A Kennedy Responds to QAnon Fixation on Dallas, JFK and JFK Jr.
At least one member of the Kennedy family has responded to the QAnon conspiracy theory’s bizarre fixation on former President John F. Kennedy and his son John F. Kennedy Jr.
Maria Shriver, the journalist niece of the former president and the cousin of his son, on Tuesday shared to Twitter a segment from MSNBC anchor Brian Williams that described followers of the conspiracy as “lost souls,” while urging viewers to remember the losses of the Kennedy family instead of showing “pity” for QAnon “cult members or conspiracy theorists.”
“Well said, Brian Williams,” Shriver tweeted alongside a video clip of Williams. “He’s right, you never get over these losses. I know many others struggle with theirs, as well. Go kindly into the days.”
JFK and his brother Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated, while JFK Jr. was killed in a 1999 plane crash alongside his wife Carolyn Bessette. Regardless, QAnon followers gathered at Dallas’ Dealey Plaza this week on the bizarre and baseless expectation that the former president or his son would arrive near “the grassy knoll” on Monday—the 58-year anniversary of JFK’s assassination—to announce the reinstatement of former President Donald Trump. QAnon theorists also claim that JFK Jr. is a likely running mate for Trump in 2024.
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The failed Kennedy resurrection prophecy was not the first for QAnon adherents. The conspiracy’s followers were also disappointed by the Kennedys failing to join them during a Dallas gathering earlier this month. Some posited that Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards could be JFK in disguise after the let down. The Williams segment that Shriver shared, which aired during the Monday night installment of Williams’ MSNBC show The 11th Hour, was aptly dubbed “Delusion in Dallas.”
“Specialists tell us we’re not supposed to pity cult members or conspiracy theorists,” Williams said during the segment. “So let’s not do that, let’s focus our pity instead on the Kennedy family. They lost their modern-era patriarch, the President of the United States, to assassination, his brother to assassination and the son of the President of the United States to a plane crash.”
“You don’t get over that,” he continued. “You learn to wake up the next day and the day after that and, hopefully, keep on living some semblance of a life. The Kennedy and Bessette families deserve our respect and our sorrow after their staggering loss.They do not deserve the circus of lost souls that is now soiling the sacred place in American Presidential history.”
Although the QAnon conspiracy has resulted in a rich vein of absurdity including the expected resurrection of deceased Kennedy family members, the theory’s central claim involves Trump supposedly waging a secret war against a “deep state” comprised of blood-drinking Democrats. The Kennedy family was perhaps the most significant Democratic Party political dynasty in U.S. history.
Kennedy family members have been generally tight-lipped about the conspiracy theory and its unusual fixation, avoiding directly commenting on the matter publicly. No members of the family are likely to be sympathetic to QAnon, although anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did speak at a rally held by a pro-QAnon group in Germany last year, according to The Daily Beast.
Newsweek reached out to Shriver for comment.
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