Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate perhaps best known for his anti-vaccine views and penchant for spreading conspiracy theories, admitted that he dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park in 2014.
In a video posted on Sunday X by Kennedy, He revealed that he left a bike and the bear’s carcass in the park, hoping it would look like a cyclist had killed the bear and that it would be “fun”. It is a strange phenomenon that Major news coverage requests At the time — and that sparked a year-long mystery about how the bear got there. As part of this the story was set to go public A long, critical New Yorker profile Kennedy’s, which the anecdote features, and which seems to have prompted Kennedy to tell his side.
The bear incident is also the latest Countless problematic tasks Kennedy was implicated — including dispersal Medical misinformation and complaints sexual misconduct. he As previously titled, also, after sharing that a parasitic worm had eaten part of his brain. Collectively, all these revelations added to the peculiar personality and random policy position that he cultivated.
Despite his antipathy and controversial stance, Kennedy a Winnowing the support base who is drawn to his anti-establishment stance, and believes he is the only candidate willing to say it like it.
recent Total of Five Thirty Eight votes Kennedy polled about 5.5 percent in the general presidential election against Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. This is down from 10.3 percent He got into FiveThirtyEight’s roundup in March, when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee.
Kennedy, along with progressive scholar Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein among those running as independents or third-party alternatives, could help determine what the alternative candidates are. It turned out to be a close election — especially in the key swing states that have historically been the case Won by a narrow margin.
The RFK bear incident – and other strange locations – briefly explained
In X video, Kennedy said he was on a falconing trip in the Hudson Valley when he saw the car in front of him hit and kill a bear cub.
“I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear,” Kennedy explained. “It was [in] Very good condition and I was going to keep the meat in my refrigerator.”
According to Kennedy, the falconing trip was long and he didn’t make it home before going to a dinner in New York City. Because that dinner also took longer than expected, he wasn’t able to get the bear back home before one of his flights that same evening.
Faced with the time constraints, Kennedy said he — and those around him — felt his best option was to deposit the bear in Central Park and make it look like a bike had killed the cub, because that would be “fun for people.” After doing so, Kennedy said he saw an explosion of news coverage the day after the incident and was concerned he would get himself into trouble with law enforcement, but never came clean about his involvement until now.
The discovery of the bear It has spurred animal cruelty investigationsAnd raised questions about how the animal’s carcass got into New York City.
This is not the only incident that has come to light about Kennedy during his presidential campaign – others include everything from this Outrage over him allegedly eating dogs Serious allegations of sexual harassment. Eliza Cooney, who previously worked as a live-in nanny for her family, alleged that Kennedy locked her in her home and touched her leg during a business meeting. Kennedy said the characteristic part of the sexual assault claim — which Published in Vanity Fair – was “rubbish”, but added that he was not a “boy of the church”. After the Vanity Fair story was published, Cooney shared a text from Kennedy He was sent to the Washington PostJoe said he had “no memory of the incident”, but apologized for any actions that might have made him uncomfortable
That same Vanity Fair story outlines a pattern of strange and disturbing behavior that includes sending nude photos of women to friends and spreading conspiracy theories about everything from Covid-19 to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a pattern the New Yorker profile also highlights. “He could say some crazy things,” his sister Rory Kennedy once said, according to Vanity Fair reports.
Kennedy’s policy platform focused heavily on inaccurate, anti-vaccine statements linking childhood vaccines to autism, which have been widely Debunked by doctors and scientists. He is also responsible for paying for an organization A significant proportion of advertising on Facebook Spreading falsehoods about vaccines, The New York Times reports. And his position has been linked to real harm: in one instance, Kennedy and his nonprofit spread misinformation about vaccines in American Samoa and possibly Contribute to a massive measles outbreak of this region, FactCheck.org notes. Kennedy also spewed conspiracies about Covid-19. and falsely claimed it was “racially targeted.” To avoid harm to Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. On the campaign trailHe embellished these positions on the importance of protecting human “health” and the need to combat chronic illness and remove toxins from the diet.
Kennedy has a small base of support that could play a role in the election
Those who supported Kennedy were drawn to him for the same reasons that critics opposed him.
His supporters, who span the ideological spectrum, see him speaking with honesty about issues like vaccines in a way they don’t see politicians of either party do. Likewise, they see him as someone willing to call out the political establishment, and point to his past record of taking on big business as an environmental lawyer.
He is not in that party structure. These political parties are authoritarian and do not allow dissent. Anyone who speaks against Democratic orthodoxy is kicked out,” said Kevin Nally, a Kennedy supporter and former Democratic voter. told Reuters.
It’s also likely that some of the reason for his early support was that he offered an alternative to Biden and Trump, both of whom came with their own baggage for many voters. Kennedy’s support is showing denied Since Harris entered the race, though, it could still play a role in the election if he manages to get on key swing state ballots — something his campaign is still working on. Places like Pennsylvania.
Earlier this year, Kennedy’s campaign said he was approved to appear on the Michigan ballot, one of a handful of states that will be a key battleground state. Previously, former President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 by just 10,700 votes, or about 0.3 percentage points. And while Biden beat Trump by just over 3 percentage points in 2020, Poll proposal The state may look more like 2016 than 2020 this year.
Barbara Perry, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, told Vox that if Kennedy “gets 1 percent in those battleground states that can be decided very narrowly, he can either lose the presidency to one candidate or win it to another candidate”.
This dynamic has been evident in the past by third-party candidates, including independent businessman Ross Perot in 1992, who was seen as withdrawing support from President George HW Bush, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016, who was seen to be elected in 2016. Endorsed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Research suggests that neither Perot nor Stein actually changed their polls.)
Polls indicate that Kennedy may actually have influence on both sides, since his views are more conservative ideas like anti-vaccination positions and more climate-friendly proposals, like calling on companies to cover the costs of pollution. It’s possible, though, that she’s even more damaging to Trump — despite her Democratic roots — because of their shared positions on vaccine mandates and Covid-19 restrictions. And the report says that the former president Dr The campaign has some concerns About Kennedy
