On Wednesday, anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a member of a political dynasty, will declare a long-shot quest to challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Kennedy, 69, had little chance of winning, but his campaign could help him promote the scientifically disproven belief that infant vaccines are harmful.
Kennedy was banned from YouTube and Instagram for disseminating vaccination and COVID-19 disinformation.
He is the nephew of John F. Kennedy, who was slain in 1963, and the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential campaign.
Kennedy will likely underscore these links when he announces in Boston, where his uncles, including the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, began their political careers.
Right-wingers support his anti-vaccine activism. In 2017, Republican then-President Donald Trump appointed him to lead a vaccine review council, which scientists feared might legitimize unjustified distrust.
Kennedy denounced COVID-19 social distancing and vaccine mandates. At a January 2022 event in Washington, he claimed Americans have fewer pandemic freedoms than Jews in Nazi Germany. He apologized.
Kennedy tweeted last month that he might run for president to “end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power.”
Self-help guru Marianne Williamson will also fight Biden for the Democratic candidacy.
Last Friday, Biden, 80, indicated he will run for re-election and announce “relatively soon.”
