Contrasting Kennedys: Scions of powerful political family project very different images

“I have got so many skeletons in my closet that if they could vote, I could be king of the world,” Robert F Kennedy jnr (69) told his supporters as he launched his campaign to become president of the United States earlier this week.

He is the latest member of his fabled political family to run for the White House, nearly 60 years after his father, Bobby Kennedy – former attorney general and presidential candidate – was assassinated while on the same campaign trail in 1968.

Robert F Kennedy jnr is the nephew of former president John F Kennedy and a relation of several other members of the Kennedy clan who have served in Congress. He is a controversial figure.

For many years, he was known primarily as an environmentalist lawyer who played a key role in campaigning for waterways and cleaning up the Hudson river in New York.

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In more recent years, however, he has become increasingly associated with anti-vaccine activism and conspiracy theories.

Several prominent members of the family have made clear they do not agree with Robert Kennedy’s views on vaccines and were not prepared to drop their support for president Joe Biden to back him.

About the same time as Robert Kennedy was launching his presidential campaign in Boston, across the Atlantic in Belfast, Joseph (Joe) Kennedy III (42) was tweeting about meeting European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, and Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton Harris, on opportunities for growth in the region.

Joe Kennedy had travelled to Belfast last week with Biden but stayed behind afterwards as part of his new role as US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs and was doing important work on behalf of the president of the United States.

Biden, during his visit, said he has asked Joe to “supercharge” the work of bringing more business, more investment and more opportunity to the North.

[ Robert F Kennedy jnr announces bid for White House ]

On Wednesday, Joe Kennedy addressed the final part of the three-day conference Queen’s University Belfast hosted on the Belfast Agreement, 25 years on from the peace settlement.

The grandson of Bobby Kennedy and son of Joseph P. Kennedy said: “There also can be no prosperity without peace and there can be no peace without prosperity.”

He said American companies considering investing in the North wanted certainty for the future and emphasised the opportunities presented by Northern Ireland’s dual access to the UK and EU markets.

“Two of my primary responsibilities will be trying to get those firms who are already here to expand their footprint and, of course, to make the case to the next set of global partners about why they should come here.

“Perhaps not surprisingly, many executives are already aware of the case for Northern Ireland. They know about the talent and the ease of transit. They know about the potential for market access.

“They also, yes, want clarity and certainty. They want to have a good idea of what might change and how and when that might happen. The sooner they have answers to those questions, the better for a Northern Ireland economy.”

The Kennedy family and the Bidens have been close for years. Other Kennedys have been appointed to key positions by the Biden administration.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK, is ambassador to Australia while Ted Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, was appointed by Biden as the US ambassador to Austria.

Family members have publicly expressed their unease about some of the causes espoused by Robert Kennedy.

In 2019, three prominent family members – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph Kennedy II and Maeve Kennedy McKean – said, in an article, that while they stood behind Robert’s work on the environment, “on vaccines he is wrong”.

They said he had “helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines”.

When news of his impending presidential bid first emerged a couple of weeks ago, his sister Kerry Kennedy, who is president of the non-profit organisation, Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, said: “I love my brother Bobby [Robert] but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information.

[ Next-gen Kennedy in town as Biden says Bobby’s grandson will ‘supercharge’ US investment in the North ]

“It is also important to note that Bobby’s views are not reflected in or influence the mission or work of our organisation.”

Another sister, filmmaker Rory Kennedy, told US broadcaster CNN: “I love my older brother Bobby [Robert]. He has extraordinary charisma and is a very gifted speaker. I admire his past work as an environmentalist – because of him, we can swim in the Hudson. But due to a wide range of Bobby’s positions, I’m supporting president Biden.”

At the beginning of last year, as the Omicron variant of Covid-19 spread across the US, Robert Kennedy caused outrage over comments made at a protest rally in Washington. He went as far as to suggest Jews in Europe during the Nazi era had more freedoms than Americans during coronavirus.

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.”

He later apologised for his Anne Frank remark, “especially to families that suffered the Holocaust horrors”.

Despite his political pedigree, his activism has brought him to places where his beliefs chime with many on the American right. Former top Trump administration figure Steve Bannon is a fan.

At his campaign launch, Robert Kennedy sought to weave his bid for the White House into the narrative of famous family campaigns of the past – particularly that of his father. He was introduced by his wife, actress Cheryl Hines. He pointed out his children and grandchildren in the crowd.

For some US media organisations, however, the big news angle was not who was present in the audience but rather who was not.

He acknowledged that some in his family disagreed with him on several issues, saying he had no ill will towards them and that he loved them.

He is not the first Kennedy to break with a sitting Democratic president. His uncle, Ted Kennedy, unsuccessfully challenged Jimmy Carter for the party nomination in advance of the 1980 election.

The New York Times quoted Bob Shrum, a former aide to Ted, as saying the new presidential candidate’s attacks on Dr Anthony Fauci and the federal government’s top medical and scientific agencies would have infuriated his uncle.

“It’s contrary to everything his uncle Ted Kennedy ever did. He called healthcare the cause of his life.”

Robert Kennedy said his mission would be “to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country, to commoditise our children, our purple mountain’s majesty; to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs; to strip-mine our assets; to hollow out the middle class and keep us in a constant state of war”.

He told a conservative college in Michigan recently that he was not anti-vaccine “although I’m kind of the poster child for the anti-vax movement”. He maintains that safety is his primary objective.

In 2021, however, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named him one of the 12 people whom the organisation found to have been responsible for roughly three-quarters of anti-vaccine content on some social media platform.

[ Robert F Kennedy jnr: Anti-vaccine activist launches bid for US presidency ]

Robert Kennedy is the author of a forthcoming book which alleges that US health officials conspired with the Chinese military to conceal the origins of Covid-19 but his scepticism about vaccinations predated the emergence of Covid-19. He backed a theory – now discredited in the medical world – linking childhood vaccination to autism.

His controversial views go beyond vaccines, however, and also touch on issues that are personal to his family. He maintains that Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted 50 years ago of killing his father, did not do so and he supports his bid for parole.

As his campaign gets under way this week, US political commentators largely view his candidacy for president to be a long shot, at best.

In a USA Today/Suffolk University poll on Wednesday, 14 per cent of people surveyed who had voted for president Biden in 2020 said they would back Robert Kennedy.

The poll found that Biden’s support among his own 2020 voters stood at 67 per cent.

Towards the end of his speech announcing his run for the White House – which lasted for nearly two hours – Robert said of his forthcoming campaign: “Under normal circumstances, I would not do this. But these are not normal circumstances. I’m watching my country being stolen from me.”

A moment of introspection, perhaps. Or, another conspiracy theory.