The grandson of former President John F. Kennedy on Friday ripped his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 White House bid and threw his support behind President Joe Biden, The Hill reported.
“President John F. Kennedy is my grandfather. And his legacy is important,” Jack Schlossberg, the 30-year-old son of US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, said in a video he posted to his Instagram account.
“It’s about a lot more than Camelot and conspiracy theories. It’s about public service and courage,” Schlossberg continued.
He endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign and said Biden “shares my grandfather’s vision for America: That we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
“He is in the middle of becoming the greatest progressive president we’ve ever had,” he said, citing unemployment and jobs figures, infrastructure and green energy investments and the appointment of federal judges.
“He ended the COVID pandemic and he ended Donald Trump,” Schlossberg added before blasting his cousin Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic nomination.
“These are the issues that matter. And if my cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr., cared about any of them, he would support Joe Biden, too,” Schlossberg said.
“Instead, he’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” he charged, adding, “I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president.”
“What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let’s not be distracted, again, by somebody’s vanity project,” Schlossberg said.
Kennedy has come under fire in recent days after The New York Post published a video of him floating a conspiracy theory about COVID-19 and Jews.
In the video, Kennedy quoted a theory that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.” He later added that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Earlier this week, House Democratic Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Sunday blasted Kennedy.
"The disgusting use of a vile antisemitic trope and unhinged xenophobic conspiracy theory by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is unacceptable and unconscionable,” Jeffries said in a statement.
“Hate crimes directed at the Jewish and Asian- American communities have skyrocketed in recent years. The dangerous language used by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. risks fanning the flames of violence against our Jewish and Asian-American brothers and sisters. It should be uniformly condemned," he added.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denounced the conspiracy theory floated by Kennedy.
“The claims made on that tape are false,” Jean-Pierre said during press briefing when asked about a video published over the weekend. “It is vile, and they put our fellow Americans in danger.”
On Thursday, Kennedy appeared before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on alleged government "weaponization" where he denied making antisemitic comments.
Kennedy told the committee that he had "never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic" and, despite repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation on public health issues in the past, insisted that he was not anti-vaccination.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)