he has as a professional conspiracy grifter (which has been his occupation for decades now).
Because despite the media disliking him, he’s reasonable if you watch his interviews and his interactions instead of reading headlines and determining your opinion of him by one bias sentence.
Yes, how ‘reasonable’ of him to suggest COVID-19 was a bioweapon designed to spare Jews and Chinese people. That’s the very definition of a reasonable position that is not in any way bigoted and fucking nuts.
Where did he say that, can you provide the direct quote?
Yes, I’ve played that game before. “He didn’t literally say exactly that thing, therefore he didn’t say it.”
He said viruses can impact different ethnicities differently.
You’re making up that he said it was created as a bioweapon.
He was talking about COVID in the context of bioweapons that could target ethnic groups. I saw the whole video. You’re not going to be able to gaslight me by attempting to take just the COVID part out of context.
You must not have read the article. Here ya go:
Kennedy later posted a video statement on Sunday, saying in part: “Nobody has suggested that these were deliberately engineered changes and I certainly don’t believe that they were deliberately engineered,” but calling it “kind of a proof of concept that you can develop bioweapons that will attack certain ethnicities.”
Again- I watched the video.
Why are you gaslighting me?