The organization is targeting false claims at groups that may not trust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans, experts say, which could lead to more deaths during the pandemic.
Kennedy released a book in 2021, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accused the top US infectious disease doctor of aiding a “historic coup against Western democracy” and promoting unproven COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin, which is intended to treat parasites , and the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
His push against the COVID-19 vaccine has linked him with anti-democratic figures and groups. Kennedy has appeared in events insisting that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people cheering or denigrating the uprising in the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A photo posted on Instagram shows Kennedy backstage at the July 2021 Reawaken America event with former President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger. All three are promoting lies about the stolen 2020 election.
The photo was posted but later deleted by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at several events. He and his wife sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on January 6. Bollinger celebrated the attack and his wife tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for the Super PAC.
Kennedy has repeatedly invoked the Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. He has sometimes apologized for his comments, including when he suggested that people in 2022 were worse than Anne Frank, the teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family in a secret annex of her Amsterdam home for two years.
Kennedy sometimes invokes his family’s legacy in anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.
Kerry Kennedy’s sister, who runs Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, an international human rights group founded by her mother, Ethel, said her brother had removed some content in his plea.
He told the Associated Press in a 2021 interview that his brother was “very wrong on this issue and very dangerous.”