WND Unsurpisingly Hypes RFK Jr.’s Presidential Bid

WorldNetDaily is a fan of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaxxer nuttiness — so much so that it censored his ludicrous comparison of vaccine mandates to the Holocaust — so it’s not a surprise it’s a fan of his presidential bid. Not that it actually wants him to win, mind you, but because he’s riding his family name to act as a spoiler to President Biden’s re-election bid. An April 20 article by Peter LaBarbera touted his announcement speech while downplaying the anti-vaxxer conspiracy stuff:

In a nearly two-hour speech that was equal parts history lesson, bleeding-heart liberalism, criticism of “crony capitalism,” and pro-liberty talking points that would find agreement among conservatives and libertarians, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced his candidacy for the Democrat nomination for presidency in Boston Wednesday.

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The main theme of Kennedy’s speech was that a “corrupt merger of … state and corporate power” is abusing American freedoms, decimating the middle class, and causing a “toxic” polarization of society.

Kennedy is an acclaimed environmental advocate, receiving accolades for legal actions that forced the clean up of the Hudson River of pollutants. He is also chairman of the board and the chief prosecuting attorney for Children’s Health Defense, a group he founded in 2011 under a different name. CHD gained significant influence and support during the COVID pandemic by questioning the safety and efficacy of the rushed vaccines. In August 2022, Facebook and Instagram de-platformed the group for alleged “misinformation” just when Americans were increasingly questioning the government’s “misinformation” regarding the safety of the COVID shots.

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The Hill reports on a new poll that shows Robert Kennedy, Jr. already has sizeable support among Democrat voters.

“In a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 14 percent of surveyed voters who backed President Biden in 2020 said they would support Kennedy in 2024,” the Hill reported Wednesday. Williamson, who ran for president in 2019, polled at five percent.

An April 27 column by Ilana Mercer fretted that Kennedy would be the next victim of the establishment after Tucker Carlson:

Fox News is an echo of the Republican Party, which serves the deep, warfare, industry-captured state.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on the other hand, is “a choice, not an echo.”

One need not agree with every word Kennedy spoke in a pellucid address announcing for president, almost two hours long, delivered extemporaneously, to grasp that, on the defining issues of our time, almost all of which he addressed in depth and in detail, Robert F. Kennedy is right and righteous.

Of the welter of words spoken so very beautifully – for a man with a disorder of the vocal cords – Kennedy Jr. underplayed perhaps two issues and failed to mention but one crucial matter, while delivering a riveting information-dense address, at once deep and philosophical, yet wise and pragmatic, undergirded by historic and constitutional truth. Tactical to boot.

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On second thought, and for now, I retract my implicit insinuation that Kennedy had omitted to address the war on whites and on law-and-order – for he may have opted to do so tactically and indirectly. Kennedy is hardly sanguine about the “garrison and surveillance state” America has become, noting that, “Being an imperium abroad will destroy democracy, turn America into a garrison and surveillance state.” Kennedy’s condemnation and contempt for the fulsome, foul Democratic Party was complete, calling it deliciously the party of “fear, war and censorship … neocons with woke bobble-heads.” For now, I charitably conclude that this gifted man has simply hit on a way to approach the war on whites and on law enforcement in a less divisive and direct manner, using proxy issues. Kennedy thus spoke as passionately and deliberately about the impoverished whites of Appalachia – they were as much Kennedy constituents as the poor of Southeast Washington, D.C.

Daniel McCarthy hyped Kennedy’s candidacy in his May 1 column:

Joe Biden is a nostalgia president. He’s a link to the Obama era, of course. But he’s also a living reminder of the days when Democrats were automatically the party of white ethnics, especially Irish Catholics.

For senior white voters in the Democratic coalition, the professed Catholic and Irish-ish Biden is an older, lesser Kennedy – but an heir to JFK nonetheless.

Only now Biden has to contend with a real Kennedy for next year’s Democratic presidential nomination.

McCarthy then tried to hang Kennedy’s conspiracy theories aroud Democrats:

Robert Kennedy Jr.’s penchant for “conspiracy theories” leads Biden-friendly commentators and political strategists to dismiss him.

He threatens to spoil their myth that Republicans are the crazy party, whether or not he poses any risk to Biden.

But in fact conspiracy theories have as much of a home in the Democratic Party as in the GOP, if not more of one.

The difference is that Democratic conspiracy theories, such as those alleging Russian responsibility for the election of Donald Trump in 2016, often come with the imprimatur of prestigious media outlets.

RFK Jr., on the other hand, is a Democrat whose conspiratorial beliefs don’t dependably align with the elite media’s prejudices. He’s long believed that vaccines contribute to autism. And he’s a fiery critic of Anthony Fauci and the response by government and the medical establishment to COVID-19.

Views like those are supposed to be the province of QAnon, not Democratic primary voters, according to the commentators who routinely burnish the party’s image – and tarnish the GOP’s.

Just a couple problems with that: The only people actively promoting Kennedy’s candidacy are right-wingers like McCarthy, Mercer and WND — because they want him to be a Biden spoiler, not because they actually want him to be president — and the rest of the Kennrdy family has rejected his conspiracy theories.

A May 1 “news” article by LaBarbera helped Kennedy play victim by complaining that non-right-wing media called out Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer lies:

ABC News refused to air a portion of its interview with Robert Kennedy, Jr., the recently announced Democrat primary challenger to Joe Biden, because it disagreed with his criticism of COVID vaccines.

Rather than play the full interview so that viewers could evaluate Kennedy’s own words, ABC chose to censor them, with reporter Linsey Davis giving what Kennedy said was a “defamatory disclaimer” on air: “[W]e should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview,” she said in the interview published April 27.

Davis added, “[Kennedy] also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism. Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks,” according to an Epoch Times report on the manipulated interview.

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As WND and others have reported, there is a growing skepticism in the medical field of the government’s COVID vaccine narrative that the shots are “safe and effective” — repeated ad nauseam in the last two years and now again by Davis. Dissenting doctors like Peter McCullough have earned the respect of many millions worldwide by bucking the government line on COVID and simply informing the public of the risks associated with the shots, including a spike in “sudden deaths” and myocarditis injuries thought to be a product of the vaccines.

McCullough, of course, is another anti-vaxxer WND has promoted, which means he has not “earned the respect” of anyone notable.

Joe Kovacs gave Kennedy space to spout yet another conspiracy theory in a May 7 article:

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a bombshell claim Sunday in connection with the assassination 60 years ago of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy, who is now challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, blamed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for the murder and “cover-up” of the tragic motorcade killing on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

Kovacs didn’t explain how this (debunked) claim makes anyone want to vote for him for president.