9 things to know about RFK Jr., the controversial conspiracy theorist running for president as an independent
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- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, is John F. Kennedy's nephew.
- He is a lawyer known for promoting baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
- Kennedy was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries, then switched to an independent.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer who has promoted baseless public-health conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine misinformation, is running for president.
Despite his fringe views, Kennedy's lineage as a member of one of America's most prominent political families has helped boost his bizarre claims about vaccines, COVID-19, and other public health issues.
Here's a closer look at Kennedy's family history and controversial statements. Kennedy's campaign did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
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Kennedy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, a US senator who was assassinated in 1968, and Ethel Kennedy, a human-rights advocate who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2014. He is the third of the couple's 11 children, according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Kennedy is also former President John F. Kennedy's nephew.
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Kennedy went to Harvard, then studied at the London School of Economics. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School and earned a master's degree in environmental law from Pace University School of Law.
He founded the environmental nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance in 1999, according to the organization's official website. His primary achievement was forcing the closure of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, but his advocacy for water issues has, over the past decade, become largely subsumed by an obsession with vaccines.
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Kennedy has long espoused anti-vaccine views, suggesting a flu vaccine may have caused his voice disorder (he has spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological disorder). But he rose to prominence during the pandemic for his opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, Time reported.
In 2005, he wrote an article published on Salon claiming that the mercury-based thimerosal compound in vaccines causes autism. After issuing multiple corrections, Salon eventually retracted the piece.
Kennedy founded the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, originally named the World Mercury Project, in 2011. In 2022, Facebook and Instagram removed the nonprofit's social-media pages, saying it had repeatedly violated Meta's medical-misinformation policies, The New York Times reported.
In a 2022 speech opposing vaccination mandates, Kennedy said, "Even in Hitler's Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did." He subsequently apologized for invoking the Holocaust, Reuters reported.
At a press event held at a New York City restaurant in July, Kennedy told the crowd that COVID-19 may have been "ethnically targeted" to attack certain groups of people, The New York Post reported.
"COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people," he said. "The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."
"We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential and impact," he continued.
In a statement to The Post, the Anti-Defamation League called Kennedy's remarks "deeply offensive," saying they feed into the "sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years."
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In a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Elon Musk in June, Kennedy likened Musk's purchase of Twitter, now known as X, to patriots who died fighting in the American Revolution. He also attributed increased numbers of mass shootings to pharmaceutical companies for marketing antidepressants, Business Insider's John Cook reported.
"Prior to the introduction of Prozac we had almost none of these events in our country," he said.
Later that month, in an appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, Kennedy claimed that "WiFi radiation does all kind of bad things, including causing cancer."
Kennedy also told CNN in July that environmental "endocrine disruptors" were causing "sexual confusion" and "gender confusion" in children, misconstruing studies that have shown these chemicals can cause some male frogs to become female and produce eggs.
A Kennedy campaign spokesperson told CNN that his remarks were "mischaracterized," and that he was "merely suggesting that, given copious research on the effects on other vertebrates, this possibility deserves further research."
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Kennedy married fellow University of Virginia Law School student Emily Black in 1982 and had two children, Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy III and Kathleen, known as "Kick." They divorced in 1994.
That same year, he married interior designer Mary Richardson. The couple had four children: Conor, Kyra, Finn, and Aidan. Kennedy filed for divorce in 2010.
Kennedy is now married to "Curb Your Enthusiasm" actor Cheryl Hines, whom he wed in 2014, The New York Times reported.
In 2022, following his comments about Anne Frank, Hines denounced the remarks, calling them "reprehensible and insensitive," CNN reported.
But she has supported his bid for the White House, saying in a statement in April, "My husband, Robert Kennedy Jr. announced today he will be running for President and I support his decision," according to People magazine.
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Kennedy announced his 2024 presidential campaign in April 2023 at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel.
"My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country," he said in his speech, CBS News reported.
Kennedy acknowledged that some of his family members do not support his presidential bid, but that he harbors "no ill will or any kind of disappointment" towards them.
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In October, Kennedy announced that he was no longer running for president as a Democrat.
"I must declare my own independence," he said at a campaign event in Philadelphia, The Hill reported. "Independence from the Democratic Party. And from all other political parties."
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One of Kennedy's sisters, Kerry Kennedy, released a statement condemning his "deplorable and untruthful remarks" after he claimed COVID-19 was "ethnically targeted" to certain races.
In a statement to Business Insider's Alia Shoaib, Kerry Kennedy also shared that she would not be supporting his campaign.
"I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the COVID pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information," she said.
Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts also posted on X that his uncle's comments were "hurtful and wrong."
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Nicole Shanahan founded the patent technology company ClearAccessIP in 2013.
She also founded the Bia-Echo Foundation in 2019 to fund programs dedicated to criminal justice reform, reproductive research, and addressing the climate crisis.
Shanahan has donated to Democratic candidates such as Pete Buttigieg and Marianne Williamson since 2018, but told Newsweek she plans to leave the Democratic party.
"I want somebody who will look out for young people and not treat them as if they're invisible," Kennedy told Newsweek of his decision to choose Shanahan as his running mate. "She's just 38 years old; she comes from technology and understands social media."
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