TIME Reports: Inside the Very Online Campaign of RFK Jr.

hi I'm Molly ball of Time Magazine I'm here with my colleague Vera Bergen Gruen welcome Vera thank you uh so we're here to talk about your new profile of Bobby Kennedy Jr now you normally Cover disinformation far-right online communities how did that lead you to a profile of Bobby Kennedy yeah so I'm usually kind of an investigative correspondent I cover a lot of online movements you know where these kind of ideas come from that seem to mobilize large groups of people especially on the internet and I was covering a lot the anti-vaccine movement during covid how that was taking off and who the big personalities were that whose name kind of became synonymous with the movement and one of them was RFK Jr and people really responded to him partly maybe because he's a Kennedy they recognize his name but he had been running on anti-vaccine Organization for decades before it became you know trendy as people kind of said during covet before it became much more of a mainstream idea and so I actually went to a big uh rally on the Lincoln Memorial it was called the feed the mandates it was last January in 2022 and he was one of the keynote speakers it was a very right-wing rally it was the you know everyone was holding all these signs that had a range of very right-wing um slogans the proud voice were there and he is you know he's a Democrat and he was there as one of the main speakers and a lot of people really responded to him to his message about you know the dangers of vaccines what he said was a big cover by the government and you know all of them were Republicans all of them were very conservative and they told me that they really admired him and we're going to keep following you know his career and see what he did next and so I also kept covering what he did next and now you know he's running as a Democrat but seems to have a very odd Coalition of support from the far left the far right and kind of everything in between right so he's now running for president in the Democratic primary against President Joe Biden but it's a very unconventional campaign talk about the the time you spent with him the reporting that you did yeah so uh he actually lives in La uh you know he's married to Cheryl Hines who's a famous actress from Curb Your Enthusiasm and um you know he he lives in a very kind of unusual World usually for someone who wants to go into politics in that particular route and I went to his house he lives you know up you know thousand feet above sea level you lose reception when you drive up to his house in Mandeville Canyon and you know his entire home his living room it's a shrine to his famous Uncle famous father he has you know a bust of you know JFK he's got all these framed memorabilia from his dad he was uh nine when his uncle was assassinated and 14 when his dad was shot and so it's almost you know he's created this like time has kind of stopped at that moment he's got they're so you know they were both so young when they were killed and so he they're all very they have all these campaign posters you know RFK Jr himself is uh 69. and so you know it's almost like that's frozen in time as these very young charismatic politicians were cut down in their Prime and he says he's trying to continue on their legacy and you can tell by being in his home that you know he's kind of spent his whole life in that shadow and thinking about that Legacy wow what what's he like what's his personality he's he's a really interesting uh guy you can tell that he he has the demeanor of someone who's used to being listened to he was born at Kennedy he was always you know he had he a very political uh obviously famous political family um and it's almost like he's used to being listened to on any topic whether it's cryptocurrency or Ukraine you know he goes He studies it and then you know he goes out and talks about what he's learned and he's used to people taking him seriously and so he's uh you know it's odd in some ways because you look at him and you he's he he Bears a striking resemblance to his dad everyone always said that he was the one that was the most similar and the one that most kind of had his political talents but he uh he has a vocal disorder he lost his voice when he was 42. he um he says it's a side effect of a vaccine that there's no proof of that uh but it's almost like you're looking at his dad or his Uncle at someone who looks pretty familiar but you know he got old and they never did and so he kind of has this um again this very kind of 60s look a very similar way of expressing himself but it then when he when you listen to what he's actually saying um he's someone who clearly spends a lot of time online he speaks kind of in the in the parlance of someone who's you know spends a lot of time on Twitter spaces and talks a lot on kind of right-wing telegram groups and so it's a really odd combination of that kind of 60s nostalgic style you know he he wears the skinny ties that were popular in the 60s just like his uncle and his dad he always has his sleeves rolled up there's a certain look that whether consciously or consciously he's trying to emulate and at the same time he's probably the most online candidate he's got a tick tock he's out there talking about censorship and you know um you know all those kind of things and so it's it was very it was a very interesting conversation to to listen to someone who again this seems stuck in