Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed the media for dragging his campaign Sunday, saying he has been slammed “even more than President Trump was slammed” by mainstream media outlets.
“I’ve been really, you know, slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented,” Kennedy said during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic who is running a longshot primary campaign against President Joe Biden, is more popular among Republicans than Democrats, according to polling.
The nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr. has been hit with backlash for his stances on vaccines, particularly recent comments he made suggesting that the coronavirus could have been “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while sparing Jewish and Chinese people. Kennedy denied allegations of racism and antisemitism, saying on Twitter: “I have never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.”
“I mean, listen, if I believed the stuff that’s written about me in the papers and reported about me on the mainstream news sites, I would definitely not vote for me,” Kennedy told host Maria Bartiromo. “I would think I was a very despicable person.”
The mistake the media is making is covering RFK Jr. at all. Would have figured they’d learned their lesson with Trump. The media is as much to blame as any other entity for the US’s lurch to the right because they waste their time covering it.
They did learn their lesson from Trump. Articles about crazy candidates brings more site traffic.
You are absolutely right.
The media at the end of the day care about ratings and clicks. RFK gives that to them unfortunately as it does with Trump.
The only reason he’s getting coverage or any attendees at his events is because he’s a Kennedy. If he didn’t have that last name he’d be just yet another fringe candidate giving talks to fifteen people at a time at fire companies and senior centers.
💯
Maybe it’s because he’s an alt righter campaigning as a Democrat.
a longtime vaccine skeptic
Anti-vaxxer. Don’t play into their hands and use their language.
He’s a Democrat!? On what planet?
If you don’t want to be criticized for saying stupid, untrue things, stop saying stupid, untrue things. It’s pretty simple.
Gee, I wonder why the media would hit a spoiler candidate like RFK Jr harder than someone who is entangled in multiple trials? Maybe he will realize he has no shot and just go away but I doubt that.
So you actually both suck, neither of you care ambit American democracy or basic, decent good and neither of you should be in the national conversation, period (and one of you should obviously be in jail and disqualified from attempting to run for any political office after inciting an insurrection).
You’re not serious people people and there’s a high likelihood that you’re both mentally ill. Fuck.Off.
Please do not be ableist
Are you joking? Not every disability is a superpower and some in fact prevent you from being capable of things. No matter how hard he tries my buddy Josh will never be as good on the pommel horse as he was at 11 years old primarily because he has two fewer legs than he had at 11.
No one would be ableist for suggesting Josh can’t/shouldn’t try for the Olympics just like it isn’t ableist to suggest some mentally ill people are unfit to govern.
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That sounds like you have a childish perspective on mental illness. If you suffer from delusions of grandeur, for example, you are going to be ill suited for governing.
Do we really need to start invoking Godwin’s Law here?
The news media gave Trump one free pass after another, so in many ways, RFK Jr is right.
But he’s still a fucken clown and his presidential run is purposefully done as a disruption to Biden and managed by conservative interests. He’s trying to be a spoiler candidate that siphons just enough votes away from Biden to get Trump elected.
So fuck everything about the guy, but when he says the media is harder on him than Trump, he’s right by a technicality simply because the media gave Trump the easiest time what with the countless number of things they could have, and should have, investigated about him, but chose not to all because of ratings.
Conservatives always love playing the victim. Dude is truly showing his colors now.
I worked in MA politics in the 1990s. No one thought any living Kennedy was even remotely intelligent other than Ted and Joe. Ted is dead and Joe is still running his charity for poor people who have oil based heating systems (Joe for Oil).
Trump and RFK Jr: Unity ticket from hell
Although the media hit Trump really hard, the left-on-left violence seems pretty unprecedented.
It;s clear that the left knows that he’s not establishment, like Biden is, and that if he got a fair chance, he’d probably stomp Biden.
Where is exactly is the left in this fight? The media is hardly the left and RFK Jr. is an alt-right candidate using his family’s name as cover to masquerade as a Democrat.
Almost all TV media is left wing. Most online media is left wing. Social media is left wing.
RFK Jr. is an alt-right candidate
Can you define alt-right?
