Anti-Vaccine Zealot RFK Jr. Is Running for President as a Democrat
Kennedy Jr. has not yet made a formal announcement—but filed official paperwork declaring his candidacy Wednesday.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president as a Democrat, according to paperwork filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
Kennedy Jr. has not yet made a formal announcement. In a pinned post on his Twitter profile dated March 10, he directed supporters to the website TeamKennedy.com, which states it is funded by an exploratory committee.
“If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race,” he wrote then.
The son of the late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr. is an environmental lawyer who until 2017 worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Hudson River protection organization Riverkeeper.
A vaccine skeptic, Kennedy Jr. was widely criticized last January for saying that Americans who refused a coronavirus vaccine were in a worse situation than the Jews in Nazi Germany. Later that year, Facebook and Instagram removed the account of his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, which had been labeled a spreader of misinformation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Kennedy Jr. was also responsible for popularizing the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
In a 2019 Politico op-ed, three of Kennedy Jr.’s family members denounced his comments about vaccines as “tragically wrong.”
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Kennedy Jr. is the second Democrat after self-help author Marianne Williamson to enter the 2024 race.
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