Read this below and you'll see why.
SNIPS from NPR:
Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his campaign challenging President Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, he has given hours of interviews to podcasts, magazines and TV networks. He paints a dark, conspiratorial picture of the world, bristling with debunked theories, misleading claims and outright falsehoods.
Wi-Fi causes cancer and "leaky brain," Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan last month. Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings, he mused during an appearance with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender, he told right-wing Canadian psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson, echoing a false assertion made by serial fabulist Alex Jones. AIDS may not be caused by HIV, he has suggested multiple times.
There's no credible evidence for any of these assertions or for Kennedy's longest-running false claims: that vaccines cause autism and are more harmful than the diseases they're designed to protect against.
Yet Kennedy is building a campaign for the highest office around these conspiracy theories and the idea that fact-checking or criticizing them amounts to censorship. His throughline is the bedrock conspiratorial premise that "they" (the government, pharmaceutical companies, the media) are lying to you — but that he is telling the truth.
But what stands out in Kennedy's case is the sheer volume of what he has asserted over the years, from his insistence that Republicans stole the 2004 election to his claims that 5G networks are being used for mass surveillance to his belief that the CIA assassinated his uncle.
n 2021, he was named one of the top spreaders of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. He was kicked off Instagram, along with his organization, Children's Health Defense, which was also removed from Facebook (Instagram reinstated Kennedy after he announced his presidential bid).
He told NPR that year that the social media bans had cost him "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in donations. But federal tax filings show otherwise: Children's Health Defense's revenue surged during the pandemic, from $3 million in 2019 to $7 million in 2020 to $16 million in 2021.
The global pandemic crisis also provided Kennedy, by then one of the most prominent figures in anti-vaccination circles, a broader set of targets in the form of changing public health guidelines, school and business shutdowns, and vaccine and mask mandates.
He wrote a book accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and formerly a White House adviser during the pandemic, of "help[ing] orchestrate and execute 2020's historic coup d'etat against Western democracy."
He compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany and promoted a film targeting disproven claims about vaccines to Black Americans. He touted the alternative treatments ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which have not been found to be effective at treating COVID-19. He appeared at the Christian nationalist ReAwaken America Tour alongside MAGA stars Roger Stone and Michael Flynn and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
"There was this coalescing of different groups that wouldn't really have crossed paths before the pandemic," said Aoife Gallagher, a research analyst at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies extremism and disinformation. "What this allowed groups like Children's Health Defense and Robert F. Kennedy to do was to reach a much wider audience."
While Kennedy is running as a Democrat, promising to "heal the divide" in American politics, many of his views are out of step with the mainstream. Americans of both parties resoundingly support childhood vaccines.
His extremely isolationist positions on immigration and foreign policy sound more like a candidate in the Republican primary. He says he would "seal the [U.S.-Mexico] border permanently" and blames the U.S. for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying Moscow acted in "good faith."
A podcast-centric presidential campaign
Kennedy's media strategy reflects his warm reception among an extremely online, right-leaning audience. He has turned up on a flurry of podcasts, from The Joe Rogan Experience to shows hosted by Peterson, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, actor Russell Brand and venture capitalists Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Friedberg.
The medium allows him to reach a big audience — Rogan's show, the country's most popular podcast, is estimated to draw as many as 11 million listeners per episode — and an audience that may not be tuning in to traditional news sources.
Kennedy's campaign has given him a platform that has long been denied him, with profiles in seemingly every media outlet. But he remains a long-shot candidate, and his campaign appears to be resonating more with Republicans than the Democrats who will vote in the primary.
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