Over the weekend, video of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discussing a claim that “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” are more immune to COVID-19 than other groups surfaced.
This prompted criticism from lawmakers and the White House. By Thursday, Kennedy was in the nation’s capital to deny that he is antisemitic.
“After I announced my presidency, it became more difficult for people to censor me outright. So now I’m subjected to this new form of censorship which is called targeted propaganda, where people apply pejoratives like ‘anti-vax’… I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” he said in an appearance before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Kennedy is known for his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. Last year, Audacy reported that he compared measures to prevent the virus from spreading to Nazi Germany, comments that were criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Auschwitz Memorial Museum and Kennedy’s own wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
“But, everybody in this room probably believes that I am,” Kennedy said Thursday of his reputation as an anti-vaxxer. “That’s the prevailing narrative – antisemitism, racism. These are the most appalling, disgusting pejoratives and they’re applied to me because people don’t want me to have that conversation about war, about groceries, about inflation, about the war on the middle class in this country that we need to be having.”
In the video published Saturday by the New York Post, Kennedy said “COVID-19 – there’s an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.”
He went on to say “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know if it was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential…” before going on to talk about alleged plans by China and the U.S. to make bioweapons.
“So, the claims made on that tape is false,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Monday. “It is vile. And they put our – they put our fellow Americans in danger. If you think about the – the racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that come out of – of saying those types of things. It’s a – it’s an attack on our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans. And so, it is important that we essentially speak out when we hear those claims made more – more broadly.”
A press release from the Congressional Integrity Project called the remarks hateful, antisemitic and racist.
“I STRONGLY condemn my brother's deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting,” said Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy.
President Joe Biden is also running as Democrat in the upcoming 2024 election. In general, the party aligns more with Biden’s approach to vaccines related to COVID-19, while the GOP has been more critical of vaccines and vaccine mandates.
Kennedy, who the son of the late politician Robert Kennedy and the nephew the late President John F. Kennedy, also said Thursday that he has “never uttered a phrase that is either racist or antisemitic,” and touted his experience fighting for the protection of Israel. He also defended the comments on social media.
After his appearance before lawmakers, Kennedy announced the rollout of the “Defenders of Democracy network,” on social media. He said its goal is to “enable us to bypass censorship and legacy media to reach the American people directly.”
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