The Alternative Facts of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto)
The Democratic Presidential candidate talks about his right-wing admirers, his distrust of scientists and the media, and his belief that the C.I.A. was involved in J.F.K.’s death.
“I think if you don’t have enough self-awareness to see the element of megalomania involved in thinking you can be President, then you probably shouldn’t be President,” Obama said. “There’s a slight madness to thinking that you should be the leader of the free world.”
I was thinking about that moment last week, after finishing a long interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for The New Yorker Radio Hour. Kennedy is running for President as a Democrat. He is polling between eight and twenty-one per cent.
If there is a madness, slight or otherwise, in Kennedy’s bid, it is not confined to his hubris. He is roiling with conspiracy theories: S.S.R.I.s like Prozac might be the reason for school shootings, vaccines cause autism. There are many. To prepare for the conversation, I listened to some of Kennedy’s podcast sessions with the likes of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Joe Rogan. I watched his marathon announcement speech and tuned in to all the hosannas he was getting from a peculiar amen corner that includes Steve Bannon, Jack Dorsey, and Tucker Carlson. In his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” Kennedy accuses Fauci, who was then the nation’s top infectious-disease doctor, of helping to carry out “2020’s historic coup d’état against Western democracy.” (The book has blurbs from Carlson, Naomi Wolf, Alan Dershowitz, and Oliver Stone.)
Kennedy’s habits of mind are MAGA-adjacent, but his manner differs from that of his Republican doppelgänger. Donald Trump is a bully—rude, swaggering, out to flatten his questioner under an avalanche of lies and volume. Kennedy is not rude. Rather, he is serenely convinced of his virtue and his interlocutor’s pitiful susceptibility to conventional wisdom. The experience of interviewing him and listening to his previous interviews, I found, was like settling in for a long train ride with a seemingly amiable stranger in the next seat. You ask a straightforward question and, an hour later, as you race by Thirtieth Street Station, in Philadelphia, he is still going on about the fraud of COVID vaccines and how he was unfairly “deplatformed” for spouting conspiracy theories. By the time you’ve pulled into Wilmington, he might be talking about how drugs known as poppers helped cause the AIDS epidemic, or how “toxic chemicals” might contribute to “sexual dysphoria” in children. As you head south, he is talking about being “censored” by Instagram, the F.B.I., and the Biden White House. New technologies like 5G towers and digital currencies are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.” Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” After a while, you begin to wonder why you bought a ticket. But it’s too late. You’re pinned into the window seat.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Kennedy has never run for public office, but, at sixty-nine years old, he says that he has “been involved in almost every Presidential election during the last sixty years.” He has had a career as a conservationist and, more recently, as a litigator, author, and public speaker. Recently, he appeared in videos stripped to the waist, doing pushups and straining at a bench press. The conspicuous display, it can be reasonably supposed, was intended to draw comparisons with the sitting President, whose greatest liability is his age. Kennedy is ripped, that is true, but, like Trump, he had no experience as an elected official before seeking the White House. I asked how his experience qualified him to hold what is arguably the most consequential job on the planet.
KENNEDY: I’ve been around government and studying government since I was a little boy. I went to the 1960 convention. I’ve been to most of the conventions since. I was involved in the [1980] election with my uncle Edward Kennedy. I began writing about foreign policy when I was nineteen years old. My first article was for The Atlantic. I have a very, very strong vision and opinion about what our foreign policy should be. I’ve met with heads of state. I’ve been to a large portion of the countries. I’ve been to every country in Latin America. I’ve been to many of the countries in Africa and Asia.
Experience of attending conventions and being around politics is not the same as being involved in the making of policy, either as an executive or as a legislator or as a governor. Are you saying that that kind of experience is not necessary to be President of the United States? The one President I can think of who hasn’t had any experience at that level is Donald Trump.
Well, there’s nothing in the United States Constitution that says that you have to go to Congress first and then Senate second—or be a governor—before you’re elected to the Presidency of the United States.
Or even mayor of a small town. But you haven’t done any of it. Do you think that is irrelevant experience?
I think my life experience is absolutely relevant.
Among the obvious parallels between Kennedy and Trump is their disdain for “élites,” their suspicion of, in Trump’s words, the “deep state,” and their belief that traditional media and “cancel culture” threaten to silence them. With Kennedy, this is particularly curious. The Kennedys are the embodiment of dynastic power. Tens of thousands of books have been written about the family. It is impossible to imagine both the tragedy and the privilege Kennedy experienced as a child and adolescent. His uncle was murdered when he was nine. His father was murdered when he was fourteen. As a young man, he was kicked out of prep schools, got arrested for marijuana possession, was addicted to heroin, and still managed to graduate from Harvard. He now works as a lawyer, and his income last year was $7.8 million.
