RFK Jr’s offspring join him and wife Cheryl Hines on stage to launch 2024 White House bid

Anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kicked off his White House bid on Wednesday joined by his granddaughter and three of his children.   

The 69-year-old, known as RFK Jr., appeared at a campaign kick-off event in Boston with four-year-old Bobcat, daughter Kyra and two of his sons Finn and Aidan.

Kennedy gave a rambling, nearly two hour-long speech after being introduced to supporters by his actress wife Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame. 

He said the U.S. would have a ‘really funny first lady’ if he’s elected, while admitting that despite his ‘Kennedy’ last name, he’s a non-traditional presidential candidate.

‘I told my wife the other day, I said, I’ve got so many skeletons in my closet that if they could vote, I could be king of the world,’ Kennedy said. 

The former environmental lawyer is also being advised by ex-Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who ran for the White House himself in 2004 and 2008. 

The 76-year-old is currently Kennedy’s top surrogate and who jealously guards access as to the member of America’s most famous political family.

At Monday’s event in Boston, his glamourous British wife Elizabeth Kucinich, a 45-year-old environmental campaigner, was on hand too.

She made a name for herself during her husband’s tenure in Congress as being an advocate for vegan and organic food.   

Kennedy gave shout-outs to a few members of his famous family who came to his launch in Boston – including Doug Kennedy and Anthony Shriver. 

‘There are other members of my family who are not here today,’ the 69-year-old Kennedy scion said to laughs. ‘I know most American families – they never have any differences with each other,’ he said sarcastically. 

He spoke about how his family members ‘have different views on politics in this country’ and have ‘long personal relationships with President Biden’ – as a number of Kennedys work for the current administration.  

Kennedy said they disagreed with him on issues including government censorship, war and public health – alluding to his prominent vaccine skepticism – as he spoke to his crowd about children being poisoned by ‘chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs.’ 

‘And I love them back,’ he said of his family. 

He revealed to the crowd that many of them wrote him ‘beautiful letters of love’ this week ahead of his announcement, as well as calling and emailing him. 

Kennedy said he respected the beliefs of his family members and said they were entitled to their opinions – adding that he believed the country could learn from that. 

‘We have a polarization in this country today that is so toxic and so dangerous at any time since the Civil War,’ Kennedy said. ‘And part of the principle mission of my campaign and on my presidency is going to be to end that division.’

‘I’ll try to do that by encouraging people to talk about the values that we have in common, rather than the issues that keep us apart,’ Kennedy added. 

‘During this campaign and during my administration my objective will be to make as many Americans as possible forget that they are Republicans or Democrats and remember that they are Americans,’ he said. 

Kennedy talked at-length about how he started his career as an environmentalist, and bemoaned the environmental destruction in the last several decades. 

He noted how children today wouldn’t see butterflies and songbirds at the rate he did as a kid. 

‘I think we deserve a president in this country who cares about these things and talks about these things,’ Kennedy said. 

At 48 minutes in, Kennedy warned the crowd ‘I’m about halfway done with this speech.’ 

‘This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,’ he said to cheers. 

He then proceeded to hit former President Donald Trump for enforcing lockdowns during the opening months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

‘President Trump is blamed for a lot of things that he didn’t do and that he gets blamed for some things that he didn’t do,’ Kennedy said. ‘But it was the worst thing that he did to our country, to our civil rights, to our economy, to the middle class.’

Kennedy pointed out that Trump said ‘a lockdown wasn’t my idea,’ adding ‘but that’s not a good enough excuse.’ 

The candidate spoke of how children were locked at home with their abusers and people weighed 29 pounds heavier when being kept at home during COVID-19. 

More broadly, Kennedy attacked the healthcare system – including the uptick in the most severe kinds of autism. ‘Why aren’t we asking the question, what happened?’ 

‘If I am president of the United States I’m going to end the chronic disease epidemic,’ he pledged. ‘If I don’t significantly drop the level of chronic disease in our children after my first term, I do not want you to reelect me.’ 

Kennedy wrapped up his speech by talking about the war in Ukraine. 

He said that discussions of the war needed to be more nuanced than they are. 

‘We can’t tell one side that they’re Nazis and the other side that they love Putin,’ he said. 

Kennedy said the U.S. government needed to be clear about why we’re aiding Ukraine.  

‘It is not in America’s national interest to push Russia closer to China,’ Kennedy argued. ‘It’s not in America’s national interest to involve us in something that could lead to a nuclear exchange.’ 

‘We are in Ukraine for the right reasons,’ Kennedy also said. ‘We are there because of our compassion for the Ukrainian people who’ve been brutalized, who’ve been illegally invaded.’ 

But Kennedy questioned the cost of supporting Kyiv.

‘We have money for wars and we have money to bail [out] bankers,’ he said. ‘But what happens to American people who hit hard times?’ he mused.  

He pointed out that ‘inflation is a tax on the poor.’ 

Kennedy linked his own war wariness to his own father’s push against the Vietnam War.

