Robert F Kennedy Jr

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      RFK Jr is poised for a 2024 run as an independent. Which side should be worried?

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      For months, Republicans have been reveling in Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential bid.Running in the Democratic primary against Joe Biden, the hope has been that Kennedy could weaken the president ahead of a presumed Biden-Trump match-up in 2024.But with Kennedy expected to announce that he will ditch the Democratic party and run as an independent, some commentators are suggesting that conservatives’ schadenfreude could come back to haunt them.That’s because of the curious case of Kennedy’s political appeal.It turns out that the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, Democratic giants who maintain widespread admiration in the party, is actually more popular among Republicans – including some of the most influential rightwing voices in the US.Kennedy, Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast in April, would be “an excellent choice” for Trump’s running mate.Charlie Kirk, founder of the rightwing Turning Point USA, has praised Kennedy. So has Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor and QAnon enthusiast.The noted rightwing crank Alex Jones added his endorsement on his InfoWars show.“I don’t agree with Robert F Kennedy Jr on some topics, but he’s a man of integrity that fights fluoride and poison shots and fentanyl and everything else. He’s a good man,” said Jones, who last year was ordered to pay nearly $1bn to relatives of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victims, after he falsely claimed the shooting was a hoax.The support for Kennedy from fluoridated-water-lowers-IQ-and-or-causes-cancer Republicans makes sense. Kennedy, 69, is a man who never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.In the last few months alone, the former environmental lawyer has said that wifi causes “leaky brain”, and linked antidepressants to school shootings. In June Kennedy said chemicals in water are making kids transgender and and declared that US support for Ukraine to be “a setup by the neocons and the CIA”. He also has longstanding, and wrong, beliefs about apparently any and all vaccines.Kennedy first announced he was considering a run for the Democratic nomination in March, in a speech that, true to form, was banned from YouTube for violating the platform’s “medical misinformation” policies.In April, he announced his candidacy for real, in a video that has not yet been removed from YouTube, and soon some polls showed that up to 20% of Democratic primary voters would pledge for Kennedy.If, as expected, Kennedy is to run as an independent, those numbers would suggest he could strip votes from Biden.Not so, said Steffen Schmidt, professor emeritus in the department of political science at Iowa State University.“Kennedy is an IED – we don’t know [when] he’s going to blow and on whom,” Schmidt said.Schmidt said there may have been early “sentimental” appeal for Kennedy among Democrats, given his family’s history. Biden’s age – a recent poll showed a majority of Democrats believe the president is too old to be effective for four more years – might have also been a factor in liberals considering a different candidate.“And then they began to hear the menu of things, his conspiracy theories and all that, and they began to see him on Fox News and all kinds of other conservative media, and the honeymoon was over,” Schmidt said.That slew of appearances on conservative media, and at rightwing events – Kennedy has previously appeared at a show hosted by ReAwaken America, described by PBS as “a petri dish for Christian nationalism” – have made him popular among Republican voters, many of whom are still in thrall to Donald Trump, another noted conspiracy theorist.A FiveThirtyEight review of eight polls on Kennedy’s popularity in both parties found that he was actually better liked among Republicans than Democrats, which Schmidt attributed to his conspiratorial beliefs. (Kennedy has also said that 5G towers could “control our behavior” and suggested HIV is not the cause of Aids. He has been accused of racism and antisemitism over claims – partly withdrawn – that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, while in July the Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, released a report that details Kennedy’s meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists.“He has conspiracy theories, including his anti-vaccine position, which is very popular among conservative Republicans,” Schmidt said. “There’s a pretty formidable list of things that would appeal to a more fringy group on the Republican side.”Kennedy is already attracting Republican donors: in July Axios reported that a “small but growing number” of donors had given heavily to the presidential campaigns of both Kennedy – when he was still running as a Democrat – and Republican candidates.“Republicans put a lot of effort and money into getting visibility because they thought that was going to hurt Joe Biden and now it looks more like it’s going to backfire on them. I’m not a gambling man. But if I had to put $1,000 on the table in Las Vegas, I would put it on Republicans losing some votes in some states to him and not the Democrats,” Schmidt said.“Although with RFK Jr, there will be people who will lose some sleep on both sides. Biden supporters and staffers, as well as some of the Trump campaign people will be worried as to what’s going to happen.”For all the talk of Kennedy’s potential effect, there is near universal agreement that, as an independent, he will not win the presidential election.“Independent candidates typically will carve away support from one of the major parties,” said Emmitt Y Riley III, associate professor of political science and Africana studies at DePauw University and president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.