While Kennedy fashions himself as a warrior against the billionaire class, income inequality, and the corruption of institutions ranging from the intelligence agencies to the universities, he is a pure romantic about his own family. Camelot is his brand. As the polls appear to indicate, the Kennedy name still carries weight among Democratic voters.
You’re running as a Democrat for President, and I wonder, Who in the Democratic Party do you feel is kindred to you? Obviously not Joe Biden, but—A.O.C.? Or Joe Manchin? Or are you something new entirely? How would you define your ideology?
I’m something old. I’m a Kennedy Democrat. I believe in labor unions. I believe in a strong, robust middle class. I believe in racial justice, in policies that are going to actually help the lowest people on the totem pole.
I don’t think Joe Biden would disagree with any of that.
Well, then, why did he do the lockdowns? Lockdowns robbed four trillion [dollars] from the middle class and the poor in this country and transferred it to the super rich. We created five hundred new billionaires—a billionaire a day, every day. [Fact-checking Kennedy’s assertions is like chasing rabbits. This is a good example. The four-trillion dollar figure was likely an estimate for the price of the federal bailout. Many of the five hundred billionaires he seems to refer to rose up in other countries, especially China.]
Do you think he did lockdowns, or politicians did lockdowns, in order to enrich billionaires? That was the goal?
I think that, if they cared about the middle class in this country, they wouldn’t have done it. They wouldn’t have shut down 3.3 million businesses without due process, without just compensation.
Did they make mistakes, or were they carrying out some kind of perfidious plot?
No, I think that they made mistakes, which disqualifies them from continuing to do that job.
I’m finding it curious, and maybe even disturbing, that some of your early admirers include Trumpists like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. Do you welcome that, or do you think maybe—just maybe—someone like that is delighted that a strong Democratic opponent will wound Joe Biden and in the long run help Donald Trump?
I’m trying to unite the country, David. I’m not going to do what you do, which is to pick out people and say that they’re evil, they should be cancelled, or whatever. I’m a Democrat. I know what my values are. I’ve always spoken to Republicans my entire life. During all the years that I was a leader of the environmental movement, I was the only environmentalist who regularly went on Fox News. And, when Tucker Carlson recently did a special on endocrine disruptors, and he was condemned by the left, I thought that was crazy. I think what we ought to be doing is inviting people into our tent, without changing our values. I don’t change my values. I have the same values that my father had, that my uncle had, and that I have harbored and fought for since I was a kid. But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to speak to people who don’t share those values. I think the kind of tribalism that you’re advocating is poisonous to our country. I think it’s toxic. It’s created a polarization, a division, in this country that is more dangerous than at any time since the American Civil War.
Isn’t there a difference between disagreement and—
What you’re trying to get me to do now is to lash out against other Americans. And what I’m saying is: I don’t agree with what those people represent in many parts of their lives. I don’t agree with it, and I don’t like it. But I’m still going to talk to them. I’m not going to cancel them. I’m going to invite them into my tent. If I can get them to support a vision of the idealistic America that I believe in—the same America that my father and my uncle believed in: an America without censorship; an America that fights for our Constitution; an America that is a moral authority around the world, that projects economic power around the globe rather than military violence—if I can get people to support that, I don’t care if they’re Republican or independent, or what they are. These are democratic values.
At what point do you say, with respect, that this is not about “tribalism” or “cancellation” or the terms that you’re using, but just an insistence on a certain level of decency and principle? Somebody like Alex Jones comes forward and he has nice things to say to you. At what point do you say, “You know what, Alex Jones, with all due respect, I don’t want your support”?
I’m not a cancel-culture guy.
That’s not cancel culture. That’s a principled insistence that he’s a bridge too far.
If you’re just saying you’re going to dismiss certain people because this human being is so irredeemable that I am going to exclude him or her from any future activity on the planet—I just don’t think that’s consistent with my spiritual beliefs. It’s not consistent with my political philosophy. I believe that we should invite our enemies into the tent with us to the extent that they want to break bread with us, that they may want to endorse some of the values that we hold dear.
Kennedy seemed to be talking not only about Steve Bannon or Alex Jones but about himself. “I believe in redemption,” he said. “I got an opportunity for redemption in my own life, and there’s plenty of people who had good excuses to write me off forever.”
Tell me about your own sense of redemption. I think you’re probably referring to problems with addiction.
I was a heroin addict for fourteen years. I’m lucky to be alive. People have plenty of reason to write me off forever because of the way I conducted my life during that fourteen-year period. And, when I was at Riverkeeper, I made a point of hiring people who were felons, who were convicted, who had served their time in prison. And that divided the organization. I believe in redemption. I don’t think we can dismiss human beings, no matter what they did earlier on in their lives. Everybody gets another chance. And what Jesus said is, Not only do you give them seven chances, but you give them seven times seven chances.
