Robert F Kennedy Jr. vs himself: Do his conspiracies cancel out his environmental achievements and promises?

 Joseph Cabornero

Professor John Horgan

HST 401-A

1 May 2024

Robert F Kennedy Jr. vs Himself: Do his conspiracies cancel out his environmental achievements and promises?

America has been dealing with a difficult dichotomy since the road up to the 2016 election. This decision has been choosing between Trump and whatever weak politician the Democratic party is pushing for. For many Americans, it’s been described as trying to choose the lesser of two evils. While politicians like Bernie Sanders attempt to run for president, after not getting support from their political party, they completely drop out of the race. This is not the case for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

While originally running as a Democrat, he is now running as an independent candidate with complete disregard for Joe Biden’s candidacy. For many voters like me who are sick of this dichotomy of the 2-party system and don’t want this election to be a repeat of 2020, we wonder if RFK Jr. is worth voting for and if he can go all the way and win.

So, is this possible? Is a candidate not backed up by the Republican or Democratic party able to overcome the odds? This Depends on what polls we look at. He’s doing as low as 8 % and 13% or as high as 31% and 38% with him ahead of both political party nominees. “…in an Economist and YouGov poll, his favorability rating beats everyone, including Biden and Trump, I think it’s important to take him seriously” (Prasad). 

While some people are skeptical of 3^rd party polling and election polling in general, there have been active improvements to these polls since 2020 and even more compared to 2016. “61% of national pollsters in the U.S. used methods in 2022 that differed from those of 2016” (Kennedy and Keeter). While these polls don’t seem to hold much weight, at the very least it shows that that RFK Jr. has a fighting chance if he makes the right moves. 

Right now, RFK Jr. isn’t taking votes away from one candidate specifically according to polls and it makes sense. He has many policies that Democrats like including ones that are very environmentally friendly while also appealing to Republicans with his economic policies. 

But it’s not just his promises that are driving people in. RFK Jr. has a long list of accomplishments including working 40 years as a lawyer suing numerous big polluters and government agencies responsible for actions unlawfully done in spite of the environment.

However, Joe Biden and Donald Trump aren’t the only ones holding RFK Jr. from overcoming the Two-party system. Along with RFK Jr.’s long list of achievements and policies comes his long list of what some people might call conspiracies. While RFK Jr. would consider many of these concerns evidence-based and reasonable, to many others it’s just nonsense. So when it comes to deciding if I should vote for RFK Jr., I would first like to weigh his conspiracies along with his environmental achievements and promises to see if he is really the better option.

RFK Jr. has such a long record of suing big polluters and agencies as an environmental lawyer that he was given the title “Hero of the planet” by Time Magazine. With over 40 years of experience calling out corrupt corporations and government agencies, he has won hundreds of lawsuits. The lawsuits include many incidents of making corporations take responsibility for their chemical spills as well as holding them accountable for the chemicals they use. 

He also fought to restore the Hudson River and helped “several indigenous tribes in Latin America and Canada in successfully negotiating treaties protecting traditional homelands” (Cusp Conference). During his career as a lawyer, he worked as the chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, the attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and ran the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University School of Law. 

He has many achievements not relating to his practice of law. He founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is the largest clean water organization in the world. He’s on the board of several green tech companies and involved in solar and wind power construction projects. He also travels the country giving around 200 environmental speeches a year normally on the topic of renewable energy.

One of RFK Jr’s major focuses of his policies is the environment obviously due to his passion for it and the vast amount of work he’s done in that realm of politics. The work he was involved in as a lawyer he would want to continue at a grander scale as president. This would be reducing toxic chemical pollution and plastic waste, protecting wildlife habitats from corporate abuse, and stopping corporations and government agencies from using environmental issues to trick the public into funding profit-making schemes or power grabs. His policies reflecting his career in law strengthens his promise of those policies by showing that he isn’t all talk. 

RFK Jr. criticizes his political rivals saying that both did massive harm to the environment. While Trump erased many environmental rules in favor of big polluters, Biden wastes taxpayer money on environmental solutions that are just for show and won’t actually help the environment (Winters). RFK Jr. believes he is the true candidate for voters who care about the environment.

Other science-related policies include his stance on mental and physical health. He believes that Big Pharma and Wall Street firms who control the medical industry are profiting off and taking advantage of sick Americans. To combat this, he wants to hold meetings with the National Institutes of Health to shift their priorities into finding the root causes of illness as well as prevention of these chronic illnesses. 

He wants to fix the food desert problem in poor communities that only have access to unhealthy foods and not food that is rich in nutrients. He also wants to make America more reliant on small farms because as of now we are dependent on big chemical-industrial agriculture that is owned by China (Kennedy). This is a major root of the problem of American health as well as an economic issue.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. has a strong set of policies supported by his previous works, but his distrust of corporations and the government gained through 40 years of suing them has led to what some might feel is crossing the line. This line crosses from reasonable distrust to an overall distrust of everything and leads to plain conspiracy. 