Kennedy also noted that Martin Luther King Jr. was also against Vietnam because he connected it to the ‘poverty and violence and oppression at home and worldwide.’ 

Ahead of his speech he lauched a platform with six priorities. 

In the section about ‘peace,’ he said he’d explore a diplomatic solution to Ukraine. 

Kennedy was introduced by Hines, of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, and Kucinich, who previously mounted his own bids for the White House.

‘Hi, I’m Dennis Kucinich and I’m a Kennedy Democrat,’ the ex-Ohio congressman said. 

He referred to RJK Jr. as the ‘Paul Revere of our time.’ 

‘Moving from town to town, warning us if water is clean to drink, warning us if our air was safe to breathe … warning us when our food is unsafe to eat. And warning us when pharmaceuticals are unsafe to use,’ Kucinich said. 

Kennedy spent a portion of his speech speaking about Revere’s ride as well, which happened 248 years ago this week. 

The presidential hopeful opened his speech by talking about his family’s roots in Boston.  

The event was held at the historic Boston Park Plaza Hotel and Kennedy was able to fill a ballroom, with supporters stretching behind the press risers.

Organizers announced an overflow room was available too, if attendees wanted to be more comfortable. 

An hour and 35 minutes into the speech, the hotel’s fire alarm went off, causing a brief interruption. 

Kennedy tried to plow through his speech anyway, but then waited for the ringer to be shut off.  

‘We love you Bobby!’ one supporter yelled out as he resumed. 

Signs read ‘Kennedy 2024: Heal the Divide’ and ‘I’m a Kennedy Democrat.’ 

One supporter sported a red MAGA-style hat but it read ‘Make Vaccine Manufacturers Liable Again.’ 

Paula Chandler, a real estate investor from Woodstock, New York, said that she was backing Kennedy due to his stance over COVID-19 policies.

‘I just don’t trust Joe Biden. I don’t like what’s going on in our country,’ she told DailyMail.com ‘The thing for me was the lockdowns. The people who are unvaccinated have been ostracized. We really have lost tremendous civil liberties here.’

Peter, a businessman from Chicago who declined to give his full name, said that RFJ Jr would crack down on ‘corruption in Washington.’

‘He knows where the bad guys are in each department (of the U.S. government,’ he said.  

Ahead of Kennedy’s announcement, family photos were shown on a jumbotron, including historic photos of RFK and JFK, as well as pictures of RFK Jr. with prominent Democrats, including Al Gore. 

Kennedy’s official campaign kick-off came about two weeks after he filed paperwork on his plans to run with the Federal Election Commission.

Biden has yet to officially announce a reelection campaign but earlier this month said that he was ‘planning’ to seek a second term.

Kennedy has faced criticism from his own relatives for repeatedly parroting bogus conspiracy theories that FDA-approved jabs are not safe. 

He has also made the entirely fictional claim childhood vaccinations are linked to autism.

The nephew to slain President John F. Kennedy and the son of assassinated New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was kicked off Facebook in 2021.

The social media giant suspended his account as part of its crackdown on what it said was COVID-19 disinformation.

Kennedy’s announcement that he is running for the White House will also bring his colorful personal life back into the spotlight.

A leaked copy of his journal in 2001 contained sordid details of his serial cheating in which he spoke of his ‘lust demons.’

They contained scorecards of more than two dozen sexual conquests racked up behind his second wife’s back.

They carried the names of the women and the numbers from 1 to 10 next to each entry.

The codes corresponded to sexual acts, with 10 meaning full sexual intercourse.

The father-of-six married his third wife, Curb Your enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, in 2014. 

He asked his second wife Mary for a divorce in 2012.

Just four days later, the mother of four of his children – Conor, Finny, Kyra, and Aidan – was found hanged at home in Mount Kisco, New York.

She was reportedly convinced RFK Jr was having an affair. 

His attempt to become the next commander-in-chief will not be the first time someone from the Kennedy clan challenged a sitting Democratic president.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy took on President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980.

Carter, who was plagued by low approval ratings and a sluggish economy, saw off Kennedy’s bid but went on to lose to Republican Ronald Reagan.

Biden, too, faces similar challenges to what Carter experienced.

His popularity has taken a dip after years of slow growth and rampant inflation after the COVID-19 pandemic.

As many as 52.3 percent of Americans say they disapprove of his presidency, according to polling experts FiveThirtyEight.

That it is down from a 36 percent disapproval rating Biden had when he entered office in January 2021. 

Kennedy enters the race with 14 percent of Biden’s 2020 supporters saying they would select him as their choice, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll that was released Wednesday, ahead of Kennedy’s Boston announcement. 

Other surveys of Democratic and independent voters suggest Biden is too old to run again, but no high-profile member of his party has come forward to challenge him.

And only one elected sitting president has ever lost out on his party’s nomination for a second term – Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States, in 1852. 

Kennedy is joined in the Democratic race by Marianne Williamson, a self-help author.