Politics

RFK Jr. launches presidential bid with blast at “corporate feudalism”

Washington, Apr 19 (EFE).- Environmental lawyer and vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were assassinated while in office, formally launched his campaign for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday.

“I’m inviting all of you to join me to create an America that we can believe in and be proud of again,” the 69-year-old son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy told supporters at a rally in Boston.

“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country,” Kennedy said.

Unchecked corporate power, he said, is working “to poison our children and our people with chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs, to strip mine our assets, to hollow out the middle class, and keep us in a constant state of war.”

Kennedy decried political polarization in the United States as “so toxic and so dangerous.”

“When I talk to both Republican friends and Democratic friends, they talk about this division in almost apocalyptical terms,” he said. “Nobody can see a safe way or a good way out of it.”

He acknowledged that some members of the Kennedy family do not support his presidential bid.

“I know most American families, they never have any differences with each other,” he said sarcastically. “When that happens in a family, it’s really huge news, like everywhere.”

Kennedy announced his candidacy on April 5, joining self-help author Marianne Williamson, who was among the more than 20 hopefuls who sought the Democratic nomination in 2020.

The man who prevailed in that contest and went on to defeat Republican incumbent Donald Trump in the general election, Joe Biden, is expected to seek a second term, but has yet to make an official announcement.

Kennedy, through the organization he founded, Children’s Health Defense, has emerged as one of the most prominent voices of the anti-vaccine movement in the US.

In January, Kennedy and other vaccine skeptics filed a lawsuit against the BBC, Reuters, and other international media organizations, accusing them of colluding with social media platforms to censor anti-vaccine content.

Instagram excluded Kennedy in 2021 for disseminating “discredited” opinions about Covid-19 and vaccines. EFE ssa/dr

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