Among Democratic voters, the appetite for an anti-vax presidential candidate might seem next to nonexistent. But that’s not stopping Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the 69-year-old son of former US attorney general Bobby Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy—from throwing his hat in the ring. A leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement for nearly 20 years, Kennedy is now gearing up to challenge Joe Biden in the Democratic primary, and submitted a statement of candidacy to the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday.
According to CBS News correspondent Robert Costa, the fantastical long shot bid was contrived by Trumpworld power broker Steve Bannon, who had reportedly spent months urging Kennedy to run in the hopes that he might sow chaos on the left. (Vanity Fair has reached out to Kennedy for comment.) Kennedy also has ties to other shady figures in Donald Trump’s orbit: In July 2021, as the right’s hysteria over COVID-19 vaccines was in full swing, a photo shared on Instagram showed Kennedy posing with Roger Stone, the notorious “dirty trickster” of the Republican Party, and Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser turned QAnon influencer. The picture was reportedly taken at an event hosted by ReAwaken America, a Christian nationalist touring group made for and by QAnon followers, anti-vaxxers, and election deniers––a crowd that, needless to say, has very little overlap with the Democratic voters Kennedy would need to win in a primary bid.
It is more than likely, then, that Kennedy is part of an oddball right-wing plot to pester Biden in what could otherwise be a mostly uncontested primary. (As of now, self-help author Marianne Williamson is the only other Democrat in the race.) The 80-year-old president has yet to reveal his reelection plans.
Kennedy showed interest in the 2024 race last month, floating the idea casually in a Twitter post. “Help me decide whether to run for President,” he wrote. “If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race.”
Once a respected environmental lawyer who advocated on behalf of minority and indigenous communities, Kennedy has spent the past few years capitalizing on the anti-vax racket, which he joined in 2005, long before the COVID pandemic. He later published a best-selling book in 2021 attacking Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates. His anti-vax charity, Children’s Health Defense, has reportedly raked in $6.8 million since the start of the pandemic, and released a film in 2021 claiming that COVID-19 vaccines are being used to surreptitiously test medical experiments on Black Americans. Last year, he went so far as to say that Jews were freer “in Hitler’s Germany” than unvaccinated Americans are now. He later apologized for the remark.
