Press: RFK Jr.’s presidential run brings shame to family name

Today’s Republican and Democratic parties are both beleaguered by purveyors of wild conspiracy theories. The Republican Party is stuck with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). The Democratic Party is saddled with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

Greene is a premier conspiracy theory-spreader. There’s hardly a wacky, totally unsubstantiated theory out there she hasn’t embraced. The avowed QAnon follower once questioned whether a plane ever flew into the Pentagon on 9/11. She claimed California wildfires were started by Jewish-funded space lasers. She accused former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of being a traitor who deserves to be executed. She’s blamed Bill and Hillary Clinton for the murder of John F. Kennedy, Jr., who was killed in a 1999 plane crash. And, of course, she still insists that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, actually won the 2020 election. 

But at least Greene isn’t running for president. The problem for Democrats is that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running in the Democratic primary against President Joe Biden. And, on the conspiracy theory front, Kennedy’s just as bad, if not worse, than Greene.  

Let’s face it: Nobody would even be talking about this 69-year-old longtime vaccine skeptic and one-time environmental lawyer except for his last name. Kennedy remains a golden name in Democratic politics, thanks to JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Teddy Kennedy. The Kennedys are America’s royal family.   

Given the outstanding contributions of the Kennedy family, it’s no surprise that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy at first attracted a respectable bubble of support. In May, a CNN survey found that a whopping 20 percent of Democratic primary voters said they’d support Kennedy over Biden. But those numbers have since fallen dramatically — Kennedy polls at only 1.6 percent among New York state Democrats in a recent Siena College poll — as voters look beyond Kennedy’s last name and consider what he actually stands for. 

As with Greene, there are few wacky conspiracy theories floating today that Kennedy hasn’t embraced, including these four.  

First, the vaccines. Kennedy has long been America’s leading vaccine skeptic, promoting the widely discredited belief that childhood vaccines cause autism, a notion rejected by more than a dozen scientific studies worldwide. He leveled some of his most severe attacks against the COVID-19 vaccine, calling it the “deadliest vaccine ever made” and accusing the federal government of pushing the vaccine in order to control people via microchips. 

Second, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kennedy has repeatedly endorsed the idea that school shootings have increased only because more students are taking antidepressants. Again, this theory has been disproven by multiple scientific investigations, including a 2019 study that found that most school shooters had not been prescribed with psychotropic drugs before committing violence. 

Third, there’s the Kennedy Assassination. There are few events in American history that have been examined more thoroughly. Most historians accept the conclusion of the Warren Commission that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and was not connected to any government agency. But not Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has long maintained, with no evidence at all, that the CIA engineered his uncle’s murder and has since covered it up. 

Finally, there’s the conspiracy theory of the stolen election — shades of Donald Trump. According to Kennedy, 2020 wasn’t the first presidential election stolen. He recently told the Washington Post, again with no supporting evidence, that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election from John Kerry.  

How sad. The man who started out, to his credit, as an environmental leader cleaning up pollution in the Hudson River, is now, to his great discredit, spreading pollution in American politics and destroying the good name of the Kennedy family. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should not be taken seriously at all. 

Press hosts “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”