“But the problem is most voters in the US will claim that they are independents, when in actuality they’re more partisan than people who identify with political parties. And people like the label ‘independent’, but their politics isn’t independent at all.”There is some precedent for independent and third-party candidates having an effect in presidential elections, including Ross Perot, who won 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 race between George HW Bush and Bill Clinton.In 2000, George W Bush beat Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida, which clinched Bush the presidency. Ralph Nader, running on the Green party ticket, won 97,421 votes in the state, and Democrats – including Joe Biden – blamed him for Gore’s loss.“Ralph Nader is not going to be welcome anywhere near the corridors [of Congress]. Nader cost us the election,” Biden told the Guardian at the time.Similarly, a CNN analysis of Trump’s 2016 win found that Jill Stein, the Green party presidential candidate and Gary Johnson representing the Libertarian party, did well enough “in several states arguably to help elect Donald Trump”.The financial might of the Democratic and Republican parties, however, means independents or third party candidates will always face an uphill battle. The electoral college system, in which a successful candidate must win the vote in numerous states, is another obstacle.And while exposure hasn’t been a problem for Kennedy, at least among rightwing media, he will face difficulties making it into the presidential debates, which are watched by millions.Kennedy could also face an Icarus moment, should he be seen as drawing too much support from either of the main parties.“If he wants to run, run. Fine,” a source close to the Trump campaign told the Daily Beast after rumors of Kennedy’s independent effort began to circulate.“But if he chooses to run as an independent, then he’s our opponent.”Not everyone agrees that Kennedy’s campaign will be most damaging to Trump, however. Riley said that given the lack of enthusiasm for Biden at large – his public approval rating has been below 50% for more than two years – and continuing concerns over the economy, plus the enthusiasm of Trump’s base, Democrats should be more worried.“I’m not convinced that he will threaten Trump. I think the core supporters who support Donald Trump are typically rich white conservatives, and conservatives who have negative racial attitudes.“And as a result, the way in which he’s been able to prime support among these particular voters, I think Trump has a solid core of voters who will support him. I don’t think any of the voters who are voting for Trump are swing voters, or voters that are on the fence.”On Kennedy’s side, so far is a demonstrated ability to bring in lots of money, including $5m given to an affiliated Super Pac by a Trump donor. He’s not young, but he’s younger than Biden and Trump, in an election where age may become a factor.While Kennedy and his novel beliefs are mostly a benign fascination at the moment, the consequences of him forging a strong independent run could be serious.“I think if Trump wins the election, we’re gonna see the nation move more towards authoritarianism,” Riley said.“We’re going to see more erosion of our democratic norms, I think we’re going to be in trouble. America can no longer sell itself as a republic, or even as a democratic form of government – with a president who disrespects our democratic institutions.“I think that this is one of the most consequential inventions of our time.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr announced as speaker at hard-right CPAC event

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the attorney, conspiracy theorist and political gadfly set to next week transform his run for the Democratic presidential nomination into an independent campaign, was announced on Friday as a speaker at an event staged by the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.“Robert F Kennedy Jr has a unique voice in advocating for the defunding of the weaponised bureaucracy and ensuring the constitutional right of medical freedom,” said the CPAC chair, Matt Schlapp.Kennedy, 69, will speak at the CPAC Investor Summit to Save America, in Las Vegas, Nevada, between 18 and 21 October. Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech investor who has performed unexpectedly strongly in the Republican primary, will also speak.Kennedy comes from a storied US political family – the son of former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy. He built a public profile as an attorney and environmental campaigner but has now emerged as a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.A claim that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews have greater immunity from Covid caused huge controversy. So did a comparison of government public health mandates to laws in Nazi Germany, invoking the name of Anne Frank. Last month, Kennedy repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.Kennedy has polled relatively strongly against Joe Biden, the incumbent Democratic president. Standing next to no chance of winning the nomination, however, Kennedy’s announcement of an independent run was trailed last week. The announcement is set for Philadelphia on Monday.Polling shows the potential for a third-party candidate to pull votes from both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the president’s expected challenger in what would be a contest between aging and unpopular candidates.This week, a Reuters-Ipsos poll showed Kennedy “could draw the support of about one in seven US voters”.Some observers think Biden likely to sustain worse damage from a strong third-party candidate, perhaps handing the White House back to Trump: a twice-impeached ex-president who faces 91 criminal charges, 17 over election subversion culminating in the January 6 attack on Congress, as well as assorted civil trials.Nonetheless, Kennedy’s links to rightwingers including the mega-donor Timothy Mellon and Steve Bannon, a close Trump ally, have been widely reported and his more extreme stances could see also pull support from Republicans.Bannon was among other figures listed to appear at the CPAC Las Vegas event. So were Ric Grenell, a former Trump aide; Kari Lake, a failed gubernatorial candidate now running for US Senate in Arizona; the Utah Republican senator Mike Lee; and Ken Paxton, the impeached and acquitted Texas attorney general.