RFK Jr. says he ‘should’ve been more careful’ after Covid comments criticized as antisemitic

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acknowledged that he “should’ve been more careful about what I said” after he received backlash for suggesting that Covid-19 could have been genetically engineered to reduce risks to Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

Hundreds of attendees — supporters, protesters and onlookers — came to hear Kennedy speak Tuesday evening in New York City on fighting antisemitism and supporting Israel with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an author and commentator. The two-hour conversation was part of a presidential candidate series hosted by The World Values Network, which Boteach runs.

Kennedy, who’s running a longshot campaign against President Joe Biden, said that there are interests who want “to damage my candidacy and want to silence me,” adding that anything he says is “going to be weaponized against me.”

Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Kennedy claimed without evidence that there is “an argument that [Covid-19] is ethnically targeted” at white and Black people, and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Jewish organizations criticized Kennedy for the comment, as did members of his family and the White House.

Kennedy denied the comments and called the report a “mainstream media playbook to discredit me as a crank.” In a congressional hearing last week — one that more than 100 House Democrats tried to get him uninvited from, saying that he has “repeatedly attacked two groups that have long been subject to deadly discrimination” — he denied being anti-vaccine, antisemitic or racist.

“These are the most appalling, disgusting pejoratives, and they’re applied to me to silence me because people don’t want me to have that conversation about the war, about groceries, about inflation,” he said at the Thursday hearing. “In my entire life, I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic. … I’ve fought more ferociously for Israel than anybody, and I am being censored here.”

On Tuesday, he defended the comments he made at the hearing, saying it was important to him to not “react with vitriol.”

“If we're wanting to really heal the divide between Americans, which is one of the things that I've tried to do with this campaign, we can't react even to hatred with hatred,” he said.

Boteach asked Kennedy if he understood why people “reacted strongly” to his comments. Kennedy said yes, and pointed again to a Cleveland Clinic study on which he said he based his claims.

Boteach, who pushed back against the claims of Kennedy being antisemitic, said the event was scheduled before the report came out about Kennedy’s comments. The World Values Network doesn’t endorse candidates, and it’s unclear if other presidential candidates are slated for similar forums.

Last year, the now-presidential candidate received similar pushback when he suggested that those who did not receive vaccination for Covid-19 were worse off than Anne Frank.

Tuesday’s event was originally set to be held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a “non-theistic, Humanist community dedicated to ethical relationships, social justice, and democracy.” The center canceled the event on Monday, which Kennedy’s campaign claimed to be “another example of the unsuccessful campaign to censor and silence Kennedy.” The conversation instead took place at The Glasshouse, an event venue.

“Upon learning the details of this rental, the Society’s leadership determined that it was inconsistent with the longstanding principles and values of the Society and exercised our right to cancel the rental,” Ed Beck, the venue’s communication manager, said in a statement. “Our reasoning was shared with the renter. No contract had been finalized, and no outside organization or individuals were consulted in our decision.”

Biden is handedly leading in the polls, but some have Kennedy registering in the double-digits.

“I am up against a very, very formidable force, the Democratic Party,” Kennedy said when asked about his plan to win the Democratic nomination.