Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. will not participate this weekend in a far-right Christian nationalist conference he has previously attended, his spokesperson said, despite being listed as a featured speaker on the event’s website.
“Mr. Kennedy is not a featured speaker for the upcoming tour. We have put in a request to have his photo removed,” Kennedy’s communications director, Stefanie Spear, said in a text message.
Kennedy, best known for his skepticism of vaccines and heterodox political views, has previously participated in the ReAwaken America tour, which was started by a conservative entrepreneur and Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Kennedy’s activism against vaccine mandates and alleged censorship by social media platforms has endeared him to the far-right, especially since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, when conservatives frequently promoted the famous Democrat’s diatribes against Anthony Fauci and social distancing measures.
Other speakers have included Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former Trump adviser Roger Stone, former Trump administration officials, and some of the leading voices behind efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.
This year’s tour, which kicks off this weekend at Trump’s golf resort in Miami, has attracted extra controversy because it includes speakers who have promoted overtly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, such as claiming that Jews orchestrated the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, viral pandemics and more. “Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we’re trying to take down today,” one speaker, Scott McKay, said last year on his streaming show.
Many speakers close to the former president are still planning to participate, including Eric Trump, who has lashed out at reporters for pointing out his connection to people who have downplayed the Holocaust and praised Hitler.
Kennedy, however, is sitting out this year’s tour. “He was never part of this tour,” Spear said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