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchlapp, the CPAC chair, is a former White House political director under George W Bush now the subject of claims of sexual misconduct, which he denies.Schlapp said: “Kennedy joining such an important event is a reflection of the splintering of the leftwing coalition that has gone full woke Marxist to the point that traditional liberals don’t feel welcome anymore.”Not everyone thinks a Kennedy candidacy will only damage Biden. This week, a “Kennedy campaign insider” told Mediate: “This is going to fuck Trump. Bobby’s values are much more in line with patriots. He’s against Big Pharma. He’s pro-Bitcoin. Decentralise so the government can’t control it.”That prompted Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, to say: “Blame Bannon. His monster got out of the cage.” More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly set to end his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, a nephew of President John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.Whether Kennedy, the Green party pick, Cornel West, or a notional nominee backed by No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, a third-party candidate is widely seen to be likely to peel more support from Biden than the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, thereby potentially handing the presidency to the Republican.Kennedy is an attorney who made his name as an environmental campaigner before achieving notoriety as a prominent vaccine sceptic, particularly over Covid-19. His campaign has been rife with controversy, not least in a podcast interview released this week in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.His campaign has also been roiled by an antisemitism scandal after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was embraced by neo-Nazi groups and condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Kennedy’s remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed the coronavirus as a global Jewish plot and caused members of his own family to denounce him for “deplorable and untruthful” comments.Polling has shown Kennedy performing relatively well against Biden, the incumbent president, in the Democratic primary, but not close to posing a serious threat.However, Biden aides are reportedly nervous about the possible impact of third-party candidates in a likely presidential election match-up with Trump.Polling shows widespread concerns, including among Democrats, that at 80, Biden is too old to serve an effective second term in the White House. Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among his fervent Republican base that he could be unfit to return to office.Rightwing figures – prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist – have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.As cited by Mediate, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win.”But not every observer thought Kennedy’s move would be bad for Biden.Joe Conason, editor of the National Memo, said: “Go Bobby! Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality. (That’s Trump, not Biden.)” More

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      Armed man posing as US marshal arrested at Robert Kennedy Jr event

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      An armed man accused of impersonating a federal officer was arrested outside a Robert F Kennedy Jr campaign event in Los Angeles.A Los Angeles police department statement said police received a call on Friday afternoon that a man with a loaded gun and holster and wearing a US marshals service badge was outside a theater where the Democratic presidential candidate was scheduled to give a speech.A campaign statement said Kennedy’s security team surrounded the man, who later was arrested by the LAPD. The FBI also was on the scene.No one was injured.“The man claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security team,” the campaign statement said. He told the candidate’s security team “that he needed to be taken to the candidate immediately”.The man was booked on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon.In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Kennedy said he was grateful for the Los Angeles police’s swift response. His campaign said Kennedy’s requests for Secret Service protection have been rejected, and he plans to apply again this month. More

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      Third party candidates will help Trump win | Robert Reich

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      Whether they intend to be or not, third-party groups such as No Labels and the Green party are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024.No Labels has pledged to spend $70m to support a third-party candidate in 2024 who could easily draw enough votes from President Biden to tip the presidential election to Trump.No Labels has already qualified as a presidential party that can run candidates on the ballot in 10 states, including in both Arizona and Florida.It claims to be a centrist organization seeking a new bipartisanship, but it will not reveal its donors, one of whom is reportedly the conservative mega-donor Harlan Crow. Politico reports that No Labels has brought on a major Trump donor as an adviser in the pivotal battleground state of Florida.If you believe that No Labels exists in order to encourage bipartisanship, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.No Labels will only help elect Trump.So will every other third party claiming to be in the “center” or on the “left” – including the Green party, which is already on the ballot in the two key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin and whose most likely candidate for president is Cornel West.And the People’s party, especially if Robert F Kennedy Jr becomes its nominee.The reason they’re all front groups for Donald Trump is that the upcoming 2024 election is likely to be nail-bitingly close even as a two-way race between Trump and Biden.The good news is that Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate – which is why Trump has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47% in either.So, as long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind Biden, Trump cannot win, as Biden demonstrated in 2020.But if a third-party candidate takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House.Consider the five states most likely to decide the 2024 election in the electoral college – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump narrowly won each of them, giving him the presidency. In 2020, these five states narrowly tipped in the other direction, giving Biden the presidency.Biden’s razor-thin margins in these five states in 2020 came from a massive anti-Trump vote.In all of these states, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.In Wisconsin (where the Green party has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 38% of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.In Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot), 45% of Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump.Biden has no margin for error. Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would make him vulnerable.Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10m cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin – less than half of 1% – were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.If candidates from No Labels, the Green party and the People’s party peel off just 15% of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, and Trump’s base stays with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.These third parties are urging people to “vote your conscience”, “give the people a real choice” and “not settle for the lesser of two evils”.If the upcoming election were an ordinary one – pitting a conservative Republican against a liberal Democrat – I’d say the more the merrier. If people want to vote for a third-party candidate, fine.But the upcoming election isn’t an ordinary one. We’ve already witnessed what Trump has tried to do to remain in power. If he’s re-elected, 2024 could mark America’s last democratic election.The reality is that any anti-Trump votes these third parties pull away from Biden will only help ensure a Trump victory.The risk to the future of American democracy is enormous. If No Labels were a legitimate third party rather than a Trump front, it would withdraw from all ballots for the 2024 election, and try again in 2028. If Cornel West and the Green party had positive intentions, they would do the same.The rest of us must spread the word about what’s at stake.If Trump wins the Republican nomination for president, as seems highly likely despite (or because of) his coming trials, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind Joe Biden – to ensure that Trump, in the words of then representative Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office”.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      RFK Jr draws quite a crowd – what does it mean for 2024?

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      Wearing a Robert Kennedy Jr campaign T-shirt, Kevin O’Keeffe found there was standing room only as the candidate, introduced as “Bobby Kennedy”, walked on a sunbaked stage decked with hay bales to whoops and applause.“He supports freedom of speech, and he’s questioned the efficacy of the vaccine, which is legitimate at this point,” said O’Keeffe, 52, who works for a telecommunications company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I like his views on foreign policy and keeping us out of the war. He cares about his fellow Americans in a way that a lot of the politicians nowadays I don’t think really do.”He was far from alone in rooting for Kennedy at the Iowa state fair in Des Moines last weekend. The longshot challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024 drew one of the biggest and most energetic crowds, outnumbering conventional politicians on the Republican side. The shouts of “We love you, Robert!” and “Thank you, Robert!”, and subsequent mobbing of Kennedy for handshakes and selfies, hinted at the stirrings of a movement.In a nation that has seen plenty of political convulsions over the past decade, Kennedy, a 69-year-old environmental lawyer who has never before run for public office, is proof that Americans’ appetite for insurgents and outsiders, mavericks and populists, remains undimmed. Even when a campaign traffics in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and has been hit by antisemitism scandals.Kennedy rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic because of his strident and widely condemned opposition to vaccines. He has styled himself as a hammer of the elites – quite a feat for a scion of one of America’s most storied political dynasties. He has scrambled old political allegiances, striking an anti-establishment nerve on the far left and far right over the Ukraine war and other issues.Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter for NBC News, summed up his supporters as “anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, internet contrarians, billionaire tech bros, Camelot nostalgists and rightwing provocateurs who seem to be pumping Kennedy as a spoiler candidate”.In his speech from the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox, Kennedy wore blue jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He spoke of his father, former attorney general Robert Kennedy, and uncle, President John F Kennedy, as figures from a golden age when America was the envy of the world.His campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, held up a map as Kennedy railed against proposed pipelines that would run through Iowa to transport liquefied carbon dioxide away from ethanol plants for burial underground. It was a retro, 20th-century presentation but more locally targeted than many candidates offered.Such is the celebrity-style clamor for Kennedy that, for an interview with the Guardian, he slipped away from the crowds and sat in the back of a black limousine with security detail present. Kucinich, a former congressman and past presidential contender, offered to take an Uber back to the hotel but Kennedy insisted that he climb in too, then asked an aide for some fried bacon from the fair.His uncle, Ted Kennedy, was once floored by the simple question, “Why do you want to be president?” This Kennedy does have an answer for that one: “I’m running for president because I feel like I’m losing my country and because I feel like the Democratic party is going in a bad direction. In particular, it has become the party of war – the Ukraine war was an unnecessary war.