RFK Jr’s family is slamming him again – this time for comments he made last week, claiming that Covid was ‘racially targeted’ to avoid affecting Jewish and Chinese people.
Her sister, Kerry Kennedy, condemned the comments as ‘sad and untrue’, as she distanced the Democratic presidential candidate from their father Robert F Kennedy’s human rights campaign non-profit.
Their brother, Joseph Kennedy II, also called RFK Jr.’s comments ‘morally and factually wrong’ and ‘playing on anti-Semitic myths.’
And his nephew, former Massachusetts Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, said he ‘unequivocally’ condemned RFK Jr.’s comments at an event Thursday at Tony’s Di Napoli restaurant on New York City’s Upper East Side.
The Anti-Defamation League also condemned this comment.
Democratic presidential candidate RFK Jr. claimed at an event last week that COVID was ‘racially targeted’ to affect Jewish and Chinese people.
Her sister, Kerry Kennedy, condemned the comments as ‘sad and untrue. He is pictured here in May
Former Massachusetts Representative Joseph Kennedy III also condemned RFK Jr.’s comments
At the event last week, RFK Jr., 69, started talking about vaccines when he outlined his thoughts on how Covid was bio-engineered.
He claimed that the virus was ‘ethnically targeted’ and that ‘the most resistant people are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.’
‘We don’t know if it was intentionally targeted but there are some papers that show racial or ethnic differences and impacts,’ the Democratic candidate added.
‘We know that the Chinese are spending millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons. They are collecting Russian DNA. They’re collecting Chinese DNA so we can target people racially,’ he continued.
The presidential candidate’s response was swift, soon after his comments were published.
Several Jewish actors condemned Kennedy for his comments, and a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League reacted with outrage.
‘Claims that Covid-19 was a biological weapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and Blacks are deeply offensive and dovetail with the Sinophobic and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Covid-19 that we have seen evolve over the past three years. ,’ an ADL spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
Kerry has since come out to condemn the comments, saying in a statement: ‘I strongly condemn my brother’s sad and untrue comments last week about engineering Covid for racial targeting.
‘His statements do not represent what I or Robert F. Kennedy stood for in human rights, our 50 [plus]-Years of track record of defending rights and standing against racism and all forms of discrimination,’ he said as president of the organization.
Joseph Kennedy II, meanwhile, told the Boston Globe in a statement: ‘Bobby’s comments are morally and factually wrong.
‘They play on anti-Semitic myths and instill mistrust of the Chinese. His comments in no way reflect the words and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.’
And former Rep. Joseph Kennedy III tweeted: ‘My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong. I unequivocally condemn what he said.’
Even RFK Jr.’s adviser and right-wing activist Morton Klein said the candidate’s comments ‘concerned’ him.
‘It’s madness. It makes no sense that they would do it. I have read all. I was totally against vaccines. . . I had to convince myself it was right not to take it,’ Klein told the New York Post. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
He made the comments at a private event at Tony’s Di Napoli restaurant on New York City’s Upper East Side on Thursday.
He claims that the Chinese are developing bioweapons that target specific races and ethnicities
Kennedy has dabbled in anti-Semitism with some of his other comments surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic.
He has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust while touting measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates.
He apologized for some of those comments, in which he suggested that people in 2022 were worse off than Anne Frank.
But so far, Kennedy has defended his comments, saying they were intended to be off the record and were misconstrued.
He said in a series of tweets that he was referring to a scientific paper that analyzed theoretical genetic susceptibility to Covid.
He tweeted, ‘I never suggested that the Covid-19 virus was aimed at saving Jews.
‘I correctly pointed out – during an off-the-record conversation – that the US and other governments are developing racially targeted bioapons and that a 2021 study of the Covid-19 virus showed that Covid-19 appears to disproportionately affect some races. The furin cleave docking site is most compatible with blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns and Ashkenazi Jews,’ he continued.
‘In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for racially targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and have never suggested that the racial impact was intentionally engineered,’ the Democrat added.