such different kind of spheres yeah when you talk about him sort of going on and on and on at length to your point um but you also you describe his appeal as being a sort of Maga for Democrat rats it seems like it's a Nostalgia that goes beyond just the Kennedy family right it's a it's an older America that he's trying to invoke yeah it really struck me from you know his work uh throughout his life in different ways he he keeps referring back to you know and even before he was even alive I mean he's kind of talking about you know people used to be able to go out when they lost their job and you know catch fish in the river and feed their families and now the rivers are polluted and so it's what I'm trying to say is it goes all the way back he really kind of has this very nostalgic vision of America um but especially kind of from what he considers the Golden Era of the 60s which again you know his life was kind of divided into before and after his father was assassinated and you know it cut short this campaign that was so much about optimism about forward-looking Bobby Kennedy's campaign was it was just all about the future and about you know this this particular vision for America and he sees himself as the heir of that but really all he talks about is the past he kind of talks about you know you know the companies then used to be able to poison medicines without anyone holding him accountable the government you know people used to trust the government and you know stress the government not to lie to them or censor them which if you know the 60s I don't think it's quite accurate but uh he he speaks about this era and clearly wants to return to it and so I specifically just asked him I said it's it actually strikes me pretty that's pretty Maga you're pretty trumpian and he said he's like you know I I want to go back to the America of my youth and he wants to you know when you go to his campaign rallies the signs are I'm a Kennedy Democrat and then the same font in the same blue block letters from the 60s um and even though I think most people now most of most voters are younger than him but it still kind of seems to bring up something in most Democrats again this era that's clearly been kind of idealized but they you know it sounds pretty good to people to say sure we want to go back to that we're dissatisfied with the current current political sphere we're okay with Biden we don't really like him all that much and we'd love to go back to what you're describing well and people probably know the famous name they may know his anti-vaccine uh activism but but talk a little bit about his career before that so he uh you know he got really into environmental law when he was younger he spent three decades you know becoming a very famous Environmental Lawyer uh he he got all kinds of awards accolades um and he was extremely respected in that field he was you know he's pretty intense and obsessive about his passions everyone says that you can tell no matter what he focuses on he's he kind of tends to be that way and so he just you know relentlessly pursued polluters he he was accredited with cleaning up the Hudson you know kind of suing all these companies uh coal oil and you know focusing a lot on indigenous communities he traveled a lot to South America and you know again like it's that's what many people do remember um I think he was he was on magazine covers as you know big Kennedy who matters the one who's going to be the the one who has the political future and uh then in the 2000s and it's important to realize that this is a continuation of this world for you it's not a lot of people have been asking recently since become so prominent you know what happened to RFK Jr you know when did he kind of when did he go off the deep end but when you it's important to understand that for him he was pursuing polluters and then he decided that vaccines were polluted with Mercury um none of this as a scientific basis uh scientists and you know experts dispute this uh and you know they they say it's not true um but you know he basically decided that vaccines were being polluted that uh you know he says that when he was younger there was no autism uh there weren't as many peated allergies he basically pulls this all these facts together which you know experts say he takes out of context and uh basically decided that you know kind of with the same idea of going backwards uh the thing that I changed were vaccines and that vaccines are dangerous for children and again there's no factual basis to this but he founded with that same obsessive energy uh basically builds the largest anti-vaccine organization in the United States and uh the Kennedy name kind of helped with that because if you come out of nowhere and start saying these things you might not get very far but he used his family name to kind of give some respectability to very French anti-vaccine views um which remained Fringe until recently until the pandemic yeah as you said the covet sort of brought a lot of these probably important to emphasize very dangerous on scientific non-factual ideas about vaccines into the mainstream very dangerous ideas uh but but he's had this appetite for conspiracy theories for a long time in addition to the vaccine stuff even even stuff about his dad right right and he seemed to be a bit more low-key about that back when he was you know again he was constantly asked to go on on TV interviews to talk about his family to