What to know about RFK Jr., the controversial conspiracy theorist who ran for president and joined Donald Trump's campaign
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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 ran against Biden in the 2024 primaries, switched to an independent, and endorsed Trump.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer who has promoted baseless public-health conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine misinformation, dropped out of the presidential race in August and endorsed Donald Trump. Trump went on to add Kennedy Jr., along with Tulsi Gabbard, to his transition team to help shape his administration if he wins the election in November.
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 a 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.
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."
AP Photo/Hans Pennink
In a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Elon Musk in June 2023, 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 2023 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.
In 2022, following his comments about Anne Frank, Hines denounced the remarks, calling them "reprehensible and insensitive," CNN reported.
But she supported his bid for the White House, saying in a statement in April 2023, "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" toward 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."
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
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."
REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In a 2012 deposition during his divorce from Mary Richardson Kennedy, Kennedy said that he'd seen neurologists in an effort to diagnose memory issues.
"I have cognitive problems, clearly," he said in the deposition. "I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me."
Kennedy said that one doctor suggested that he had a worm in his brain based on a dark spot in a scan that could have been "caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."
Kennedy told the Times the memory issues he experienced have since resolved.
The health issues were in contrast to how he had portrayed himself in his presidential run, depicting himself as healthier, mentally and physically, than his then-rivals Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
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In August, Kennedy said he met with Trump and was "surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues."
"In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party," Kennedy said.
Kennedy also said that he was making an effort to remove his name from ballots in 10 swing states.
"Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues," he said.
Upon receiving his endorsement, Trump added Kennedy to his transition team along with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
In July, Kennedy denied a Vanity Fair report that he had once eaten a barbecued dog.
A Vanity Fair story published in July included a photo of Kennedy holding a charred animal carcass. A veterinarian told the outlet that it looked like the animal was a dog based on the number of ribs. Kennedy denied the report and said it was actually a goat.
In August, Kennedy revealed that he was behind the bear carcass that was found in Central Park in 2014. In a video on X filmed with Roseanne Barr, Kennedy said that he'd planned to skin the animal after finding it dead on the side of the road, but had to catch a flight, so he disposed of the dead bear in Central Park.
Kennedy said in the video that he wanted to share the bear story ahead of a forthcoming New Yorker profile mentioning the incident. In the New Yorker profile, Kennedy said that he may have gotten his brain worm from the dead bear.
Also in August, a 2012 Town & Country interview with his daughter Kick resurfaced — in it, she said her father had decapitated a dead whale they'd found on a beach near the Kennedy home in Hyannis Port when she was 6. According to Kick, he strapped the whale head to the roof of their minivan before their drive back to New York, prompting "whale juice" to "pour into the windows of the car."
In September, the National Marine Fisheries Service told the Associated Press it was investigating the incident. In response to reporters' questions about the incident, Kennedy said, "I'm not interested in feeding that feature of the mainstream media."
Paul Morigi/Getty Images; John Parra/Getty Images for Latino Wall Street
"Earlier this year, the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal," Nuzzi said in a statement to Darcy. "During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source. The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I've disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York."
Nuzzi was placed on leave from New York magazine, and editor in chief David Haskell hired a law firm to investigate the matter and conduct a review of her reporting.
A representative for Kennedy denied the relationship, telling The New York Times, "Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece." However, The Daily Beast reported that Kennedy had bragged about the relationship, making it something of an open secret in some circles.
In October, Nuzzi accused her ex-fiancé, Politico reporter Ryan Lizza, of blackmail. In a court filing, Nuzzi said that Lizza "threatened to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation — a threat he has since carried out."
Lizza denied the claims.
"I am saddened that my ex-fiancée would resort to making a series of false accusations against me as a way to divert attention from her own personal and professional failings," he said in a statement. "I emphatically deny these allegations and I will defend myself against them vigorously and successfully."
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