Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of the assassinated Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, has filed election paperwork to run for the US presidency in 2024 as a Democrat. The 69-year-old environmental lawyer’s campaign treasurer, John E Sullivan, confirmed the filing on Wednesday.
However, Mr Kennedy is an outspoken anti-vaccine campaigner, and Instagram removed his account in 2021 for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims”, according to the company. This may impact his chances of securing the Democratic nomination, as both the Democratic and Republican parties hold their own contests, called primaries, to find their presidential nominee.
President Joe Biden has indicated that he will run for re-election, though he has not yet formally declared his candidacy. CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, has reported that Mr Kennedy is expected to formally announce his candidacy in early summer.
In March, Mr Kennedy said on Twitter that he was considering a run for president, and if he does run, his top priority will be to “end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms.”
As the co-founder of an environmental law firm, Mr Kennedy has won plaudits for campaigning on issues such as clean water, including working to clean up the Hudson River in New York. However, his anti-vaccine views go back years and have provoked a strong backlash, including from his own family. In 2021, his sister Kerry Kennedy called him “very dangerous” on the issue.
In 2019, three other family members penned an op-ed in Politico, denouncing Mr Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. His sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, brother Joseph P Kennedy II, and niece Maeve Kennedy McKean said his views were “tragically wrong” and have “deadly consequences”.
Although Mr Kennedy’s vaccine scepticism long predates Covid, he found a new audience during the pandemic, when revenues to his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, doubled to $6.8m (£5.5m). In 2022, Facebook and Instagram removed accounts for the group for “repeatedly” violating company policies on medical misinformation.
Mr Kennedy also published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused the former US infectious disease chief of “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy”, and invoked Nazi Germany during an anti-vaccine speech in Washington, DC last year.
Mr Kennedy’s voice disorder, spasmodic dysphonia, affects the muscles in his voice box. He married actress Cheryl Hines in 2014 and lives in Los Angeles, California.