talk about his environmental work and once he really veered hard into these you know dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines he was kind of ostracized he wasn't allowed to go on the documentaries about his dad he was people basically didn't want to interview about anything and so he started going further and further into every kind of into other conspiracy jerseys which you may have kind of believed before but clearly now felt you might as well go into them so he had a very extensive theory about the 2004 election being stolen he thinks the ca killed his dad uh he you know and then he just kind of goes on and you know he thinks 5G is being installed in order to harvest our you know all kinds of different information about us and all these things usually positions in a way that many people would kind of agree with and then he kind of goes way way further and it's a specific tactic that is pretty effective to get people to believe these conspiracies does he have a governing philosophy Beyond this sort of idea that there's a conspiracy out there does he have a set of of political beliefs that you could imagine you know being president and and working from that right I mean he his main idea and he hasn't set out very detailed policy uh proposals or anything like that uh for for most uh areas his main idea is that you know there's this corporate control of government of every agency and he needs to root that out he needs to get all rid of all those financial conflicts of interest all those entanglements um and you know basically return the government to the people and his uh his tagline for his campaign is reclaimed democracy which is pretty Stark uh in that particular way too and uh again I asked him how would you do that you know how that seems you know it sounds I think few people would disagree that you know getting rooting out any you know corruption all these things he says on their face sound good to most people uh he said it would be very easy he was fully confident he said I'm just you know he says he sued so many of these agencies that he knows exactly who's a good person and a bad person and he'll be able to basically get rid of them um and I just kind of started giving him some agencies I said you know what about the FDA he's like oh yeah that guy's a bad guy you know I'm going to put in the people I used to work with when I was a lawyer and then I asked about the CIA and he said most people were um you know Duty full of servants just trying to do their best but again you need to kind of get rid of the top man you know top people who are you know in his mind kind of completely controlled by all these corrupt corporations that are pulling the strings um and that's the main that's just his main message is basically get me in there and I will kind of go back to this particular version of thing you know he doesn't have from what our discussions a particular immigration policy he doesn't have comprehensive policies for Health Care um maybe you know it's obviously early days but the two main things are you know ending the kind of corporate control but he says the corporate control of American government and also uh ending you know he's ending endless Wars he says he's going to stop support for Ukraine and kind of get America out of this cycle of being involved abroad and one of the most interesting things I thought about your story was uh this very unconventional set of fans that he's attracted he obviously runs in some very elite circles uh but his campaign now is attracting support for from everyone from Aaron Rodgers the quarterback to Jack see the Twitter founder Alicia Silverstone other other Hollywood figures so talk a little bit about the sort of very unconventional campaign he's running yeah it's it's very odd the kind of people he's attracting have pretty big megaphones you know they're very well-known people some of them um again I think a lot of them are kind of drawn they're they're not excited about Joe Biden and it's not that they're necessarily behind everything RFK Jr is selling because it's still unclear like we said what exactly he's selling for the most part but they like having an alternative and what they're mainly drawn to I think is being able to discuss these pet issues which a lot of them have as well you know Alicia Silverstone the actress was very involved for this anti-vaccine organization you know you know which is called the children's uh Health defense fund so it's like it's all around the idea of children and like you know be you know kind of saving the children I guess um other people like what he says about censorship this has been a very young long ongoing debate especially in the last couple of years about people being canceled about people who you know who decides what is misinformation why can people be on Twitter you know this is the kind of free speech absolutist Elon Musk style people um he he basically just because of his name and because of the way he is he's basically giving all these people a platform in order to discuss these ideas in a way that you would never have with even Trump with anyone who's kind of in the current political mainstream um and so people you know musk wants to have him on on he had a two-hour conversation where RFK Jr mainly interviewed musk he said what do you think and so musk was thrilled to tell him what he thought um and so he's I think that's the reason he's attracting this very unlikely Coalition