Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Files To Run In Democratic Presidential Primary

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of assassinated presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in order to run for president in 2024 in the Democratic party.

He asked his Twitter followers on Monday to visit his website to show support for his potential run, suggesting that if he receives enough donations and volunteer applications he will “jump in the race.”

RFK Jr. would join author Marianne Williamson as the only other official candidate for the Democratic nomination, although President Joe Biden is expected to announce his reelection campaign in the coming months.

RFK Jr. is unusual among Democrats, in that he holds deeply libertarian views against vaccines and other lockdown measures that were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates,” he told a cheering crowd in early 2022. “It will make you a slave.”

Back in 2016, RFK Jr. founded Children’s Health Alliance, a nonprofit that has increased vaccine hesitancy. The advocacy group, which is chaired by Kennedy himself, alleges that increased usage of vaccines on children has led to substantial rises in autism, cancer, food allergies and a wide array of other diseases.

On other political issues, however, such as environmentalism and foreign policy, Kennedy is solidly left-wing.

An environmental lawyer, Kennedy has heavily criticized Republican politicians for their lack of action on climate change. Famously, he attacked corporate CEOs and George W. Bush‘s environmental politics in a 2007 Rolling Stone article, which later became a New York Times bestselling book.

Kennedy’s foreign policy opinions have been based on left-wing democratic principles since he was an undergrad at Harvard in the 1970s, where he wrote a detailed article in The Atlantic about the Nixon administration’s support of the violent right-wing military coup of leftist Chilean President Salvador Allende.

In 2005, Kennedy wrote a scathing criticism of the CIA’s torture program which was sanctioned by the Bush administration, arguing that the policy abandoned “American traditions.”

in 2016, Kennedy wrote an article in Politico magazine arguing that the CIA instigated the Syrian Civil War in order to build an energy pipeline through the country, a position supported by many leftists in the United States and abroad. He argues that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has generally been short-sighted, and has been one of the key forces that led to the type of Arab extremism that killed his father and inspired the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Kennedy is not considered a serious contender for the Democratic nomination as of now, as Biden is expected to effortlessly sweep the primary elections.

Article by Jakob Mieszkowski-Lapping