“It has become the party of censorship. It’s become the party of a pugnacious neocon-driven foreign policy and a Wall Street-driven domestic policy. Those are all the opposite of the Democratic party that I grew up with, so I’m running to bring the party back to its traditional values.”The political class was rattled in 2016 by the two-headed insurgency of not only Donald Trump on the right but Bernie Sanders on the left, channeling frustrations with the status quo in very different ways. Kennedy argues that Democrats, once the party of the poor and middle class, now own most of the nation’s wealth and dominate its richest counties.“Americans feel ignored by both political parties,” he said. “Their wealth is being strip mined by large corporations, corporate interests, and you’re seeing a level of desperation that I’ve never seen in this country. They just don’t feel that anybody’s listening, and they felt like Bernie was maybe listening, and they felt like Donald Trump was maybe listening as well.”Many are disturbed by Kennedy’s flirtations with the far right, including racists and antisemites. He has appeared on Infowars, a channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and granted interviews to pro-Trump extremists Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. A Super Pac supporting Kennedy’s presidential run owes half its money to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports.Kennedy insists that he is happy to receive support from across the spectrum and focus on issues that united Americans rather than divide them. He said: “My message is a populist message. The Republicans are appealing to a populist base and I appeal to the same base. I appeal to working people, middle class people and the poor.”So what did he make of Trump’s presidency? Kennedy seemed a little reluctant to reply and kept his answer short: “I don’t think it was the shining apex of American exceptionalism.”Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases, many related to an attempted coup after his 2020 election defeat. Democrats warn starkly that his return to the White House could spell the end of American democracy. But again Kennedy swerved: “There’s authoritarian impulses on both sides. On one side it’s the authoritarianism of rightwing demagoguery, and on the left it’s the authoritarianism of the elites, which is equally dangerous because it involves censorship.”Equally dangerous? “I would say equally dangerous,” he reiterated. “What do you think is more dangerous? The attack on the Capitol building on January 6 or the revelations that the White House has been using the CIA and the FBI to censor its critics? What do you think is more dangerous for the republic? Both parties are doing things that are equally dangerous.”He added: “Once a government can silence its critics it has licence for every atrocity and so it’s shocking to me that people in the Democratic party now think it’s OK to silence people. I’ve never thought that’s right. I’ve always spoken to people who I don’t agree with. That’s an important part of being American.”It is an exercise in false equivalence fueled by personal animus. Kennedy accuses the government of colluding with social media companies to deny his freedom of speech, making him the first person censored by the White House after Biden’s inauguration. In reality he was suspended from platforms such as Instagram and Twitter for spreading coronavirus vaccine misinformation.Without the pandemic, it might be argued, there would be no Kennedy candidacy. He has long promoted bogus theories linking vaccines to autism, antidepressants to school shootings and chemicals present in water sources to transgender identity. But now his anti-scientific views have moved from the fringe to resonate with millions of people, especially consumers of rightwing media.His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, prospered during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling in 2020 to $6.8m, according to filings made with charity regulators. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. In 2021 he published a book, The Real Anthony Fauci, in which he accused America’s top infectious disease expert of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against western democracy”.In his Guardian interview, Kennedy is unrepentant, saying: “Show me where I got one thing wrong.” He tossed out far-fetched claims that might have been plucked from dark corners of the web: “The British study that just came out said 98% of the people who died were triple vaccinated”; “If you look at the data, countries that were least vaccinated had the least Covid deaths”. He did not take the vaccine himself and did catch the virus but “it didn’t stop me from skiing”.Earlier this year the UN’s World Health Organization declared an end to Covid as a public health emergency, stating that immunity increased due to “highly effective vaccines” developed in record time. A modelling study by the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health at the end of last year found that Covid vaccines kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives.Kennedy’s own family have distanced themselves from him. Jack Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s grandson, said in an Instagram video: “He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame. I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment.”But at the state fair there was a significant constituency thrilled to hear Kennedy keep saying the unsayable, renewing questions about what the rise of such candidates tells America about itself and its yearning. Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt, said: “I believe in freedom of speech, peace and civil liberties. Trump drew a large crowd too, and I was in that crowd, and I got nothing but thumbs up from everybody.” More

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      Unrepentant Robert Kennedy Jr attempts to revive campaign after antisemitism accusations

