Robert F Kennedy (Image: Sky News Australia)
Robert Kennedy Jr (Image: Sky News Australia)

When Sky News Australia had an exclusive sit-down interview with Robert Kennedy Jr about his US presidential campaign, the most critical words were saved for those who’ve criticised him for his years of anti-vaccine activism.

“Those who deride Kennedy have long tried to portray him as a ‘crank’ for challenging authorities during the pandemic over vaccines and freedom of speech,” said Sky News Australia senior reporter Adam Walters.

But the reporting on Kennedy — who is challenging US President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for the 2024 election — and his grab bag of conspiracy theories goes far beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

For more than half a decade, Kennedy has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work with the virulently anti-vaccine, misleadingly named Children’s Health Defense. The organisation is best known for spending years and millions of dollars spreading misinformation including disproved claims that vaccines cause autism.

Somehow Kennedy’s beliefs go beyond even that. In an interview last week with podcaster Joe Rogan, he erroneously claimed that wi-fi radiation causes chronic disease, and promoted ivermectin as a COVID cure (all debunked by a variety of outlets). 

Kennedy’s views have had destructive consequences. When Samoa faced a deadly measles outbreak, for example, Kennedy was perhaps the loudest voice in a campaign by international anti-vaxxers to undermine mass vaccination efforts by claiming the disease was being caused by the shot. Over three months, 83 people died and 1868 were admitted to hospital. 

While even Kennedy admits in the Sky News Australia interview that his family name is responsible for some of his appeal, his views mean that he can’t count on their support. In 2019, Politico published a letter from three members of his family that said he’s “tragically wrong about vaccines” and accused him of having been caught up in a “misinformation campaign that’s having heartbreaking — and deadly — consequences”.

Who stands to gain from his campaign to usurp the Democratic Party’s incumbent president? Take a look at where he’s getting support, according to The New Republic’s Walter Shapiro:

Kennedy has been ballyhooed on Fox News with gushy interviews with Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. Republican megadonors like David Sacks and Omeed Malik are fundraising for him. He has also been endorsed by the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and implicitly supported by Elon Musk, who is driving Twitter into the ground. Both Roger Stone and Steve Bannon have been giddy with praise for Kennedy, even suggesting him as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate. And Rolling Stone revealed that a pro-Kennedy super PAC was organized by a Georgia-based Republican firm that has recently worked for Marjorie Taylor Greene, Herschel Walker, and George Santos.

(It’s worth noting that while some of the high-profile names propping Kennedy up may have ulterior motives, his small base of support from Democratic voters is real. Conspiracy theories are not exclusive to one side of politics.)

But when an Australian outlet — one with a massive, primarily international audience thanks to its YouTube and Facebook presence — had a rare opportunity to press him on his support, beliefs and capability to take on perhaps the most important role in the world, it demurred.

Instead, Sky News Australia lobbed softball questions such as: “Recently, the founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey went public and tweeted that Robert Kennedy was going to beat Biden, he was going to beat Trump, he’s going to beat DeSantis. That’s quite an endorsement. Are you such a long shot after all?”