Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces Bid for President 2024.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will mount a campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the fourth member of the storied political family to seek the presidency and the second Democrat to challenge President Joe Biden in his expected reelection bid.
Kennedy, the son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated during his 1968 primary campaign, will announce formally in Boston April 19, his campaign said in a statement. His campaign paperwork was filed with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, his spokeswoman said.
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Kennedy is a trial lawyer who became known for his work on environmental issues earlier in his career. But more recently, he has been a vocal opponent of vaccines, a view that led to a public and painful clash with other prominent members of his family as the COVID-19 pandemic raged.
"We love Bobby. He is one of the great champions of the environment.
However, on vaccines he is wrong. … And his and others’ work against vaccines is having heartbreaking consequences,'' wrote former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Maeve Kennedy McKean, executive director of Georgetown University's Global Health Initiatives, in a 2019 op-ed in Politico Magazine.
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"We are proud of the history of our family as advocates of public health and promoters of immunization campaigns to bring life-saving vaccines to the poorest and most remote corners of America and the world, where children are the least likely to receive their full course of vaccinations. On this issue, Bobby is an outlier in the Kennedy family," the three wrote, recalling President John F. Kennedy's push to get 80 million Americans vaccinated against polio.
In January of 2022, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. invoked the Nazis when denouncing vaccines, saying in a speech that Holocaust victim Anne Frank had more of a chance for freedom than unvaccinated Americans. He later apologized for the remarks, which had been criticized by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the Anti-Defamation League and less directly by his own wife, actress Cheryl Hines.
Kennedy's uncle, Edward M. Kennedy, challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination and lost. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins self-help guru and writer Marianne Williamson as primary challengers to Biden. Williamson ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020 but suspended her campaign before the primaries began.
Tags: Democratic Party.
