A number of members of the Kennedy household have condemned a bigoted conspiracy concept from the Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who instructed that the coronavirus was “ethnically focused” to spare Jews and Chinese language folks.
In feedback at a latest occasion in New York Metropolis, a recording of which was first revealed by The New York Publish, Mr. Kennedy mentioned: “Covid-19 is focused to assault Caucasians and Black folks. The people who find themselves most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language.” He added, “We don’t know whether or not it was intentionally focused or not.”
His sister Kerry Kennedy referred to as his remarks “deplorable and untruthful” and mentioned they didn’t characterize the rules espoused by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the group she leads — named after their father, the previous lawyer common and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
His brother Joseph Kennedy II issued the same assertion, telling The Boston Globe: “Bobby’s feedback are morally and factually fallacious. They play on antisemitic myths and stoke distrust of the Chinese language. His remarks under no circumstances replicate the phrases and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.”
And former Consultant Joseph Kennedy III wrote on Twitter on Monday afternoon: “My uncle’s feedback have been hurtful and fallacious. I unequivocally condemn what he mentioned.”
Mr. Kennedy rejected criticism of his feedback on Sunday, saying in a prolonged Twitter publish, “The insinuation by @nypost and others that, on account of my quoting a peer-reviewed paper on bio-weapons, I’m in some way antisemitic, is a disgusting fabrication.” (The paper he referred to didn’t assist the claims he made.)
It was removed from the primary time that Mr. Kennedy’s kinfolk felt compelled to disavow his phrases or actions.
As soon as an environmental lawyer identified for his work to wash up the Hudson River, Mr. Kennedy — now a long-shot candidate working towards President Biden for subsequent 12 months’s Democratic nomination — has grow to be a number one purveyor of anti-vaccine misinformation. Lengthy earlier than the coronavirus pandemic, he helped popularize false claims of a connection between childhood vaccines and autism, and since Covid vaccines grew to become accessible, he has sought loudly and ceaselessly to forged doubt on their well-documented security.
Final 12 months, Mr. Kennedy instructed that unvaccinated Individuals would quickly be extra persecuted than Anne Frank, who was murdered by the Nazis. A number of of his siblings criticized him for that remark, as did his spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, who referred to as it “reprehensible and insensitive.”
He has superior many different conspiracy theories as effectively, together with claiming that there’s a hyperlink between antidepressants and mass shootings (there isn’t) and that Republicans stole the 2004 presidential election (they didn’t).
Regardless of his promotion of misinformation and a few coverage views extra aligned with the Republican base than the Democratic one, Mr. Kennedy is polling comparatively strongly — between 10 and 20 % in a number of surveys, nowhere close to sufficient to overhaul Mr. Biden, however nonetheless hanging numbers towards an incumbent.
