U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., currently running as an independent and holding a considerable following, potentially impacting both President Joe Biden and his opponent Donald Trump, has found himself on the defensive following a revealing Vanity Fair investigation.
The report uncovers past allegations, including accusations of sexual assault from the 1990s. In a YouTube interview, Kennedy did not explicitly deny these allegations, saying, "I'm no choir boy."
The Vanity Fair investigation features the testimony of Eliza Cooney, who claims that in 1998, at the age of 23, Kennedy inappropriately touched her and behaved sexually inappropriately toward her on three separate occasions.
At that time, Cooney was employed as a babysitter for Kennedy's children, who was 44, and also assisted him with his legal work. She told the magazine that she documented the incidents in her diary and disclosed them to her mother in 2017 during the height of the #MeToo movement. Last year, when Kennedy announced his presidential run, she shared the story with some of her friends.
The investigation also highlights other actions by Kennedy that allegedly depict him in a morally questionable light, including extramarital affairs, drug addiction (which he has previously spoken about openly) and his efforts to assist his cousin Michael Skakel, who was convicted of murdering a 15-year-old girl in Connecticut. Additionally, a report suggested that he enjoyed eating dog meat last year: the magazine claimed he sent a friend traveling in Asia a photo that appeared to show a roasted dog, recommending a restaurant in South Korea that serves dog meat.
In an interview with the YouTube show Breaking Points, Kennedy responded to the allegations against him, seemingly not denying most of them. "I've said it from the start – I'm no choir boy. My youth was very, very wild. Even in my speech announcing my candidacy, I said I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world."
He accused Vanity Fair of recycling 30-year-old stories and conducting an investigation filled with "a lot of garbage," adding that he does not intend to respond in detail to all the allegations. When directly asked if he denies Cooney's claims of sexual assault, he refused to comment.
However, Kennedy was keen to deny one specific point: he claimed that the "dog" photo he sent to a friend was actually a picture of a goat, which he ate during a trip to Patagonia in South America, not in Asia.
The presidential hopeful is a scion of the famous and tragedy-stricken Kennedy family: his father is Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 by a Palestinian assassin while running in the Democratic primaries for president, and his uncle is former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated five years earlier while in office.
Kennedy is known as an anti-vaccine activist and was previously banned from Instagram for spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, he was accused of antisemitism after claiming that "COVID-19 affected Jews less." Conversely, earlier this year, he expressed strong support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
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With his wife, actress Cheryl Hines
(Photo: USTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Until last year, Kennedy was a member of the Democratic Party and even intended to run in the Democratic primaries against President Biden. However, he ultimately launched his own presidential run as an independent. His supporters have organized glamorous fundraising events for him and worked hard to register him as a candidate in various U.S. states.
Polls show he has about 9% support among voters, making him the most popular independent candidate since Ross Perot, whose relative success in 1992 dashed Republican President George H.W. Bush's re-election hopes, handing the victory to Democrat Bill Clinton.
The fear of Kennedy's support haunts both the Democratic and Republican parties. Democrats worry that many left-wing voters, nostalgic for the Kennedy dynasty and disappointed with Biden, will give their vote to the independent candidate. Republicans, on the other hand, are concerned that RFK Jr.'s anti-establishment message and his stance on COVID-19 vaccines will siphon off Trump supporters, so they too are increasingly attacking him. Among other things, they portray Kennedy as a radical leftist who promotes extreme environmental agendas and wants to ban hydraulic fracturing.
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Meanwhile, there is ongoing speculation about President Biden's future following his poor performance in last week's televised debate, where he appeared weak, tired and at times confused. Amid calls from within and outside the Democratic Party to replace him, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Wednesday suggests that not only has Biden's support not declined following the debate, but there has been a slight improvement: if in the previous poll on June 11-12, Trump led with 41% compared to 39% for Biden, now they are tied at 40% each. The poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday this week.
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The poll results should be taken with a grain of salt: firstly, other polls conducted in the three days following the debate showed a clear advantage for Trump, such as a CNN poll where Trump led Biden by 6%, and a YouGov poll where Trump led by 2-4%; and secondly, U.S. elections are not decided by the popular vote but by the electoral college.
Nevertheless, the fact that the poll does not show a dramatic drop in support for Biden in the face-off with Trump may offer some encouragement to the president and his team.
According to the Reuters poll, 83% of Democrats and 97% of Republicans agreed with the statement that Biden stumbled in the debate and that his age was evident, and 58% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans agreed with this statement regarding Trump.
The poll also examined which possible alternatives for Biden in the race have a better chance of defeating Trump, with Michelle Obama, who apparently has no intention of running, leading with 50% support compared to 39% for Trump in a direct contest between them. All other individuals mentioned lose to Trump in a direct contest in public opinion, but the one with the best chance among them is incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, who gets 42% of the vote compared to Trump's 43%.
Reuters reported that according to seven senior sources in Biden's campaign, the White House, and the Democratic National Committee, if Biden withdraws from the race, the leading candidate to replace him is indeed Harris.