is partly is less because people most people don't want to necessarily hear what RK Jr thinks in terms of fixing the country but he's presenting an opportunity to have these conversations interesting so as you report even most members of his family don't support what he's doing they've written op-eds saying you know he's sort of abusing the Kennedy name but he does seem to be getting traction there's consistently now in a lot of these early polls of the Democratic primary he's in solid double digits as high as 20 percent should we be taking him seriously as a candidate could could he win well that's a good question um I think you know again there aren't many uh people challenging Joe Biden so I think in terms of polls he has a lot of name recognition again he's a Kennedy people you know you talk to pollsters and they say okay A lot of people are just saying yes I would support him because they aren't excited about Biden and the Kennedy name means something uh but he is attracting like I was skeptical but he is attracting an interesting amount of support um I've spoken to a lot of people who either didn't vote in the last election or you know just just kind of seem for for different reasons motivated about this guy and um he he is running what he calls kind of a you know he's he's going on a lot of podcasts he's kind of attracting these really he's spending he's getting a lot of oxygen from a lot of new mediums uh not that new but that aren't really used as much in campaigning and so a lot of people are basically listening to him you know he's recently gone on Joe Rogan uh 11 million people listen to every episode that's an average and so that's a lot of people for someone like him who four years ago was completely on the fringes and nobody would really have on their platform just to talk about some pretty dangerous conspiracy theories like you know the doctors and experts say you know this is going to get people killed and he says he he told me straight up he said running for president makes it harder for me to be censored and so he's kind of doing this to an extent to be listened to and when you talk to him you really get the sense that he was uh he was very upset and very hurt by uh all these by his family members by the political establishment by everyone turning their backs on someone they used to call during campaign season to endorse them you know and so he feels like he's in his element he's doing what he's meant to be doing and uh so just by going out there and constantly not refusing a single interview going on every podcast um I don't think he can win but I think he's exposing his real goal seems to be to also just expose the more people that he can to these ideas so it sounds like it's almost a form of indication for him kind of felt that way yeah yeah well you're right at the end of your piece the the that his candidacy may say more about America in 2023 than about him specifically what to you is the larger phenomenon that he represents I think he's giving you know this is a it started it was it started before covid but it really became really uh apparent to most people during covid these conversations that people wanted to have this uh kind of bottomless appetite to discuss we can call it conspiracy theories we can call it disinformation but really wanting to be out there um challenging you know challenging the kind of what they would call the mainstream narrative about whether it's covid whether it's about Ukraine there's a lot of kind of anti-establishment contrarian uh people who have pretty big platforms who are you know pretty well off and they want to be having this conversation these conversations in a political context and he's basically giving them the excuse to do that and so I think you know people love discussing this kind of stuff people have a lot of the the pandemic the disruption of it uh and just you know just the amount of confusion that there was with the health maintenance with everything else um you know people had a lot of legitimate questions about that um it it also allowed you know gave an opening for a lot of conspiracy theories um you know a deep and distrust of government of government agencies of the government telling you what to do you know uh the vaccine again vaccine mandates kind of only expanded that and uh he used that to his Advantage because he's basically you know he he's he he and many other people want to keep relitigating what happened during covid um and you know with everything with the with the 2020 election January 6th so many very big moment disruptive moments happened and these people want to keep discussing it and kind of what they want to say is we were right so he's kind of you know he's like we were right about this you know they said that you should wear a mask and then they said this and then they say that and some people want to keep discussing it a lot of people who really fell into those things you know lost family members over it lost jobs over it you know they were ostracized by people and now he's giving them a chance to kind of again be kind of Vindicated and to have a very high platform discussion of these things which a year ago probably wouldn't be getting this much oxygen if that makes sense right such a fascinating piece Vera thank you so much thanks Molly

Channel: TIME

Views: 14,135

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Id: AWS14CyDzT4

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023