If you scratch any conspiracy theorist, you’ll find an anti-Semite underneath:
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dished out wild COVID-19 conspiracy theories this week during a press event at an Upper East Side restaurant, claiming the bug was a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
Kennedy floated the idea during a question-and-answer portion of raucous booze and fart-filled dinner at Tony’s Di Napoli on East 63d Street.
“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
I think I have had my fill of this asshole.
BTW- thank you all so much for the donations!
Elizabelle
Now they’ll have to move on to No Labels.
In fact, the FTF NY Times has an article up about the “centrist” group right now. With no reader comments allowed.
Scamp Dog
I keep lowering my opinion of RFK Jr, and somehow it’s never enough.
Jertian
I wonder if I can get my alma mater to rescind the honorary doctorate they awarded him years ago.
Baud
Nominating
Baud
@Jertian:
In what, conspiracy theory?
Ken
At the very least I’m hoping from an announcement by the DNC starting, “Any lunatic can say they are a Democratic candidate — and has — but…”
Cacti
What a loser RFK’s namesake turned out to be.
Alison Rose
Always new reasons for people to hate us.
People who claim Jews control everything don’t seem to realize they wouldn’t be breathing enough oxygen to spew their bullshit if we did.
pacem appellant
I’m sure the families of deceased Chinese and Jewish victims of COVID-19 are super excited about this “targeted” bio weapon. /s Can we yeet this guy into outerspace finally?
Baud
The good news is it’ll be that much easier to dismiss the howling for Biden to debate RFK Jr. out of hand.
MisterForkbeard
His response to this is really bad, too. Basically, “I did nothing wrong and it’s JUST THE SCIENCE that I’m completely accurate about reporting. Also, this was off the record and it shows just how much the MSM wants to shut me up”
Meanwhile, the blue checks are eating it up. The blue check really is the best indicator of having one’s head up one’s ass.
EDIT: Jason, David Sacks and the rest of the pro-russia idiots have all come out. “Of COURSE the United States is developing ethnically targeted bioweapons. Are we just not allowed to talk about this ever? Also, the MSM is really showing how much they’re afraid of RFK here, so he should be president. I am not a crackpot/anti-semite.”
Alison Rose
@pacem appellant: Yeah. My great-uncle died of Covid, and he was a very Jewy Jew. Guess he forgot to pay his Soros Union dues or something.
Amir Khalid
Per RFK Jr’s bat-shit crazy theory, why spare only Ashkenazi Jews? Do the Chinese have some kind of problem with, say, Sephardic Jews?
Denali5
How on earth can this person claim to be a Democrat?
OzarkHillbilly
I’m running a little late John. I have to figure out the Zelle and Venmo shit. Might be the middle of next week before I do.
tom
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Although it is not a funny topic, that comment did make me laugh.
It’s like the Arizone rep who is now saying he didn’t mean colored people. Then what did you mean?
Martin
@Baud: But without a debate how will we know if Biden wasn’t the one who unleashed this pro-Jew bioweapon? What is he hiding?
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: We’ll be here!
OzarkHillbilly
@Denali5: The RFK is silent.
JPL
@Martin: RFK jr stated that trump was the best debater since Lincoln. That could be his most way out there comment, or at least a close second. When the orange clown was stalking Hillary on stage, who among us didn’t think of Lincoln.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: You always are.
MattF
I’m somewhat irked with myself that this came as a surprise to me. That said, I’m willing to put serious money on the proposition that it was not a surprise to the media scrum surrounding RFKJ. They knew and stayed quiet.
Jinchi
A crypto enthusiast who thinks vaccines are poison, wants to put Dr. Fauci on trial, believes the Ukrainians are only fighting because the West tricked them into it, and is an anti-Semite to boot.
How is it that these guys check literally all the boxes, every single time?
Why not just sample a couple of prime conspiracies from the Qanon collection? You don’t have to buy the whole thing.
Baud
@Martin:
I bet he helped design the Jewish space laser too.
Alison Rose
@Amir Khalid: We’re the powerful ones. When people talk about Jews controlling the government, running Hollywood, space lasers, etc, the Jews they’re picturing are Ashkenazi because that’s what most people are familiar with. I’d bet if you asked most of the goyim in this country to name the different diaspora and ethnic groups within Judaism, they wouldn’t even know what the hell you meant.
Kent
Because he can’t ratfuck the Democrats if he runs as a Republican.
Jackie
@Elizabelle: Joe Manchin is speaking at a No Labels event this Monday 😡
”Manchin, who is up for re-election to the Senate next year, has not ruled out running for president as part of the No Labels ticket.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/shows/meetthepress/blog/rcna93860
His unsatiated ego infuriates me to no end.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m fairly certain the RF stands for Rat Fucking.
Jinchi
Speaking of Qanon, have they tried to arrange a meetup between RFK Jr. and the resurrected JFK Jr., or have they decided he is JFK Jr.
steppy
But it won’t, although he was always done. I’m afraid we’re going to have to hear his, and Williamson’s, shit until the summer of 2024. Please be prepared to sprain your eyes rolling them. I see no alternative.