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      Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr has said that he should have been “more careful” in making his recent false remarks about the “ethnic targeting” of the Covid pandemic.At a campaign debate in New York on Tuesday night, Kennedy sought to put the accusation of antisemitism that has engulfed his campaign behind him. But he stopped short of retracting his false claim that coronavirus had been targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people from the impact of the disease.“I should have been more careful about what I said because I know anything I say will be distorted and weaponised against me,” he said.Speaking at a presidential campaign event hosted by the celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Kennedy said the charge of antisemitism had hurt him personally. “I have a thick skin, but the charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me, it hurts me. I haven’t said an antisemitic word in my life.”Kennedy’s bid for the White House has been contentious from the outset, given his embrace of virulent conspiracy theories that promote vaccine hesitancy. A political watchdog, the Congressional Integrity Project, recently released a report that set the candidate’s disputed views on Covid against years of antisemitic, racist and xenophobic remarks which it called “horrific” and “beyond the pale”. The report said that his promotion of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories had “deadly real world consequences”.On Tuesday, Kennedy insisted that the barrage of criticism that he has faced in the past week was itself an attempt to silence his long-shot bid for the White House. He portrayed himself as the target of what he called an “infrastructure” that was set on destroying his campaign.“There’s a way to censor people through targeted character assassination – you use vile accusations to marginalise them, and that is the kind of censorship I’m now dealing with,” he said.Kennedy is the nephew of the assassinated president John F Kennedy, and son and namesake of Robert F Kennedy who was also assassinated, while he was running for the presidency in 1968. He is challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.Until the antisemitism furore erupted, Kennedy had been gaining more traction than many observers had expected. In some polls he was attracting up to 20% among Democratic voters.His campaign stumbled after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner this month that Covid had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was enthusiastically embraced by neo-Nazi groups, while being condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Critics pointed out that his remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed coronavirus as a global Jewish plot.Members of Kennedy’s own family denounced him for his “deplorable and untruthful” comments. Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President Kennedy, posted an online video in which he called his cousin’s campaign “an embarrassment”, and Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy and brother Joseph Kennedy II also unleashed harsh criticism.In trying to counter the charges of antisemitism on Tuesday night, Kennedy merely succeeded in doubling down on the false suggestion that China orchestrated the epidemic. He said there was no evidence the virus had been engineered, “and in any case it would not have been engineered by Jews – most of the experiments were in China, in Wuhan”.Hours before Kennedy appeared on stage with Boteach, the candidate was forced to find a new venue for the debate after the original host, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, cancelled the booking. Kennedy accused the society of bowing to pressure from Biden, which he said amounted to “political censorship”.The society responded with a tart statement that said Kennedy’s event had been “inconsistent” with its values, adding that no outside party had influenced the decision.Kennedy went on to make a lengthy speech in which he expressed his support for the state of Israel against claims that it was practising apartheid against the Palestinian people. “A major piece of my campaign will be explaining to Americans why that is wrong and making the case for Israel.”Since the antisemitism controversy exploded, Boteach has rallied to Kennedy’s side. The rabbi said he disagreed with the candidate’s views on vaccines – he has had four Covid vaccinations, he said – but dismissed the charge of antisemitism against him as a “disgusting, offensive lie”. More

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      January 6 grand jury to hear testimony from Trump aide – US politics live

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      From 2h agoA federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election will hear testimony from an aide who was with the former president for much of the day on 6 January 2021, according to multiple reports.William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump’s presidential campaign, is scheduled to testify before he grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, both CNN and NBC reported.Russell, who has previously testified before the grand jury, served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and deputy director of advance, before moving to Florida to work as an aid to Trump after he left office.Multiple former senior Trump White House officials have testified before the grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Among those who have testified are Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and former top Trump aide, Hope Hicks.In April, Mike Pence testified for seven hours behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors in the case remain uncertain.House speaker Kevin McCarthy has denied he privately promised former president Donald Trump that he would get legislation passed that would erase Trump’s two impeachments.According to a Politico report, Trump was outraged at McCarthy for withholding his endorsement of his presidential run in the 2024 election. In an interview last month, McCarthy expressed doubt that Trump was the “strongest” candidate to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House next year.