Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will run for president as independent, drop Democratic bid

[spaminator]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will run for president as independent, drop Democratic bid
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Ali Swenson
Published Oct 09, 2023 • 3 minute read

PHILADELPHIA — Longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he will run for president as an independent and drop his Democratic primary bid, adding a wrinkle to a 2024 race heading toward a likely rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.


Kennedy, a member of one of the most famous Democratic families in politics, was running a longshot primary bid and has better favorability ratings among Republicans than Democrats. It’s unclear whether GOP support would translate to a general election when Kennedy would also be running against Trump. Both Biden and Trump allies have at times questioned whether Kennedy would be a spoiler against their candidate.


Biden’s allies so far have dismissed Kennedy’s primary campaign as unserious. Asked for comment on his potential independent run, a Democratic National Committee spokesman responded with an eye roll emoji.

Awaiting Kennedy’s remarks Monday, hundreds of supporters gathered at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, an apt location for the launch. Campaign signs teased a potential new slogan: “Declare your independence.”


Among Kennedy’s fans in the crowd were several voters who said they don’t identify as Democratic or Republican and view Kennedy as a truth teller and a breath of fresh air.

“He tells it how it is,” said Julia Hill, a 23-year-old student from New Jersey. “He doesn’t sound like a politician.”

Other supporters, such as Brent Snyder, a disabled veteran from south Philadelphia, said they had voted for Trump in the past but were looking for a change.

“The last couple years I’ve been noticing the Republican Party’s been going a way I didn’t like,” Snyder said. “Not that I agree with everything that’s happening to Trump, but I think right now he has more baggage than his country needs. The division right now is just terrible. We need someone to bring both sides together to make us work.”


Monday’s announcement comes less than a week after the progressive activist Cornel West abandoned his Green Party bid in favor of an independent White House run. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels is actively securing ballot access for a yet-to-be-named candidate.

Kennedy has spent weeks accusing the DNC of “rigging” the party’s primary against him and threatening that he might need to consider alternatives.

In campaign emails and videos, he blasted the DNC’s decision not to host debates between Biden and other candidates and railed against the committee’s plan to give South Carolina rather than Iowa or New Hampshire the leadoff spot on the primary calendar this election cycle.

“If they jam me, I’m going to look at every option,” he said in September at a New Hampshire barbecue held by Republican former Sen. Scott Brown.


Far-right and anti-vaccine influencers close to Kennedy also have sent strong signals on social media suggesting he should or will leave the Democratic Party. Last month, Joseph Mercola, an influential anti-vaccine doctor who is allied with Kennedy, ran a poll on X, formerly known as Twitter, asking if Kennedy should quit the party.

While Kennedy has long identified as a Democrat and frequently invokes his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle President John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail, he has built close relationships with far-right figures in recent years. He appeared on a channel run by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.


Polls show far more Republicans than Democrats have a favorable opinion of Kennedy. He also has gained support from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, including his vocal distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which studies have shown are safe and effective against severe disease and death.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will run for president as independent, drop Democratic bid

Longtime environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he will run for president as an independent

torontosun.com

 

[petros]

Interesting

 

[Taxslave2]

Could add a little drama to the primaries. Maybe he could run with Trump?

 

[Twin_Moose]

The Dems bought him off running as an independent they're hoping he'll pull the moderate vote away from Trump

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Pretty sure they won't be naming an aircraft carrier after this asshole.

 

[petros]

Pretty sure they won't be naming an aircraft carrier after this asshole.

Your asshole moniker came and went in 1863.

The sinking of the USS Tecumseh just off of Fort Morgan as it steamed into Mobile Bay on the morning of August 5, 1864 remains one of the most dramatic and somber moments in all of American naval history.Feb 1, 2022

 

[petros]

Drama

 

[harrylee]

How does USS Biden sound?

 

[spaminator]

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s tight ties with Jeffrey Epstein threatens campaign

Author of the article:Brad Hunter
Published Dec 08, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read

Robert Kennedy Jr. partied with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, used his office and was a flier on his plane of perversion.


The U.S. independent presidential candidate was grilled on Fox News on his relationship with Epstein and his muse, Ghislaine Maxwell.


The 69-year-old environmental activist and scion of the famous clan told Fox’s Jesse Walters that he took two trips on Epstein’s private jet — dubbed Lolita Express — once to Florida and another time fossil hunting in South Dakota.


“I was never on his jet alone,” Kennedy told Walters, adding that both times children were on the plane.

Kennedy added that his late second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, “(Had) some kind of relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell.”

Maxwell, 62, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 for her role in Epstein’s twisted sex-trafficking apparatus. He took his own life in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial in August 2019.


Last month, RFK Jr. told Newsweek he’d only been on the fiendish financier’s plane once. It also emerged Thursday that the candidate and Epstein partied together at The Pierre, the New York Post reported.


Kennedy is the latest high-flier tainted by his connection to Epstein. He joins Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump whose reputations have suffered because of an Epstein connection.

All have denied any wrongdoing.

But Kennedy could see his embryonic campaign implode.

Epstein’s jet was infamous for flying young women and underage girls around the planet to be sexually assaulted by the hedge fund headcase.


Longtime family friend Christina Oxenberg said the two men were closerthanthis. And Kennedy’s timelines are also murky.


“Bobby never could keep dates or wives straight,” a source who knows the Kennedy family told the Post. “They were irrelevant to him.”

Inside Epstein’s notorious little black book there is a long entry for Kennedy. The book was also packed with contacts from the worlds of high society, big business and politics.