Comrade Misfit
Quibble: Scratch a COVID conspiracy theorist and you’ll find a Nazi.
RFK,Jr.’s been a few bricks shy of a full hod for a very long time. He’s a nepo-baby who has been cruising off his family name for his entire life. Sort of like His Orange God.
dmsilev
He’d probably do pretty well running in the GOP primary with those views.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
What’s old is new, again:
Frank Wilhoit
@Alison Rose: It has something to do with Israeli domestic politics also, does it not? I confess irresponsible ignorance of the details.
JPL
@Alison Rose: What color are the Jewish people? I just heard that was a topic among the assholes. Now I get to use my favorite term when I’m stumped. WTF
CaseyL
Calling yourself a Democrat when you very clearly are not one should be sufficient to bar you from the debates. But things didn’t work that way in 2016 or 2020, so who knows.
I definitely do not want to see this asshole on stage for a debate. I want to backhand him hard every time I see his face. What a disgrace to his name.
Ken
@Amir Khalid: Maybe his campaign manager told him, “Remember we don’t say ‘the Jews’ any more, say ‘cosmopolitan financiers’,” and he got mixed up.
dmsilev
Today’s horrifying yet completely unsurprising read:
A coach accused, again and again
Yes, his last name really is ‘Groom’.
Alison Rose
@Frank Wilhoit: In some circles, yes. Because while it is true that criticism of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic, it is also true that it’s not necessarily NOT antisemitic. But Israeli Jews comprise members of many diasporas.
Ken
But it all holds together. Without the vaccine microchips, how would the traffickers locate the teens for adrenochrome extraction and take them to the secret Chinese biolab in the basement if the Ukrainian pizza restaurant?
Jackie
@JPL: That’s RFK Jr signaling to TIFG he’s open to being his VP.
Stoking the ego is requirement #1.
Alison Rose
@JPL: Because they do not want us to be white. Which I’ve always found amusing considering I’m about two shades away from Casper the Friendly Ghost.
JPL
Truthfully, I can’t understand why most of his family ignore him.
MattF
@dmsilev: The Programmer has decided that subtlety is useless.
Jerzy Russian
@dmsilev: We need to settle the writer’s strike. The replacement writers for this timeline are just phoning it in.
JPL
@Alison Rose: It signals to me that they are really sociopaths.
Urza
@Jerzy Russian: Pretty sure the current writers are just taking what was in the trash bin when the real writers walked out.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Maybe I should change my last name to President.
Noskilz
I suspect conspiracy theorists tend to go the full crazy buffet option because if they are puddingheaded enough to buy into one, it’s not as if they are going to suddenly bring to bear amazing critical thinking skills against adding new conspiracies to the list.
Mike in NC
Nobody ever invites me to booze-and-fart-filled dinners!
Kay
@Jinchi:
He believes they’re making the targeted infectious agents in labs in Ukraine. He says it after he describes the targeting.
Have they identified the idiots at the table with him yet? The people nodding along? What basement did they crawl out of?
Honus
@Jackie: Manchin is dead meat. Justice will take his senate seat (it is impossible for a democrat to win in West Virginia now) and it’s not like democrats will flock to him in a presidential election. He may pull a few republican never trumper votes but he’s not going to get any significant democratic support. He needs to get a Fox pundit slot but he’s really not articulate or interesting enough for that.
Brachiator
@Denali5:
There have always been progressives and unaffiliated lefties who see Big Pharma as evil. It only takes a slight nudge to push them over into loony town.
JCJ
@Alison Rose: Former frequent commenter Mnemosyne (sp?) would often cite a Chris Rock routine with a YouTube clip “That train is never late!”
Seems applicable here.
Baud
We should have a pool on when RFK Jr shows up in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
BeautifulPlumage
@dmsilev: “Groom” oh for fucks sake…really? I’d say ‘fire the writers if the writers weren’t out on a legitimate strike.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
These types seek out positions of authority over young people to find their victims. Those who seek out people to be in positions of authority over young people need to be alert to this singular fact.
BeautifulPlumage
@Mike in NC: sounds like a theme for the next BJ meetup!
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: Big Pharma is evil, but not in the ways these people think they are. They’re evil in the same way AMTPT is evil.
Brachiator
Maybe there has been a post about this already, but I just saw this at the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. The claim is that the No Labels group is going to field a third party candidate.
Explains Manchin, I guess.
NotMax
Yeah, right. There is an argument it was created by denizens of Pluto as payback for us demoting their homeworld.
MattF
@NotMax: Nyah Nyah, dwarf planet.
patrick II
@JPL:
You have to admit Trump is very effective at MMA rules debates.
Jinchi
@Baud: I think RFK Jr plans to show up at a debate with Biden holding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Princess
You can’t spell ratfuck without RFK Jr.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
“Too Jewish.”
:)
Tim Curtin
@Jinchi:
There are no brakes on this roller coaster they’ve built themselves. Once you’re on, you can’t stop.
Ben Cisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
The stoopid, it BURNS!!!
Fact is, if the media wasn’t fluffing this shriveled nutsack of a humanoid, no one would know he’s running.
