Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2024 presidential campaign

Kennedy is a member of the Kennedy family, four of whom have previously run for the United States presidency.[2][4][5] His uncle John F. Kennedy was elected president as a Democrat in 1960 after a successful presidential campaign. In subsequent decades, several other family members sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination, but have failed to be nominated. His father and namesake, Robert F. Kennedy, ran a leading campaign for the nomination in 1968 but he was assassinated before the party's nominating convention. His uncle-by-marriage Sargent Shriver ran for the nomination in 1976, but later withdrew from the race.[lower-alpha 1] His uncle Ted Kennedy ran a campaign for the nomination in 1980, but was later defeated in the primaries by then-incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter.

Kennedy is active in the anti-vaccine movement.[6][7] Before announcing his bid for the presidency, he compared President Biden's COVID-19 vaccination policies to the Holocaust at rally in Washington, DC.[8] He asserted that Anne Frank and Jews in Nazi Germany had more freedom than American citizens amid vaccine mandates in churches and schools, and business closures.[9] He later apologized for his Nazi analogy and claimed his remarks were taken out of context.[8][10]

On March 3, 2023, in a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Kennedy stated that he was considering a run for president in 2024.[11] YouTube later took down a video of the speech, citing medical misinformation.[12] On April 5, 2023, he filed his candidacy.[6] He formally declared his candidacy at a campaign launch event at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston on April 19, 2023.[13][14] He chose Boston for his launch because of his family's deep political roots in the city,[7][15] and referenced in his speech that he graduated from both high school and college in Massachusetts.[16][17]

Kennedy is strongly critical of the contemporary political economy of the United States, describing it as "cushy socialism for the rich and this kind of brutal, merciless capitalism for the poor" which bails out banks and keeps the US in a state of permanent war while slashing programs like food stamps and Medicaid. He also posited that "our democracy is devolving into kind of a corporate plutocracy,"[18] and said that his priority would 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".[13]

Kennedy has espoused the pseudoscientific claim that vaccines cause autism.[19] He has previously aligned himself with the studies of Mark Geier, a former physician whose licence was revoked for administering chemical castration medications to autism spectrum disorder patients.[20]

Early supporters of Kennedy's campaign include Salon.com founder David Talbot,[21] former Bernie Sanders campaign press secretary Briahna Joy Gray,[22] journalist Max Blumenthal,[23] author Charles Eisenstein,[24] and comedian Russel Brand.[25]