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BOSTON, April 19 (AP) – Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched an attempt to challenge President Joe Biden’s slim chances for the Democratic nomination next year .
Kennedy, a member of one of the country’s most prominent political families with ties to some far-right figures in recent years, kicked off his campaign in Boston on Wednesday, likening his campaign to the American Revolution.
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“Over the next 18 months of my campaign and throughout my presidency, my mission will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that now threatens to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism.”
Self-help author Marianne Williamson is also running for the Democratic nomination. Biden has said he plans to run again, but has yet to formally announce a run. He is expected to win the nomination without a hitch, with much of the Democratic establishment backing him.
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President Kennedy was the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother, Robert Kennedy, whom he repeatedly referred to during a lengthy speech Wednesday.
Kennedy Jr. was known as an environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water. But over the past nearly two decades, he has become one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement. His family and public health experts have called his work misleading and dangerous.
His efforts intensified in the wake of the COVID-19 vaccine pandemic and development, and a 2021 Associated Press investigation revealed ties to anti-democrats and other groups. He has appeared at events spreading lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with those who cheered or downplayed the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
A photo posted on Instagram shows Kennedy at a July 2021 meeting with former President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger Backstage at Wake Up America. All three are spreading lies about the 2020 election being stolen.
Kennedy has been a guest on Infowars, the channel run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and promoted his 2021 bestseller on the “War Room” podcast hosted by longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accuses America’s top infectious disease doctor of taking part in “a historic coup against Western democracy.”
The Associated Press documented how Kennedy and his anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic — raising money and followers in the U.S. and abroad, and doubling its revenue from 2019 to 2020. Researchers found the group to be one of the most influential purveyors of anti-vaccine misinformation, and The Associated Press saw a spike in traffic to its website.
In the second year of the pandemic, Children’s Health Defense continues to experience tremendous growth, according to a recent filing with California’s charity watchdog. Revenue more than doubled from $7 million in 2020 to $16 million in 2021.
Facebook and Instagram removed Children’s Health Defense accounts for spreading misinformation.
Kennedy repeatedly invoked the Nazis and the Holocaust when speaking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates.
He apologized for some of the comments, including his suggestion that people in 2022 would be worse than Anne Frank, a teenage girl who died two years after hiding with her family in a secret annexe of a house in Amsterdam. Nazi concentration camp. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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