Infamously RFK Jr believed the Chinese and Jews were responsible for COVID-19 and used it as a bioweapon against white and black people. This is where many of the rumors of him being racist stem from. He believes our water is impacting the sexuality of children due to the mixture of chemicals and hormones. Some might remember the viral video of Alex Jones screaming about water turning frogs gay. While this was proven to be true there is no proof that water affects the sexuality of children especially since most of the water we use is treated before we access it. 

During the pandemic, he was highly against young healthy people getting COVID-19 vaccinations. While this was going on he supported alternative medicine of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine that was later proven to not work. 

The biggest conspiracy of his that shies me away from voting for him is his stance on vaccines. Although there is no evidence that thimerosal, an ingredient in vaccines that is a derivative of mercury, causes brain disorders, He is convinced it is harmful. “The controversy, which Kennedy helped fuel in the 2000s with a notorious, widely publicized article, prompted additional vaccine fears that linger to this day” (Kloor). Unfortunately, with all the good he is responsible for, the many conspiracies that he supports, ruin his name.

I was first introduced to RFK Jr. by my aunt when he was running as a Democrat. I knew something had to be odd about him since my aunt is a conservative Republican. I didn’t even check into him because of that fact. I would later hear of him on a political podcast I enjoy, and they were speaking on his conspiracies about 5G and how he is racist based on his COVID-19 bioweapon theory. At that point, I thought my suspicions were true and made up my mind about him. 

This was until I heard him speak on his mass comedy podcast run where he was guesting on many different podcasts to combat the media’s bias of him and get his message across. This run would include many famous podcasts with hosts like Joe Rogan, Theo Van, and Bobby Lee. I gave him another chance when he was a guest on The Tim Dillon Show. 

Hearing him speak directly humanized him for me and I liked the things I was hearing. A politician calling out the major corporations like Viacom and Blackrock that have a monopoly of everything in America was shocking in the best way possible. I’ve had enough of politicians that sell their souls to companies like this and RFK Jr. is willing to stand out. Later, researching for this paper I discovered his immense amount of environmental work. 

Some journalists do not have the same positive experience that is witnessed on these podcasts and describe him as aggressive and a “humorless bully” (Hagan). If journalists and his conspiracies hadn’t ruined his name enough, many members of the Kennedy family have come out to denounce his candidacy. 

I spoke with New York Times Journalist Keith Kloor who has talked with and written about RFK Jr. multiple times in the past. He was confused when I brought up journalists speaking on him in this way and said a lot of journalists, including himself, would consider RFK Jr. charming in his approaches to these conversations. Unfortunately, this is where most of the positive comments on RFK Jr end in our conversation. 

When I asked if RFK Jr’s conspiracies cancel out his environmental achievements and promises, Kloor said “I think everything he’s done, in terms of conspiracies, has all completely wiped out his reputation.” He continues, “I don’t know anybody who thinks of him as a credible source or a credible authority on anything, and that’s a shame because he did do good work.”

While Kloor told me due to his damaged reputation, he has no shot of winning this election. I understand this worry about him being in office with these conspiracies and that his network of people may now be limited in the science realm. I do believe he has a strong following of people who will vote for him based on his non-conspiratorial vision. Ignoring conspiracies of vaccines and other nonsense, I believe what Robert F Kennedy Jr. has to offer as president is worth voting for. However, my optimism toward RFK Jr.’s likelihood of being elected has been crushed since my conversation with Kloor. At the same time, my resentment of Trump, Biden, and their political parties will likely push me to vote for RFK Jr. anyway.

 

Works Cited

CBC News. “Conspiracy Campaign: RFK’s Presidential Bid | Front Burner.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 July 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_9WE1XCxLU. 

Cusp Conference. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Heroes for the Planet.” Cusp Conference, www.cuspconference.com/presenters/robert-f-kennedy-jr/. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024. 

Dillon, Tim. “Bobby & Cheryl | the Tim Dillon Show #360.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Sept. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y361zBEDzJE.

Hagan, Joe. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” Vanity Fair, 27 Sept. 2023, www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/rfk-kennedy-interview. 

Kennedy, Courtney, and Scott Keeter. “How Public Polling Has Changed in the 21st Century.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 19 Apr. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/methods/2023/04/19/how-public-polling-has-changed-in-the-21st-century/. 

Kennedy, Robert F. “Regenerating America's soil, farms, and food” Kennedy24, 2023, www.kennedy24.com/revitalization. 

Kennedy, Robert F. “The Best Environmental President in American History.” Kennedy24, 2023, www.kennedy24.com/environment. 

Kloor, Keith. “Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Belief in Autism-Vaccine Connection, and Its Political Peril - The Washington Post.” The Washington Post, The Washington Post, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/robert-kennedy-jrs-belief-in-autism-vaccine-connection-and-its-political-peril/2014/07/16/f21c01ee-f70b-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html. 

Prasad, Vinay. “What RFK Jr. Gets Right-and What He Gets Wrong.” Https://Www.Thefp.Com/, The Free Press, 21 June 2023, www.thefp.com/p/what-rfk-jr-gets-rightand-what-he. 

Winters, Joseph. “Biden Administration Slammed for Funding ‘False’ Plastics Solutions.” Salon, Salon.com, 15 Jan. 2022, www.salon.com/2022/01/15/biden-administration-slammed-for-funding-false-plastics-solutions_partner/.