Generally folks who are alt right aren’t willing to sign a gun ban, generally aren’t pro-choice, aren’t for college loan forgiveness, doesn’t champion trans rights, nor other LGBTQ rights, generally aren’t for nationalized drug recovery centers, aren’t anti-war, don’t fully condemn every white supremicist, anti-semite or anti asian rhetoric.
If you really think he’s alt-right, we have different depictions of what the ‘alt-right’ are.
Ribbit
You linked a salon article that says a private source says that bannon secretly tried to get someone to run.
Any, ya know, reliable sources?
Ribbit
Almost all TV media and social media is run by corporations who only care about making money. That’s hardly left-wing.
and guess who gives out more money? That’s right, the democrats!
The guy who paid 45 billion dollars to lift bans on several infamous wingnut trolls like Catturd and turned a bird logo into an X for clout doesn’t seem like a Democrat to me. Neither is the billionaire oil baron who owns Fox News, Sky News, Fake News, etc., the former of which is the largest media company in America. You’re not an underdog.
The guy who paid 45 billion dollars to lift bans on several infamous wingnut trolls like Catturd and turned a bird logo into an X for clout doesn’t seem like a Democrat to me.
He’s the opposite of how the former ownership ran twitter for the past 10 years. I didn’t hear you removed about it then.
And, having uniform/unbanning regardless of political affiliation is how I believe media should be. It shouldn’t be bias.
Fox News, Sky News, Fake News, etc., the former of which is the largest media company in America. You’re not an underdog.
Fox news is the only right wing cable network. NBC, MSNBC, CNN ABC are all left
Almost all TV media is left wing. Most online media is left wing. Social media is left wing.
Literally none of this is true. The only universe this is true in is the one where anything left of fascism is “left wing.”
You make a great point here. It’s so common to boil one view down to a label, and then people use that label to extrapolate a whole set of views, many of which the individual may not ascribe to. Example: he’s anti vax which is an alt right viewpoint, therefore he is alt right. You tell someone that he is alt right and then that person thinks he is bigoted toward LGBTQ+, donates to the NRA, pickets outside of abortion clinics, etc.
I’m not saying any of this in support of RFK Jr at all, just that this concept is detrimental to all rational discourse. Labels are a helpful part of language in categorizing things, but they can also be really dangerous when you default to using them in every situation even if they don’t fit.
Example: he’s anti vax which is an alt right viewpoint,
No it’s not, it’s traditionally fringe left - see hippies.
just that this concept is detrimental to all rational discourse.
Agreed. You don’t perfectly fit into one box, and the fact that one side will trash you if you don’t perfectly align and vote how their party votes is absurd
A vaccine conspiracy theorist has no chance against any sane person
He wants vaccine testing similar to almost all of western europes. That’s not a conspiracy theory.
sane person
So…not biden?
If they weren’t nervous, they wouldn’t be trying everything they could to discredit, trash and suppress his voice.
He wants vaccine testing similar to almost all of western europes. That’s not a conspiracy theory.
Bullshit. He’s been peddling dangerous crackpot theories for decades:
Coming from someone who read some of his fantastic environmental work from the Bush II era, I can honestly say he’s ventured so far into the deep end of paranoia he should be shunned everywhere he goes. Children are dying because of him.
I believe you’re arguing with a paid shill. Just call him out and move on.
You think Lemmy is big enough for a paid shill? Kinda cool if it is.
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Ribbit
Just don’t feed the trolls.
I have this conspiracy theory where he’s actually a genius who realized the world is overpopulated and is now on an evil genius plan to murder the world’s children to save the planet
But it’s obviously just a joke
He’s against mercury in the vaccines.
A lot have been removed since his initial push against it, because the vaccines we were pumping into everyone had them.
I thank him for his work to get poisonous amounts of mercury out of the vaccines
I’m pro-vaccine. So is RFK Jr. He has concerns with some of the testing and chemicals in some of the mandatory vaccines.
I’d rather have overly cautious studies when it comes to big pharma, their limited liability, their rich history in bribing US officials (including FDA members), pumping the country full of poison (see opioids) while lying to people about what is in their drugs.
