Independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a statement to the “Mainstream Media” after The New Yorker published a profile of the candidate that featured disreputable claims about him.
Though the magazine reported claims that Kennedy was a “lifelong philanderer” with “a very addictive nature,” one component of the profile featuring the carcass of a bear cub captured the corporate press’ attention.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once retrieved a bear that was killed by a motorist and left it in New York’s Central Park with a bicycle on top, sparking a mystery that consumed the city a decade ago,” AP News reported. “Kennedy described the 2014 incident in a video that was posted to social media Sunday, adding it would be included in a New Yorker article that he expected to be damaging.”
The New Yorker included a photo of Kennedy posing with his hand in the mouth of the dead bear. Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker… pic.twitter.com/G13taEGzba
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 4, 2024
The independent candidate released a statement on X indicting the corporate press early Tuesday morning.
“Every time you write ‘roadkill,’ I will mention dirty C.I.A. regime-change wars and our $35 trillion debt,” wrote Kennedy, who claims the agency was actively involved in his uncle John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“Every time you write ‘barbecued goat,’ I will invoke normalized government censorship, vanishing topsoil, threatened wilderness, the epidemics of addiction and loneliness, the deaths of despair, and the world’s largest chronic disease burden,” he continued, referencing Vanity Fair’s implication that he once ate a dog which, he claims, was actually a goat.
“Every time you write ‘vaccine crank,’ I will remind you of an industry with a well-documented track record of putting profits before people, an industry with unreliable regulatory oversight, an industry which is one of the most powerful entities in the world,” Kennedy said. “Every time you write ‘fringe,’ I will remind you of my pledge to heal the divide and center us in our shared humanity.” To the Mainstream Media
Every time you write "roadkill," I will mention dirty C.I.A. regime-change wars and our $35 trillion debt.
Every time you write "barbecued goat," I will invoke normalized government censorship, vanishing topsoil, threatened wilderness, the epidemics of…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 6, 2024
“Your opportunistic fidelity to a monstrous status quo has turned you into the Red Herring Machine,” he added. “The Defamation Industrial Complex. The Abettor of the Social Lie.”
“We are a beautiful but polarized and ailing nation,” Kennedy concluded. “The more you smear me, the more I'll keep speaking.”
The same day Kennedy received widespread corporate press coverage regarding his decade-old misuse of a bear carcass, his campaign announced an update in the candidate’s battle to secure ballot access in the 2024 election.
“The campaign turned in signatures in Arkansas, Kansas, Maryland, Vermont, and Virginia,” noted a Monday press release. “All signatures have been validated by the campaign’s independent ballot access validation firm, confirming Kennedy has more than enough signatures to achieve ballot access in each state.”
“The campaign’s aggressive ballot access operation has surpassed all its milestones to ensure the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket is on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” the statement added. “The ballot access operation is fully funded with more than $15 million raised.”
The campaign said Kennedy had collected over one million signatures, which is more than any presidential candidate in American history.
“Independent ballot access is a labyrinth laced with a mine field,” Nick Brana, Kennedy’s senior advisor and ballot access director, said during a virtual July 31 press conference. “Oftentimes, the secretaries of state do not know their own rules, they will sometimes mislead you, some are very helpful. They hadn’t even produced the forms that were necessary until sometimes days or hours before we had to submit them.”
“The amount of challenges is truly incredible because this was not meant to be done,” he added. “It was meant to be a barrier to any kind of challenge to the entrenched big money duopoly.”
Brana attributed Kennedy’s ballot access achievements to the efforts of over 100,000 nationwide volunteers.
At the time of this reporting, Kennedy is officially on the ballot in 15 states.
The campaign has submitted signatures in 22 states and has reportedly collected enough signatures for ballot access in six additional states.
