RFK Jr. Suggests Covid-19 Was “Ethnically Targeted” to Spare Jews, Chinese People

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, denied allegations of antisemitism Saturday after The New York Post revealed video of the Democratic candidate suggesting that Covid-19 was an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon genetically engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

Kennedy’s latest foray into conspiracism came at an Upper East Side press dinner last Tuesday. “COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said while eating linguini and clam sauce. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Kennedy’s comments echo “well-worn anti-Semitic literature blaming Jews for the emergence and spread of coronavirus which began circulating online shortly after the pandemic broke out,” The Post noted. The paper quoted an infectious disease expert who said she did not “see any evidence that there was any design or bioterrorism that anyone tried to design something to knock off certain groups.”

The dinner reportedly “descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting” after host Doug Dechert and “octogenarian art critic Anthony Haden-Guest” began yelling at each other over climate change, which Dechert called a “hoax.” At one point in the argument, Dechert “let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, ‘I’m farting!’”

On Twitter, Kennedy called the latest Post story “mistaken” and said he had “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.” He claimed to have been arguing that the “U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons,” and that evidence demonstrating the disparate racial impact of Covid-19 is “a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons.” “I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered,” he said.

In subsequent tweets, Kennedy accused Post reporter Jonathan Levine of having “exploited this OFF-THE-RECORD conversation to smear me by association with an outlandish conspiracy theory.” Levine wrote Saturday that Dechert had said it was on the record, and a second attendee confirmed to the Post that Dechert told him the same.