I have noted a couple times the adversarial story with which the Associated Press greeted the filing of RFK Jr.’s statement of candidacy with the FEC. By Michelle Price, the story was headlined — in case you didn’t know who he is or why you shouldn’t hear him out — “Anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. challenging Biden in 2024.” Subtle.
In “Compromised Biden runs for reelection,” I tried to imagine the AP taking the same approach with the likely Democratic nominee (a/k/a Slow Joe). Howie Carr also fastens on the AP story in his Boston Herald column “RFK Jr., the outcast Kennedy, has Dems reeling.”
By the way, I’m so old that I remember Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. It ended in tragedy, but it delivered a message of hope and healing. He had great speechwriters like Adam Walinsky. He put his name on the 1967 campaign book To Seek a Newer World based on his speeches. His speeches were so good that the likely Democratic nominee plagiarized one of them in his 1988 presidential campaign (video below). And RFK actually wrote Thirteen Days, his posthumously published memoir of the Cuban missile crisis.
I second Howie Carr’s thoughts on RFK Jr. Forgive the long quote, but Howie expresses my thoughts more capably than I did (and has much more in the column):
The more state-run media call Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a crackpot and a lunatic and an “anti-vaccine quack,” the more I’m thinking I like this guy.
Bobby Jr. is coming to Boston next week to formally announce his candidacy for the 2024 Democrat nomination for president.
At age 69, he’s the youngster on the Democrat side, after incumbent president Dementia Joe Biden (80) and spiritual nut Marianne Williamson (71 in July).
It tells you something about modern politics that for most of his dissipated life, despite the most appalling sorts of behavior – hard drugs, booze, philandering to the max — Bobby Junior was a well-respected member in good standing of the Democrat party.
He began slowly drifting off the Democrat plantation years ago, but he always had that Kennedy thing going for him, especially the famous name of his martyred father.
But then he committed the ultimate blasphemy – he profaned the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci, wrote a best-selling expose about him. And after that he was, well, unclean. He was shunned by all the Beautiful People.
To understand just what a pariah RFK Jr. has become to state-run media and the Democrat party (but I repeat myself), check out the recent story about his candidacy from the Associated Press, a semi-official organ of the deep state.
For starters, they said he was “once” a best-selling author. But that was before he became “fixated” on vaccines, and because of that, he “prospered” during the Panic. (As did the Democrat party, for that matter, not to mention its subsidiaries, the welfare-industrial complex and Big Pharma.)
Then the AP mentions his 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” which by the way was a big bestseller. But the AP dismissed it because it “promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments” including ivermectin and hydrochloroquine.
Yet couldn’t the argument be made that both of those seem to have worked pretty well, at least compared to, say, masks, plexiglass and lockdowns, among all the government’s other “unproven” Panic panaceas?
But of course the Panic was never about science, it was about obedience, to the state. And by refusing to bend a knee, Bobby, despite his background, will forever be branded a pariah, a heretic, an infidel.
When you start backsliding from Democrat orthodoxy, you fall in with a bad crowd. Let the AP explain who Bobby now runs around with.
“Kennedy has appeared at events pushing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people who cheered or downplayed the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol….”
Lie? Insurrection?
Howie also calls for the kind of thought experiment I suggested in my post above: “Imagine if the AP were to do a similar story on Biden, when (or if) he announces for another term. I wonder whether they would treat him with the same withering scorn that they reserve for RFK Jr.” I believe that is a rhetorical question. The burden falls to us.
Howie observes RJK Jr. “backsliding from Democrat orthodoxy.” Of course, it’s not just RFK Jr. I note RFK speechwriter Adam Walinsky above. In 2016 Walinksy announced that he was supporting Trump in the Politico Magazine story “I Was RFK’s Speechwriter. Now I’m Voting for Trump. Here’s Why.”
Thumbnail screenshot of RFK Jr. photo on homepage by Gage Skidmore.
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