RFK Jr. is running for President

Robert F Kennedy Jr. officially challenges President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.

Kennedy, 69, filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

He is the son of the late Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in California in 1968 during a run for president. Kennedy is the cousin of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

This Kennedy made a name for himself by being a prominent anti-vaxxer.

He joins spiritual guru Marianne Williamson in the not-so-crowded Democratic presidential field.

Biden has yet to officially announce a re-election campaign, but has indicated he intends to run for a second term.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone from the Kennedy clan has challenged a sitting Democratic president.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.

Carter was plagued by low approval ratings and a sluggish economy.

In March, Kennedy began teasing a presidential bid.

“If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race,” he tweeted at the time. “If I run for office, my top priority will be to end the corrupt state-corporate merger that has ruined our economy, destroyed the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children and has robbed us of our values ​​and freedoms. ‘

But more than 15 years ago, he became fixated on the belief that vaccines are not safe. He emerged as one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement, and his work has been described by public health experts and even members of his own family as misleading and dangerous.

Kennedy had long been involved in the anti-vaccine movement, but the effort intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of the COVID-19 vaccine.

His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, has thrived during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling to $6.8 million in 2020, according to filings with charity regulators.

His organization has targeted false claims at groups potentially more likely to mistrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans, experts said, which could have led to deaths during the pandemic.

Kennedy released a book in 2021, The Real Anthony Fauci, accusing the US’s top infectious disease physician of aiding “a historic coup against Western democracy” and promoting unproven COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin, which is intended to treat parasites, and the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.

His opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine has at times linked him to anti-democratic figures and groups.

Kennedy has appeared at events pushing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people applauding or downplaying the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

A photo posted to Instagram showed Kennedy backstage at a Reawaken America event in July 2021 with Roger Stone, the ally of former President Donald Trump, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger.

All three have promoted the lie about the 2020 election theft.

The photo was posted but later deleted by Bollinger, who has appeared at multiple events with Kennedy.

She and her husband sponsored a pro-Trump anti-vaccine rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband attempted to enter the Capitol.

Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC.

Kennedy has repeatedly appealed to the Nazis and the Holocaust when speaking of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates.

He has sometimes apologized for those commentsincluding when he suggested that in 2022 people had it worse than Anne Frank, the teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family for two years in a secret annex in an Amsterdam house.

Kennedy has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, sometimes including images of President Kennedy.

His sister Kerry Kennedy, who heads Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the international rights group founded by their mother, Ethel, said her brother has sometimes removed some of the content at her request.

She told the Associated Press in a 2021 interview her brother is “completely wrong on this point and is very dangerous.”