Anti-vaxxer, serial womanizer RFK Jr eyes challenge to Joe Biden in White House run

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic and his plan to run for the White House, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seen as an outlier in America’s most famous political dynasty.

The 69-year-old nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy and the son of assassinated New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy, has been an anti-vaccine activist for more than 15 years.

He has repeatedly touted bogus conspiracy theories that FDA-approved shots are not safe, as well as the baseless claim that childhood vaccines are linked to autism.

And his claims that life-saving COVID vaccines posed a serious risk to public health angered his own family, who accused him of spreading “dangerous misinformation.”

Social media campaigns from its anti-vaccine platform, Children’s Health Defense, were removed by Instagram and Facebook last year.

Kennedy’s personal account had already been deleted in 2021 as part of a crackdown by parent company Meta against what it called “false and misleading” information about Covid.

The former environmental lawyer’s book in the same year, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” accused Joe Biden’s then-chief medical adviser of “a historic coup against Western democracy” by swearing at vaccine mandates.

“We should love our freedom more than fear a germ,” Kennedy told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in November 2021.

“Even if this was the deadly disease they say, there are worse things than death,” he added.

Kennedy has repeatedly mentioned the Nazis and the Holocaust when discussing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements.

He was forced into an embarrassing excuse when he suggested that people in 2022 had it worse than Anne Frank.

The Jewish teenager died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family in a secret annex in an Amsterdam house for two years.

Kennedy has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, sometimes including images of President John F. 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 that her brother is “completely wrong on this matter and very dangerous.”

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

Now Robert, the third of RFK’s eleven children, could cause further rifts among the Kennedy clan with his vow to run for the White House.

Kennedy, 69, filed a declaration of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday.

“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. he said in March of a possible run on America’s top job.

He has little chance of winning the nomination along with fellow no-hoper Marianne Williamson, a self-help author.

It would pit the duo against incumbent Joe Biden, who has yet to formally confirm his anticipated intention to run for a second term.

But the threat of a primary challenge would put the 80-year-old’s record under scrutiny during his first term in office.

Polls say Democrats and independent voters say Biden is too old to run again.

But only one elected sitting president has ever lost his party’s nomination for a second term.

Kennedy’s mooted presidential run will also put a new spotlight on his colorful personal life in which he was often accused of being a serial womanizer.

The father of six married his third wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, in 2014.

They had been introduced by the show’s main star, Larry David.

He filed for divorce in 2012 from his second wife Mary, the mother of four of his children: Conor, Finny, Kyra and Aidan.

Four days later, she would be hanged at home in Mount Kisco, New York, allegedly convinced her ex-husband was having an affair.

Kennedy is said to have proposed to Mary while still married to his first wife, Emily Black, whom he separated in 1992 and divorced two years later.

In 2013, the New York Post managed to obtain a leaked copy of one of Kennedy’s 2001 diaries detailing his battle with his “lust demons.”

The squalid 398-page diary, detailing his day-to-day political activities, also included a scorecard of more than two dozen sexual conquests collected behind his second wife’s back.

They contained the women’s names, but had numbers from 1 to 10 next to each item.

The codes corresponded to sexual acts, with 10 meaning full sexual intercourse.

In the entries, Kennedy repeatedly portrays himself as a victim hopelessly seduced by a series of women.

“I narrowly escaped being robbed by a double team of [two women]. It was tempting, but I prayed and God gave me the strength to say no,” he wrote on February 6 of that year.

On May 21, he writes about hosting a dinner party for Leonardo DiCaprio, bringing the actor to town.

He then met someone else in Manhattan, who claimed he was “robbed on his way home” and recorded a 10 with a woman’s name next to it.

“I have to do better,” he wrote at the time.

In another message, Kennedy promises to “avoid the company of women.” You don’t have the strength to resist their charms’ and to be ‘humble like a monk’. Keep your hands to yourself. Turn your eyes away.’

The Kennedy scion began dating actress Hines in 2011 amid a bitter argument with his estranged wife Mary over custody and finances that ended when she tragically committed suicide.