Kennedy then accused one of the dinner guests, journalist Jonathan Levine, of using an off-the-record conversation to ‘taint’ the candidate with an outlandish conspiracy theory.
‘This frenetic tactic is consistent with the mainstream media playbook to discredit me as a crank – and by association, to deny the revelation of real corruption and collusion,’ Kennedy added.
There is no credible evidence to suggest that anything RFK Jr. said was accurate. Although new reports suggest that Covid-19 was man-made and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, there is no evidence that it was racially targeted.
Kennedy has dabbled in anti-Semitism with some of his other comments surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. He has been campaigning for the past month
So far, RFK Jr. has defended his comments, saying they were off the record and misconstrued
His comments came after he promised to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci for his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic if he wins the White House in 2024.
‘If he has committed a crime, of course, I will ask the attorney general to prosecute him, not lock him up,’ Kennedy promised in an interview on Fox News.
While Kennedy did not directly say whether America’s former top doctor was guilty of wrongdoing, he did say how he believed Dr Fauci was ‘hurt a lot’ by accusing him of withholding treatment from Americans in the early stages of the pandemic.
Kennedy has previously made similar allegations in a book titled ‘The Real Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health’.
Kennedy said it was Fauci’s actions that actually contributed to the high death toll in the United States.
Kennedy said in an interview, ‘I think that he, in particular, by withholding primary care from Americans, we have raised the highest death toll in the world.
‘We only have 4.2 per cent of the world’s population, but we have 16 per cent of Covid deaths in this country and it’s because of bad policy,’ Kennedy explained.
‘There are countries that did the opposite of what we did which provided their populations with ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, other first aid and we had 1/200 the death rate.
‘There are many, many things we’ve done wrong in our country and some of them were, I would say … some of the things that were done by health officials at the time, they knew they would be harmful.’
Kennedy was then asked by host Jesse Waters why he continues to falsely claim that childhood vaccines are linked to autism.
Kennedy said, ‘I believe that autism comes from vaccines but I think a lot of what people believe about my views on vaccines is wrong’.
‘You know, what I said about vaccines is that we should have good science. We should be doing the same kind of testing, placebo-controlled trials that we have for every other type of drug.
‘Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing placebo-controlled trials. So there’s no way anyone can tell the risks of all these products or even the relative benefits of all those products before it’s mandatory and we should be doing that kind of testing.’
Kennedy was not strongly challenged by Waters during the interview as the Fox News commentator appeared to accept the details he was telling.
Kennedy launched his campaign on April 19 at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston with his wife Cheryl Hines, the Curb Your Enthusiasm actress.
Among Democrats polled in recent polls, 58 percent support Biden for the nomination, while 15 percent support Kennedy.
The candidate is believed to be polling more than 20 percent of some Democratic voters, though there has been no indication that President Joe Biden will engage in a debate with her or self-help guru Marian Williamson.
When announcing his campaign in April, RFK Jr. compared his campaign to the American Revolution.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt consolidation of state and corporate power that now threatens to impose a new form of corporate feudalism on our country,” Kennedy said.
The candidate was once known as an environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water.
But over the past nearly two decades, he has become one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement. His work has been described by his own family members and public health experts as misleading and dangerous.
Kennedy’s efforts intensified after the pandemic and the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, and in 2021 he became associated with anti-democratic figures and other groups.
The 2020 presidential election was stolen and he appeared at events pushing lies with people cheering or belittling the uprising at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A photo posted on Instagram showed Kennedy backstage at the July 2021 Reawaken America event with former President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger. All three spread lies about the 2020 election being stolen.
Kennedy was a guest on Channel Info hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and on the ‘War Room’ podcast hosted by longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, where he promoted his 2021 bestselling book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’. He accused the US’s top infectious disease doctor of participating in ‘a historic coup against Western democracy’.
During the pandemic, RFK Jr.’s group, Children’s Health Defense, raised funding and followers in the United States and abroad, and doubled its revenue from 2019 to 2020. Revenue doubled from $7 million in 2020 to $16 million in 2021.
Facebook and Instagram removed Children’s Health Defense accounts for spreading misinformation.