Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed at a press event on Manhattan’s Upper East Side this week that the COVID-19 coronavirus was a genetically engineered bioweapon that largely spares Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says COVID was ethnically targeted to spare Jews
The Democratic presidential candidate “claims without proof”: COVID-19 is a genetically engineered bioweapon which is “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi (European) Jews & Chinese https://t.co/63dzasT03k pic.twitter.com/zkl1Z5fvYC— Michael Weingardt (@Michael_Wgd) July 15, 2023
The candidate is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. Footage of his remarks was released Saturday by the New York Post.
In a subsequent statement posted on Twitter, Kennedy tried to walk back the comments, claiming his remarks were “off the record.”
Despite that claim, however, event organizer Doug Dechert told the NY Post it was indeed on the record.
“The @nypost story is mistaken” he wrote. “I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.
“I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the US and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews.”
(For the edification of our readers: the furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is required for transmission of the virus in ferrets, according to an April 27, 2021 article in the journal Nature.)
The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 15, 2023
He added in a subsequent tweet, “As I describe in my new book, “The Wuhan Cover-Up,” ethnically targeted bioweapons are real, and history makes clear there is no population who should be more concerned about a thing like that than people of Jewish and African descent.”
During Kennedy’s discussion on bioweapons and “ethnically targeted microbes” – which he said the United States has long been involved in developing, as well as China – Kennedy said he “knows a lot” about bioweapons and said the US has poured “hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted bioweapons. The Chinese have done the same thing.
“In fact, COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” he said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic differential and impact . . . We can target people by race.”
Jewish Leaders Slam Kennedy’s Remarks
“This is crazy,” said Morton Klein, President of Zionist Organization of America. “It makes no sense that they would do that. I read everything. I was totally against the vaccine. . . I wanted to convince myself it was correct not to take it. I have never seen anything like this.
“The claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories about COVID-19 that we have seen evolve over the last three years,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
“We have no words for this man’s lunacy,” the Stop Antisemitism organization added.
There is no scientific basis for Kennedy’s latest conspiracy theory, which plays into existing antisemitic and racist tropes, and which could lead to violence against Jews.
