At confirmation hearing, RFK Jr. denies promoting antisemitic COVID-19 conspiracy theory

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on July 2023 and updated following the Senate confirmation hearing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the department of health and human services, rejected accusations during a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he was promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 as a presidential candidate last year.

The political scion, 71, a vaccine skeptic who has associated himself with conspiracy theorists, was condemned at the time by major Jewish groups and politicians for falsely claiming in a video that COVID-19 was an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon that spared Jews and Chinese people. His comments drew on a blend of old and new hatreds about Jews, falsehoods about how they are responsible for disease in general and complicit in the COVID-19 pandemic in particular.

“I’m asking you yes or no, Mr. Kennedy, did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bio weapon that targets Black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people?” Sen. Michael Bennet, a Jewish Democrat from Colorado, asked Kennedy at the hearing.

“I didn’t say it was deliberately targeted,” Kennedy responded. He repeated his claim that he quoted an NIH study published in 2020 — before effective treatments were available. The study noted that a specific receptor for the virus appeared to be absent in Amish and Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

Bennet didn’t accept that explanation. “I take that as a yes,” he said before moving on to other questions.

What Kennedy has said in the past about Jews

A vaccine skeptic who referenced Anne Frank at an anti-vaccine rally, Kennedy made several troubling comments in recent years. He compared vaccine and mask mandates to the Holocaust. He met with Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan in 2015 about measles vaccines. During his 2024 presidential run, when RFK Jr. was condemned by major Jewish groups for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19, he defended his remarks that the pandemic was an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon that spared Ashkenazi Jews, and claimed he has “literally never said an antisemitic word in my life.”

In 2020, Kennedy spoke at a rally organized and attended by antisemitic and neo-Nazi groups. And in 2023, after criticism, he retracted his praise of former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who faced backlash for using Holocaust imagery in his concerts.

During a House hearing in July 2023, Kennedy claimed he has “literally never said an antisemitic word in my life” and boasted about spending “a lifetime studying the Holocaust” and having “many friends who are Holocaust survivors.”

Holding up a letter in 2023 signed by more than 100 House Democrats urging the cancellation of his testimony, RJK Jr. said his remarks have been distorted for political reasons. “I didn’t say those things,” he said. “I denounce anybody who uses the words that I have said to imply something that is negative about people who are Jewish. I never said those things.”