The names and details of the young girls Epstein sexually ravaged are also in the book.

Kennedy’s campaign flunkies blew off suggestions that the candidate was aware of Epstein’s twisted sexual predilections and sex trafficking ring.

“Those trips took place approximately 30 years ago, long before Mr. Epstein’s criminal behaviour was public knowledge,” a spokesperson for Kennedy told the Post.

According to Oxenberg, however, Ghislaine Maxwell had wormed her way into the Kennedy inner circle even before his extramarital affair with Mary Richardson.


Both Maxwell and Epstein were society parasites, always on the make for power and leverage.

“They mostly talked about their jet, or name-dropped the people they were ‘meeting’ with,” Oxenberg recalled. “Ghislaine made a point of telling me she had arranged to take Bobby Kennedy Jr. on a day trip in the plane.

“She got it exactly right by offering him a trip out West to see dinosaur bones. She almost always knew who liked what; she knew how to sell.”

Oxenberg added: “For sure, Epstein had no interest in looking at dinosaur bones, but he did want a Kennedy on his plane.”

In her book, Oxenberg articulated a theory that Epstein cultivated the powerful to entrap them by putting them in compromising situations with the young women he employed.

“It was Ghislaine’s job to make it happen, to entice Robert Kennedy Jr. into his trap,” Oxenberg wrote. “The snag was that Kennedy showed up at the private airport with a group of kids and they were not the type Jeffrey had a predilection for.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

Newly revealed 1994 photo of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Jeffrey Epstein raises new questions about relationship between politician and the pedophile

Kennedy partied with the pervert but claims his two trips on the “Lolita Express” were thanks to dead second wife Mary.

nypost.com

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s tight ties with Jeffrey Epstein threatens campaign

Robert Kennedy Jr. partied with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, used his office and was a frequent flier on his plane of perversion.

torontosun.com

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Robert Kennedy Jr. partied with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, used his office and was a flier on his plane of perversion.

What's perverse about wanting to have sex with attractive young women?

 

[spaminator]

RFK Jr. says he had parasitic brain worm and undisclosed memory loss
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Meryl Kornfield, The Washington Post
Published May 09, 2024 • Last updated 3 days ago • 3 minute read

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate who has marketed himself to voters as a younger, healthier alternative to the two major contenders, contracted a parasitic worm that got into his brain years ago and ate a portion of it before dying, his campaign said Wednesday.


The 70-year-old scion of the powerful political family revealed in a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings from his second wife, which the New York Times obtained and first reported Wednesday, that he had short- and long-term memory loss and described himself as having “cognitive problems, clearly.” Around the time of the discovery of the parasite, Kennedy was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning that he attributed to his diet, he said in the deposition, a condition that can also cause memory loss. Kennedy told the Times that he has since recovered from his fogginess.


When asked about the incident, Kennedy campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear told The Washington Post that Kennedy contracted a parasite while traveling “extensively in Africa, South America and Asia in his work as an environmental advocate.”


“The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and mental health,” she said in a written statement. “Questioning Mr. Kennedy’s health is a hilarious suggestion, given his competition.”

Kennedy disclosed in the deposition that consulted with neurologists in 2010 when a friend voiced concerns about his memory loss, according to the Times. He said he was told that a dark spot discovered in his brain scans could be a tumor, a year after his uncle, longtime Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) died of brain cancer. The Post has not independently reviewed the deposition.

But a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital told him the spot could be caused by “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” he said in the deposition, according to the Times.


Around the same time, doctors also diagnosed Kennedy with mercury poisoning, which he said was caused by eating a large amount of fish that contained the dangerous heavy metal. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has spoken out against mercury and other toxins contaminating food, told the Times that he was eating a diet heavy in tuna and perch at the time.

He told the Times he has since reduced his fish intake and underwent chelation therapy, a treatment to expel metals from the body. He said the parasite in his brain required no treatment.

Medical experts told The Post that descriptions of the parasite appear consistent with Taenia solium, a pork tapeworm, which can cause neurologic symptoms including headaches, convulsions, epileptic seizures and even death when the worm larvae get into the brain. Methylmercury, the organic form of mercury found in fish, can cause speech and hearing impairment, muscle weakness, lack of coordination and other symptoms when people are exposed to high levels.


Kennedy has focused much of his campaign on advocating for regulations on major industries that he says have contributed to the country’s worsening health problems. He also has spread misinformation about vaccines and argued against public health measures enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Since he announced he would run for president in April last year, Kennedy has not disclosed his medical records.

Former president Donald Trump and President Biden, who have attempted to quell voters’ concerns about their advanced ages, have released limited health summaries. Biden’s doctor released a six-page summary of medical tests in February, declaring him “fit for duty,” while Trump shared a one-page letter in November from a doctor who belongs to his golf club and said he was in “excellent health.” But the disclosures break from a tradition of presidential candidates previously releasing more complete reports on their health.


Kennedy has previously disclosed other health issues. He has said his strained, sometimes hoarse voice is caused by spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the muscles of the voice box. He also has told others he became infected with hepatitis C, which was treated, from intravenous drug use in his youth.

In 2001, Kennedy was hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat caused by a common heart abnormality that can cause strokes, according to news reports at the time. Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition he was hospitalized three other times for that condition, which he told the Times has not caused any other incidents in a decade.

RFK Jr. says he had parasitic brain worm and undisclosed memory loss

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, contracted a parasitic worm that got into his brain years ago

torontosun.com