Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended himself Friday from accusations of antisemitism while repeating unfounded claims about Covid-19 and vaccines.
In an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, Kennedy, an avid opponent of Covid-19 vaccines and public health policies that were intended to reduce the spread of the virus pushed back on the notion that his previous remarks about Covid-19 that mentioned Jewish ancestry and history were antisemitic.
Asked about his comments from July in which he said Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, Kennedy acknowledged that some people could be “disturbed” by the comments. But he said he believed “they certainly weren’t antisemitic.”
“I wish I hadn’t said them, you know. What I said was true,” he said. “The only reason I wouldn’t talk publicly about this … is that I know that there’s people out there who are antisemitic and can misuse any information.”
Ashkenazi Jews trace their roots to Central and Eastern Europe and represent a majority of the US Jewish population. While there are disproportionate rates of Covid-19 illness and death across different demographics, this has not been attributed to genetics or religion.
Kennedy also defended his comments from 2022 in which he compared the Covid lockdowns to Nazi Germany, arguing that “even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland.” At the time, Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines, condemned his remarks as “reprehensible and insensitive.” Kennedy said his wife was wrong to criticize the comments and blamed the media for taking his remarks out of context.
“She is not right, but it was something that needed to be said at that time,” he said.
“I understand why people are upset with your interpretation of it, your…
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