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

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

As he challenges President Joe 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 really reveals.

Although Kennedy’s main problem to a sitting president is broadly thought-about a long-shot, he’s been sucking up media consideration on account of his well-known title and the likelihood 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. In the meantime, 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. Both one,” she stated, explaining that she was drawn to each as a result of she believes they will’t be purchased.

That type of help has demonstrated among the contradictions in Kennedy’s candidacy. He has stated he needs to “reclaim” the Democratic Social gathering, 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 Social gathering legacies of his uncle President John F. Kennedy and his father Robert F. Kennedy, his relations have distanced themselves from him and even denounced him.

“He’s buying and selling in on Camelot, superstar, conspiracy theories and battle for private achieve 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 do know him. I don’t know why anybody thinks he must be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is a humiliation.”

Kennedy’s current feedback that COVID-19 might have been “ethnically focused” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language folks — which he denies have 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 observe document have 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 Kids’s Well being Protection, sat within the rows behind him, watching as he insisted “I’ve by no means been anti-vaxx. I’ve by no means informed the general public to keep away from vaccination.”

However that’s not true. Many times, Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. Simply this month, Kennedy stated in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that’s secure and efficient” and informed FOX Information that he nonetheless believes within the long-ago debunked concept that vaccines may cause autism. In a 2021 podcast he urged folks to “resist” CDC tips on when children ought to get vaccines.

“I see someone on a climbing path carrying just a little child and I say to him, higher not get them vaccinated,” Kennedy stated.

That very same 12 months, in a video selling and anti-vaccine sticker marketing campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen subsequent to at least one 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.

A number of of his marketing campaign employees and consultants have labored for his anti-vaccine group Kids’s Well being Protection, together with Mary Holland, the group’s president on depart, marketing campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear, and Zen Honeycutt, who hosted a present for the group’s TV channel, CHD TV.

Kids’s Well being Protection at present has a lawsuit pending towards a lot of information organizations, amongst them The Related Press, accusing them of violating antitrust legal guidelines by taking motion to establish 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 folks 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, have 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 and 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 Kids’s Well being Protection John Gilmore is its CEO and Kennedy’s writer Tony Lyons is its co-chair.

The Kennedy marketing campaign didn’t return emails in search of remark about a lot 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 also 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 Fee data present.

The committee’s tackle is listed within the care of RTA Technique, 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 Technique, is Jason Boles, a previous donor to Trump and lots of different Republicans who contains “MAGA” and “AmericaFirst” in his bio on the platform X, previously generally known as Twitter.

Kennedy denied understanding Boles or the Heal the Divide PAC when it got here up on the congressional listening to, saying, “I’ve by no means heard of Mr. Boles, and I’ve by no means heard of that tremendous PAC.”

However video out there on-line reveals he was a visitor speaker at a Heal the Divide occasion simply two days earlier. The video encompasses 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 battle for presidency honesty and transparency, heal the political divide, reverse financial decline, finish conflict 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 atmosphere as one among 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. But 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 nations 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 — whilst another cryptocurrencies have adopted much more power environment friendly mining strategies.

“Nobody who claims to be an environmentalist might help a digital asset that needlessly consumes extra electrical energy than all People use to energy the lights in our properties,” Faber stated. “In reality, bitcoin produces extra local weather air pollution than another digital asset.”

Regardless of the environmental downsides of bitcoin, some Democrats, together with elected officers, have advocated for the forex.

Kennedy, for his half, informed a crowd at Bitcoin 2023 that environmentalists like himself “will proceed to stress you to enhance.” On-line, he has promoted the argument that demand for bitcoin will enhance funding in new renewable power initiatives.

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 forex’s use.

“As president, I’ll ensure that your proper to carry and use bitcoin is inviolable,” he stated.

In the course of 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.

These appearances have led to goodwill on the suitable, and he has discovered enthusiastic help amongst a section 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 believe they might get alongside simply nice,” he stated. “They’re each anti-establishment, and that’s why they’re underneath a lot assault.”

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

“For those who’re president, you already know, sic him on the FDA if he’d be prepared to serve, or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis stated.

Not everyone seems to be shopping for the Kennedy mystique.

On the annual assembly of the Nationwide Affiliation of Latino Elected and Appointed Officers 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 nations.

However in his practically 20-minute speech, he didn’t lay out any plan or coverage proposals of his personal, or discuss particular points dealing with the Latino group. 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 group that upset 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.

“After I was dwelling in Mexico, Kennedy was an American president that my complete household revered,” Ceballos stated. “And what he’s presenting are esoteric, harmful choices which are really going to harm the identical people who his father and uncle needed to assist.”

___

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