“He needs to endorse me – today!” Trump is said to have fumed to his staff on his way to a campaign event in New Hampshire. McCarthy called Trump to apologize after the interview, claiming he misspoke, sources told CNN at the time.In return for delaying that endorsement, according to Politico, McCarthy pledged that he would get the House to vote to expunge” both impeachments against the former president. The outlet said McCarthy had promised to do so before Congress leaves for an August recess. Recess begins in less than two weeks.In 2019, a Democrat-controlled House voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate his presidential election rival, Joe Biden, and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations.The House impeached Trump for a second time in 2021 for his actions ahead of the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. The Senate acquitted him both times, thanks to the votes of Republicans. McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump both times.“There’s no deal,” McCarthy told a reporter in the Capitol on Thursday, Reuters reported.The South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, accused Democrats of trying to “destroy” the supreme court and said the ethics bill “is an assault on the court itself”.Congress should stay out of the court’s business, Graham said.Opening the committee meeting, Senate judiciary chair Dick Durbin said the legislation would be a “crucial first step” in restoring confidence in the court.Graham vowed, in response, that “all of us are going to vote no”. From NBC’s Sahil Kapur:Here’s a rundown of the ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Real estate transactionsClarence Thomas’s friend Harlan Crow, the Texas Republican billionaire mega-donor, bought three properties that the conservative justice and his family owned, including Thomas’s childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’s mother still lives. Crow made significant renovations, cleared blight and let Thomas’s mother live there rent-free. The cost was more than $100,000 but was not disclosed.Justice Neil Gorsuch sold a 40-acre property he co-owned in rural Colorado after he became a justice, Politico reported. Brian Duffy, the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, which has had more than 20 cases before the supreme court, bought the property in 2017. Gorsuch disclosed the sale and reportedly made between $250,000 and $500,000, but he left blank the buyer’s identity.School supportCrow paid thousands of dollars in private school tuition for two boarding schools that Thomas’s great-nephew attended, ProPublica reported. The transaction was not disclosed.An investigation by the Associated Press revealed how colleges and universities attract supreme court justices to campuses as a way to generate donations for institutions, raising ethical concerns around a court that, unlike other government agencies, does not have a formal code of conduct. The visits have resulted in all-expenses-paid teaching opportunities and book sales.Money to partnersThe Republican activist Leonard Leo paid Thomas’s wife, Ginni, $25,000 for polling services in January 2012, telling the Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to make “no mention of Ginni”, the Washington Post reported. It’s unclear whether that is a direct ethical concern for Clarence Thomas but it may constitute a conflict of interest.Ginni, who also attended the January 6 attack at the Capitol, reportedly exchanged text messages with the then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, encouraging him to support then president Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims aimed at subverting the results of his 2020 electoral defeat. The Judicial Education Project, a law firm tied to Leo, filed a brief to the supreme court in the landmark case that eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act not long after the payment was made.Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, ran a legal recruiting firm that raised ethical concerns since she made millions of dollars in commissions from placing lawyers at firms, some of which appeared before the court. The New York Times obtained a letter from a former colleague of Roberts to the US justice department and Congress inquiring about the connection.Luxury tripsFor more than two decades, Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of luxury trips on private planes and “superyachts”, and vacations from his friend Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reported. Crow has said that he did not attempt to influence Thomas politically or legally nor did he discuss pending supreme court cases. Thomas said he was told he was not required to disclose the trips. Notably, a company linked to Crow was involved in at least one case before the US supreme court, Bloomberg reported. Thomas did not recuse himself from the case.Justice Samuel Alito reportedly took a private jet to an all-expenses-covered fishing trip to Alaska, paid for by the hedge fund billionaire and conservative mega-donor Paul Singer. NPR reports that Singer has been involved in 10 appeals to the supreme court. In an unprecedented move, Alito defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, declaring he did not have to recuse himself and followed what he “understood to be standard practice”.The Senate judiciary committee is expected to vote today on a bill that would require the supreme court to adopt a code of ethics.Senate Democrats have called for a measure to establish a code of conduct for the supreme court justices similar to those that other government agencies must follow.The bill, unlikely to pass in a divided Congress, would demand the court create a code within 180 days and establish rules on recusals related to potential conflicts of interest and disclosure of gifts and travel.The panel vote comes after months of scrutiny on the court over ethical controversies supreme court justices have been involved in.Senate judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, said this week:
      Just about every week now, we learn something new and deeply troubling about the justices serving on the supreme court, the highest court in the land in the United States, and their conduct outside the courtroom.
      Let me tell you, if I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble.