You suffered something that I think is just beyond imagination. When you were a small child, your uncle, the President of the United States, was murdered in full view of the world. Five years later, your own father, who was competing for the Democratic nomination for President, was murdered in full view of the world. I can’t quite imagine what effect that would have on a human being, a child who’s just growing up, and to live that life in the full view of the world. Later, you came to see both of those assassinations as conspiracies with the C.I.A. behind them. I want to know why you believe that when most do not, and how that has shaped your thinking in the rest of your life.
Are you saying that most Americans do not believe President Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy?
I want to know why you believe it. What leads you to believe it?
I don’t think anybody who has looked at my uncle’s murder seriously believes that the Warren Commission was correct. I’m a trial lawyer. I’ve tried hundreds of cases. I can guarantee you, looking at this case, that I could prove that my uncle’s death was caused by the C.I.A. I have enough evidence right now, without any depositions, to go to prove that my uncle’s death was the result of a conspiracy. And that the C.I.A. was involved—not only in the original conspiracy but in the sixty-year coverup—and continues to maintain the coverup.
What was the C.I.A.’s motivation?
They were angry at my uncle. Their initial anger came when he failed to invade the Bay of Pigs and provide air cover for [Cuban opponents of Fidel Castro], which they consider a betrayal. They had trained those men. Those men were dying on the beach. At that point, they believed that my uncle was a traitor to the United States. When my uncle and my father halted the raids on Cuba, after the missile crisis, they agreed as part of their agreement with Khrushchev during the missile crisis, to halt the raids from Miami by Alpha 66 and the other groups that were going into Cuba to halt them . . .
Kennedy believes that the evidence of C.I.A. involvement in “perpetrating my uncle’s death is overwhelming. The evidence of C.I.A. involvement with my father’s death is circumstantial, but very highly suggestive.” Talking about the murder of his father, Kennedy referred to a second gunman, stray bullets, and a mob lawyer whose body was later found “chopped up in a hundred pieces in an oil drum.” Kennedy visited Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of murdering his father, in prison, and supports his release.
I asked Kennedy if it was possible that his distrust of American institutions—regulatory agencies, the intelligence agencies, the medical establishment, the “mainstream media,” and more—was rooted in his view of the assassinations. “Not at all,” he said. It was only in the past decade or so, he said, that his interest was sparked by reading “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters” by James W. Douglass, which Oliver Stone has called “the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance.”
Now, we were talking about President Biden before. First, just a short yes or no answer: Did you vote for him in the last election?
Yes, I did.
So what about the Biden Presidency, which came out of the Trump Presidency, obviously, so severely disappoints you that it causes you to run for President?
No. 1, the policies on the war. I think it’s very clear that this has little to do with protecting the Ukraine. It’s more to do with the neocon ambition of deposing Vladimir Putin, which I think is very problematic. I think regime change is always problematic, but, in the case of a country that has nuclear weapons, I would characterize it as close to insane. And it’s clear from President Biden’s direct statements that that is why he believes we should be in Ukraine.
So, if you were President now, would you withdraw military aid to Ukraine?
I would end the war. I would negotiate a peace.
And what would that peace look like?
Well, you never know that until you negotiate.
Would you allow a peace that allowed much of eastern Ukraine and Crimea to remain in Russian hands?
I don’t know what I would negotiate. I know that the Russians had come to two different peace agreements, both of which were eminently reasonable. And so I don’t—
What I’m asking is: what would be a reasonable peace?
Well, you know what, the answer to that question is strategic ambiguity. If I intend to be President of the United States, I’m not going to tell my adversary what my final negotiating position would be.
What about the voter?
I’m not going to—I’m going to negotiate. You negotiate a treaty.
When there was a political campaign [in 1968], your father said exactly what he would’ve done vis-à-vis the United States and Vietnam. As did Eugene McCarthy. [Both Kennedy and McCarthy said they wanted an end to the war in Vietnam.] Why is it unreasonable for you to—
I’m telling you exactly what I would do. I consider the terms of the Minsk accords fair. And that’s what Russia already offered to sign. Now, you know, we have worsened our position in the debate clearly through these ill-advised policies of encouraging war, of refusing to negotiate, of refusing to even talk to our adversaries. And my uncle, President Kennedy, again and again, told the country, You’ve got to put yourself into the shoes of your adversary. And he did that with Khrushchev. He put in a hotline in our home in Massachusetts and in the White House, so that he could pick up the phone and call Moscow, because he was scared of provoking a nuclear response. And, today, Russia has more nuclear weapons than we do. We are toying with Armageddon here.
At a town hall, just recently, you said that you were “proud” that Donald Trump likes you. Why is that? Donald Trump—I think you’ve criticized him in the past. I think maybe we can agree that he’s a threat to democratic norms and the rule of law. Why would you be proud that he likes you?
I’d be proud if President Biden liked me, and—
They’re quite different figures, no?
