WASHINGTON — House Democrats slammed Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a hearing on Thursday over his comments promoting a false claim that suggested COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
“Hate speech has consequences. Distortion of the truth has consequences,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said. “It’s not censorship to try to correct that record.”
Republicans had invited Kennedy to testify about online censorship before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, but Democrats called for the invitation to be rescinded after the New York Post reported on comments made by Kennedy promoting a conspiracy theory about the Covid-19 pandemic.
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” Kennedy said, according to a recording obtained by the New York Post. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not.”
Kennedy’s remarks led three House Democrats to send a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Oh., the subcommittee’s chairman, to formally demand they rescind Kennedy’s invitation to testify.
“Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly and recently spread vile and dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories that tarnish his credibility as a witness and must not be legitimized with his appearance before the U.S. Congress nor given the platform of an official committee hearing to spread his baseless and discriminatory views,” the letter stated.
In his opening remarks, Kennedy said he has “never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic.”
“These are the most appalling, disgusting pejoratives and they’re applied to me to silence me because people don’t want me to have that conversation about the war, about groceries, about inflation, about the war on the middle class in this country that we need to be having,” he said.
During the hearing, Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, and fellow Democrats continued to criticize Republicans for allowing Kennedy to testify before the subcommittee.
“They intentionally chose to elevate this rhetoric to give these harmful dangerous views a platform in the halls of the United States Congress,” Plaskett said. “That’s endorsing that speech. That’s not just supporting free speech.”
“They have co-signed on idiotic, bigoted messaging,” she added.
Connolly told Kennedy — President Joe Biden’s main rival in the 2024 Democratic primary — that he was only invited to testify by Republicans because they wanted to embarrass the incumbent president.
“You’re not here to propound your case for censorship. You are here for cynical reasons to be used politically by that side of the aisle to embarrass the current president of the United States, and you’re an enabler in that effort today,” Connolly said. “It brings shame on a storied name that I revere.”