      The bill would need at least nine GOP votes to pass, and Republicans appear united against it, arguing that the legislation would undermine the separation of powers and “destroy” the court.Twice impeached and now twice arrested and indicted. Donald Trump faces serious charges in New York and Florida over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.And more criminal charges could be on the way for Trump in Georgia and Washington DC. Here is where each case against Trump stands:Classified documents case in FloridaStatus: Trump pleaded not guilty; trial scheduled for AugustCharges: 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements and representations, among othersHush-money case in New YorkStatus: Trump pleaded not guilty; trial forthcomingCharges: 34 felony charges of falsifying business recordsJanuary 6 case in WashingtonStatus: Subpoenas issued by grand juryPotential charges against Trump: Obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government and incitement of an insurrection2020 election meddling case in GeorgiaStatus: Grand jury report finished; charging decisions expected this summerPotential charges against Trump: Election code violationsE Jean Carroll lawsuits in New YorkStatus: First lawsuit going to trial; second lawsuit on appealAllegations against Trump: Defamation and sexual abuseRead the full story here. Donald Trump has said he has until midnight tonight to testify before the federal grand jury deciding whether to indict him over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Targets of criminal investigations rarely speak to grand juries, as they are usually advised by their attorneys to not take up invitations to meet with the grand jury because any statements provided in that setting could be used to help build a case against them in the event that they’re charged.Trump has not exercised that right in the two other criminal cases in which he’s been charged, Politico’s Kyle Cheney writes. Recent witnesses who have appeared before the grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were reportedly asked about the former president’s state of mind surrounding the January 6 insurrection.Federal prosecutors asked multiple former senior Trump White House officials to speak to Trump’s mindset in the days and weeks after losing the 2020 election, leading up to 6 January, according to a New York Times report. Witnesses including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were asked if he had privately acknowledged that he had lost the election, it said. Kushner is understood to have said that it was his impression that Trump truly believed the election was stolen.The line of questioning suggested prosecutors were trying to determine if Trump acted with corrupt intent as he sought to remain in power, the paper said.A federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election will hear testimony from an aide who was with the former president for much of the day on 6 January 2021, according to multiple reports.William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump’s presidential campaign, is scheduled to testify before he grand jury convened by special counsel Jack Smith, both CNN and NBC reported.Russell, who has previously testified before the grand jury, served in the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president and deputy director of advance, before moving to Florida to work as an aid to Trump after he left office.Multiple former senior Trump White House officials have testified before the grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Among those who have testified are Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and former top Trump aide, Hope Hicks.In April, Mike Pence testified for seven hours behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors in the case remain uncertain.What the potential charges means for Trump is unclear.Prosecutors have been examining various instances of Trump pressuring officials like his former vice-president Mike Pence, but Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power could also be construed as conspiring to defraud voters more generally.The other two statutes, meanwhile, suggest a core part of the case against Trump is focused on the so-called fake electors scheme and the former president’s efforts to use the fake slates in a conspiracy to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021.The target letter did not cite any seditious conspiracy, incitement of insurrection or deprivation of rights under color of law – other areas for which legal experts have suggested Trump could have legal risk.Last year, the House select committee that investigated the Capitol attack concluded that Trump committed multiple crimes in an attempt to reverse his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.The committee issued symbolic criminal referrals to the justice department, although at that point the justice department had since stepped up its criminal investigation with the addition of new prosecutors in spring 2022 before they were folded into the special counsel’s office.House investigators also concluded that there was evidence for prosecutors to charge Trump with conspiracy to defraud and obstruction of an official proceeding. They also issued referrals for incitement of insurrection, which was not listed in the target letter.Should prosecutors charge Trump in the federal January 6 investigation, the case could go to trial much more quickly than the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case – before the 2024 election – because pre-trial proceedings would not be delayed by rules governing national security materials.Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, two people familiar with the matter said.The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.Prosecutors appear to have evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the target letter, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.The target letter to Trump identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.The statute, enacted to protect the civil rights of Black voters targeted by white supremacy groups after the US civil war, is unusual because it is typically used by prosecutors in law enforcement misconduct and hate crime prosecutions, though its use has expanded in recent years.Donald Trump has until Thursday midnight to respond to special counsel Jack Smith and tell his office whether he will appear before a grand jury in the justice department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.A letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from Smith’s office on Sunday identified the former president as a “target” in the probe into the January 6 insurrection, Trump posted to his Truth Social website on Tuesday. He wrote:
      Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter … stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and an Indictment.
      People who receive target letters from federal authorities are usually advised by their attorneys to not take up invitations to meet with the grand jury because any statements provided in that setting could be used to help build a case against them in the event that they’re charged.Good morning, US politics blog readers. The former president, Donald Trump, has quietly added a criminal defense attorney to his legal team as he faces a potential indictment in the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection.Attorney John Lauro, who has also represented Trump attorneys Christina Bobb and Alina Habba, is joining Trump’s legal team alongside Todd Blanche, according to sources, CNN reported late on Wednesday.Lauro will be solely focused on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, including the deadly 6 January 2021 riot in which his supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington DC.Federal prosecutors have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, the Guardian reported last night, citing two people familiar with the matter.Trump faces being charged with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.The target letter also identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from Smith’s office, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.Here’s what else we’re watching today:
      9am ET: Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
      9am ET: The House will hold a hearing on online censorship. Democratic presidential hopeful, Robert F Kennedy, is expected to testify.
      10am ET: The Senate will meet to resume consideration of an EPA nomination and the NDAA.
      10.20am ET: Biden will leave for Joint Base Andrews, where he will fly to Philadelphia.
      10.45am ET: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will hold his weekly news conference.
      1pm ET: Biden will speak about “Bidenomics”. He will depart Philadelphia to return to the White House in the afternoon. More