Well, President Biden has also acted against our Constitution, in many, many areas. You know, this is the first Administration in our history that has colluded with the press to censor Americans—directly out of the White House, including me by name. And my purpose, my intention—
How are you being censored out of the White House?
The White House was ordering the social-media sites to censor me. And in fact—
You’re everywhere in the press. You’re in what you call mainstream media. You’re on Joe Rogan. Who censored you?
I am, since I declared for President. But before that I was deplatformed. I was deplatformed completely, from . . . eight hundred thousand followers were taken away from me on Instagram at the behest of the White House.
So you’re equating President Biden’s attitude toward the Constitution and the law with former President Trump.
What do you think is worse, David? What do you think is worse: the White House using the F.B.I. to censor political dissenters, or whatever Trump has done?
But why do you think Donald Trump admires you? Are you not suspicious of that?
You know what? My job is not to drive people apart. I think what you guys have decided that you’re going to do, in the press, is create this polarization and feed the anger and feed the hatred. And I don’t want to do that.
So polarization is a bad thing. I understand that. But you’re also critical—
You belong to a class of élite journalists who once were the guardians of the press and the protectors of American values and the American middle class, and you now consider those people to be deplorable.
I don’t consider anybody to be deplorable. That’s somebody else’s vocabulary. And let’s talk about the word “élite” for a second. You come from a highly privileged background, eclipsing mine by some order of magnitude. Isn’t it a little rich for you to be calling people élites?
When I use the word “élite,” I’m talking about the people who are inside the Beltway, the press figures who are supposed to be speaking truth to power, but instead have become propagandists for the government. Who view their jobs as quashing dissent, and quashing political criticism of the government that they’re supposed to be actually criticizing.
Do you really believe this, or do you think it plays well?
Of course I believe it. I mean, I don’t think—
Then what press do you read to be informed? Do you get up in the morning and read the New York Times? Or the L.A. Times?
I read everything I can get my hands on.
O.K. But what would that be? What’s your go-to way to find out what happened in the world today and yesterday?
I read everything that I can get my hands on. I read the Times. I read the L.A. Times, although not religiously. And I read a lot of alternative press sources, which are now, you know, oftentimes better sources for unvarnished truth than the mainstream media.
Like what?
On what subject?
Well, foreign policy. Domestic policy.
Well, if I want to know about what’s happening in Ukraine, I might read Doug Macgregor’s site, or a number of other just alternative sites. I have a podcast where I interview people, and I interview people on both sides.
Douglas Macgregor is a retired Army colonel. Trump had hoped to nominate Macgregor as ambassador to Germany until his comments about Muslim refugees as “unwanted invaders” were repeated in the press. After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Macgregor spoke repeatedly on Fox News in defense of the action, adding that Russia had been “too gentle” in the early days of the war. The former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has characterized Macgregor as representing “the Putin wing of the GOP.”
I think I’m going to surprise you with the next question because I really—I’ll be very honest with you, I don’t want to engage you in deep detail on the question of vaccinations and your belief, stated in the past, that vaccines are responsible for autism to some degree. I have a child with quite severe autism, and, while no one would want to know the cause of autism more than I do, I frankly think, with respect, that you’ve been slinging around a lot of theories over time that don’t have any great credibility among scientists. And they do a lot of harm to a lot of people. I want to ask you this question: Do you not have any second thoughts about this? You seem to be altering your rhetoric about this very recently, saying that you just want to see vaccines tested. You seem to be shifting on this, without quite saying so.
I’ve never shifted on it. I’ve said from the beginning that I got involved with this issue, that’s what I wanted. I’ve always said, I’m not anti-vaccine. I want good testing with the vaccines, and I want good science. I’ve written about the science. I’ve read—I’m one of the few people that actually have read the science. You say that scientists don’t believe that—
No, they don’t.
Well, you know, the scientists all, at one point, believed that the COVID vaccine prevented transmission. And when I said, No, they don’t prevent transmission, because I read the monkey studies in May of 2020, and I saw that the amount of the concentration of the virus in the nasal pharynx of the vaccinated monkey was identical to the unvaccinated monkeys. And I said, These vaccines should be dead in the water. They won’t prevent transmission. [In fact, vaccines have proved highly effective against the worst outcomes of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death. The C.D.C. has reported that widespread vaccination in a population reduces the spread of the virus.] And I was deplatformed for spouting conspiracy theories. And because all the scientists said they’re going to prevent transmission. So, you know, I don’t necessarily believe all the scientists, because I can read science myself. That’s what I do for a living. I read science critically. That’s how I win cases. And I’ve read the science on autism and I can tell you, if you want to know. David, you’ve got to answer this question: If it didn’t come from the vaccines, then where is it coming from?
hy did Robert Aaron Long kill six Asian women, in three Atlanta-area massage parlors, as well as two other people who happened to be on the premises?
