Who is Robert Kennedy? Anti-vaccine activist with a controversial message who can manage US healthcare

The last time a new party appeared that broke the duopoly of American politics was 190 years ago, when the Whig Party (a word that means nothing) was born, a conservative formation that more or less brought together the nascent middle class and bourgeoisie. industrial and whose implosion after two decades in which it brought four of its members to the Presidency ended up generating the Republican Party.

Since then, the idea of ​​a party that breaks the Democratic-Republican duopoly has been a constant. And also a failure. Not only a failure for the independent parties but also for those who present an ideology more similar to them. George Bush Sr. lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 due to the emergence of and protoTrumpthe millionaire Ross Perot. With a populist and isolationist message and self-made man rhetoric, Perot took 19.9% ​​of the votesfurther damaging a republicanism that has always had more isolationist tendencies than the Democrats. It was the highest figure achieved by what in the US is derogatorily called a third party since in 1912 Theodore Roosevelt reached 27.4% with the Progressive Party, which he had created.

That’s him fate of third parties in the United States: bother others. When in the year 2000, in the midst of the bitter dispute in the Supreme Court over who had won the elections, George W. Bush or Al Gorethe Green Party candidate Ralph Nader He said, “the truth is that I think I am the one who won the elections”, many Democrats wanted to strangle him. Gore had gotten more votes than Bush. But he would have been the undisputed winner of the elections if it had not been for the 2.7% of votes that Nader took. The experience of 2000 was for the Democrats the same as that of 1992 was for the Republicans.

Therefore, candidates who are neither Democrats nor Republicans tend to be qualified as spoilersa word that is difficult to translate that comes to mean something like “he who spoils something”. In other words: they don’t win, but they make others lose, because they divide the vote. Surely many supporters of the PP and the PSOE also consider Vox, Ciudadanos and Unidas Podemos spoilersalthough Spanish does not have such a precise word.

And in 2024, those third parties reappeared but soon dissipated. The 5-N elections have been historic. The most important of those third parties with possibilities was one with an illustrious name: Robert F. Kennedy. It is the son of the attorney general and presidential candidate of the same nameassassinated in 1968 during the campaign, and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Its popularity fluctuated, before suspend his presidential campaign and support Trump, between 9% and 15%, according to the surveys, which was more than remarkable given that his program was a public danger. RFK Junior, as he is known, He is an anti-vaccine activist who said that Nazi Germany was a better system than today because Jews, at least, could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank, while today there is no way to escape vaccines against Covid-19. He has also stated that the pandemic “is directed at attack caucasians (the whites) and the blacks. The most immune people are Jews ashkenazim (especially from central and eastern Europe and mostly in Israel) and the Chinese.” He has also suggested that chemical compounds in drinking water are making Americans homosexual.

Aside from these atrocities, the political proposals of President Kennedy’s nephew are located in the left. His program is a diluted version of that of Bernie Sanders, the socialist candidate who contested the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton in 2016. RFK junior sees illegal immigration as a humanitarian problemis in favor of police reform – despite the fact that this is the responsibility of cities, not the State -, defends the tightening of environmental regulations, the moderate reduction of defense spending and a more progressive tax system. Kennedy is a skilled politician, as he demonstrated when, after realizing that he was not going to have a chance in the Democratic Party primaries, he decided to run as an independent. The same ability that has led him to side with Trump and that could lead him to have a role related to health or regulation of the country’s medicines and food.

Trump’s thanks

“If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the enormous burden of chronic diseases that are now demoralizing and bankrupting the country will disappear,” he noted in August, implying that the Republican has promised him any position related to public health.

“If you give me the opportunity to solve the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years, we will see the burden of chronic disease reduced dramatically. We will make Americans healthy again,” he stated.

Even then the alliance seemed clear because minutes after Robert Kennedy’s announcement, Trump thanked him for his support: “I want to thank Bobby. What he did is something very nice and really important. “He’s a great guy, respected by everyone.”

Robert Kennedy’s anti-vaccine fanaticism contrasts with his pragmatism in other areas, such as when he supported Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the Hamas attacks.

With that ideology, Kennedy has the support of a part of the American left. But his name and his opposition to vaccines made him very popular in two democratic strongholds: Hollywood y Silicon Valley. No wonder he is married to actress Cheryl Hines, one of the stars of the cult television series Curb Your Enthusiasm. In fact, the person who introduced them was Larry David, one of the creators of Seinfieldwhich has been broadcast on HBO since no less than the year 2000.

RFK Junior combines Trump’s populism with the rejection of vaccines – which is transversal in both parties – and a generally left-wing proposal.