Thiomersal is in almost no vaccines at this point, and you get more mercury from a can of tuna than you would from a vaccine with thiomersal in it.
So maybe start scaremongering about tuna salad sandwiches instead.
Do you know if Thiomersal was removed from most vaccines before or after the issue was brought up?
Why did you ignore the part of my comment about tuna?
Thiomersal is in almost no vaccines at this point
Thanks to those who fought it!
and you get more mercury from a can of tuna than you would from a vaccine with thiomersal in it.
And they recommend limited how much tuna one eats…because of…that’s right! Mercury!
Ethylmercury (C2H5Hg+) and methylmercury (CH3Hg+) are not the same thing. The former is a preservative that’s rapidly metabolized, and the latter is a bio-accumulative environmental toxicant. Huge difference between ethyl and methyl groups. It’s the same reason that ethanol (C₂H₆O) will get you drunk but methanol (CH3OH) will make you go blind.
God I hate when internet laypeople try to act like they understand chemistry. Have you literally ever taken a chemistry class? If not, please start here, and in the meantime shut the hell up before you get someone killed.
Shill much?
In what way?
It’s amazing what happens when you don’t stop reading a source when you find something useful to lift out of context:
And more:
Your own source made my point for me. Why didn’t you read the whole thing?
**except for **
So it can cause issues to some…why force it on 2 month olds?
"The notion that thiomersal causes autism has led some parents to have their children treated with costly and potentially dangerous therapies such as chelation therapy, which is typically used to treat heavy metal poisoning, due to parental fears that autism is a form of “mercury poisoning”.[16] As many as 2 to 8% of autistic children in the U.S., numbering as many as several thousand children per year, receive mercury-chelating agents.
I don’t get why you think this argues against me? I never said it caused autism, I don’t believe it does.
So it can cause issues to some…why force it on 2 month olds?
Local hypersensitivity reactions happen with all vaccines. That’s why they tell you to stay in the pharmacy for 15 minutes after you get a shot. It has nothing to do with thimerosol. The reason you accept that is that we take immunological advice from immunologists, not from partisan nincompoops who read something that sounds bad on the internet and go, “SeE!? WhY mAkE ShOt? iT hUrT bAbY1!!”
I don’t get why you think this argues against me? I never said it caused autism, I don’t believe it does.
I’m reiterating why your “why not play it safe” shtick is a toxic mischaracterization and deflection that downplays the very real harm his JAQ conspiracy ideation has caused in the world. The answer to “why not play it safe?” is “you’re not playing it safe, your trolling and people are taking your megaphoned ignorance as gospel, often at the expense of their own children.”
Our childhood vaccines are documented to be safe. He is a conspiracy theorist who is assisting the murder of children.
Advocating for big pharma being more responsible for the drugs they pump into our system, while bribing FDA officials isn’t assisting the murder of children.
If anyone is against holding big pharma responsible for the opiod epidemic, and holding the FDA responsible for it, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year.
You’re bad at trolling lol.
Either that or you REALLY don’t want to read RFK’s bio, even after another commenter linked to a source
I know RFK’s bio.
Do you know your favorite big pharma companies bio? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical_settlements
What’s funny is how many settlements there are, despite the federal government protecting them from the majority of lawsuits. Imagine getting sued this much, when the government makes it illegal hahaha
He’s concerned that some vaccines are unnecessary for kids that we require for every kid.
For example the NHS in the UK advises against the chickenpox vaccine.
I just looked it up and the NHS does not warn against it at all. They only administer it to certain people.
The NHS also doesn’t buy enough MRI machines, leading to long wait times. Does that mean they’re anti-MRI? No, they’re just frugal
You’re right, I apologize for my framing.
They only recommend it to a small minority of people.
So…they don’t recommend it to the majority of people.
Again, reread my comment about efficiency and cost-saving.
Or are you agreeing that it’s perfectly safe and we have no reason to doubt that?
Shingles for everyone!
Not having the vaccine, and encouraging natural immunity actually reduces the effects of shingles.
Yeah, and being exposed to chickenpox as a child makes you more likely to have shingles as an adult. Most people encounter it as a child.