I don’t actually advocate lining the MSM against a wall, but I am beginning to understand the sentiment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Cisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: Just nuke the Village from orbit.
Adam L Silverman
For those wondering, here’s where this stuff is coming from to hook people like RFK Jr:
Ben Cisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Villago Delenda Est: Wow, that was fast!! Good to see you!
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: He most likely doesn’t actually know that there are Sephardic Jews, let alone what Ashkenazi and Sephardi really mean. Not that it would matter ethnically as there’s no real differences. Sephardic Jews are Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent. Ashkenazi and Sephardi is really about differences in rabbinic interpretation of Judaic Law to inform the practice of Judaism between the senior rabbis in different parts of Europe. If you look at the Israeli Jews in the orthodox Sephardic political parties and movements, they’re ethnically indistinct from the Israeli Jews in the orthodox Ashkenazi political parties and movements. Where you see a major ethnic division is with the Mizrahi Jews, which are Jews of Arab and Persian descent – Middle Eastern Jews. Also, the Ethiopian Jews. And, of course, the Jews of Asian descent, which includes the descendants of the Indian Jews (the white and black Jews of Cochin/Kerala), as well the Central Asian Jews, the Jews of the Steppes (on both sides), the Jews of China, and in my family’s case, whichever family members went from the Mongolian Steppes into Korea for a bit, then back into and across the Steppes into Imperial Russia, before my maternal great grandmother walked Deity knows how many hundreds of miles till she reached a port, got on a boat, and then came to the US.
Additionally, the only major genetic markers that show up distinctly as Jewish is a couple for the genetic disease Tay-Sachs and one combination for Jews who descend from the Cohanim, the priestly caste (usually people with last names like Cohen, Cohan, Keohane, Kahn). The other group that has this latter unique marker are the Palestinians, which provides something of a genetic confirmation for what we know: the Palestinians were originally Judeans who did not go into exile and first embraced Christianity and then Islam. Which only makes the dispute that much more tragic.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: That was my 3rd cousin. My 3rd cousin invented the laser as part of his doctoral research. Let me know if you want the friends and family discount to book time on it.
Jackie
@Honus: “ He may pull a few republican never trumper votes…”
Dems need as many never trumper votes as possible as we are divided almost 50-50 by partisan voters. So, yes, Manchin is taking votes away from Biden. That’s important in purple states. And for voters who are ageist – altho Manchin isn’t exactly a spring chicken himself.
Ruckus
@Scamp Dog:
With RFK Jr you start at the bottom and work your way down.
You will likely still be too high but at least your odds of hitting it reasonably close are better.
Alison Rose
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, most people know very little about us, yet in general, wherever they fall on the prejudice spectrum, they tend to think they know a lot because they watched a Woody Allen movie once or something. As far as what they “understand” about our ethnic and geographical variety, my own background is basically what they view all of us as: Eastern European (Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, mostly) Ashkenazi with pale skin and dark hair that turns into a nest of frizz and curls with half an ounce of water.
NotMax
@Adam L Silverman
Semi-related.
Time was Stalin was throwing money at not only Lysenkoism but also bizarre plans in the sphere of Russian genetics.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Yep.
bbleh
@Jackie: @Honus: @Brachiator: concur re Justice. Manchin is just doing this for the brand enhancement. Rumor a while back was that he would bail on the Senate and run for Gov, which he’s been before, and I can see that MAYBE working in WV.
The greater danger is the protest-vote effect. Totally unclear to me whether that would hurt Dems or Reps more: there’s a LOT of Reps who would welcome a sensible moderate centrist [insert other Beltway-pundit buzzwords] as an alternative to TFG or a [shudder] Democrat. But there’s a long way to go yet, and if Manchin actually does sign on, it will only cement his status as a clueless tool.
Jackie
For Floridian jackals:
“Some people” are starting to call Pudd’n Boots DePast😂
“Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has fired roughly a dozen staffers — and more are expected in the coming weeks as he shakes up his big-money political operations after less than two months on the campaign trail.
Those who were let go were described to NBC News by a source familiar as mid-level staffers across several departments whose departures were related to cutting costs. The exits come after the departures of David Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, veterans of DeSantis’ political orbit, which were first reported by Politico.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-fires-roughly-dozen-staffers-campaign-shake-rcna94470
bbleh
@Alison Rose: @Frank Wilhoit: @JPL: personally, I NEVER bought into that early-20th-century notion that the Irish were White. I mean, if standards don’t last, then they don’t mean anything!
Ken
@Jackie: I think the source must also be outside the campaign, or at least skeptical of its chances. Otherwise we’d hear the usual nonsense about creating a lean machine laser-focused on priorities, 100% dedicated to reaching the White House, blah blah blah.
Tony G
@Alison Rose: Good lord, what a piece of shit this guy is. The fact that he chose to make these remarks in New York City — home to about 1.6 million Jews and more than a half-million Chinese-Americans — is just extra special.
Tony G
@bbleh: My Italian ancestors certainly weren’t white when they came to New York City more than 100 years ago.
Alison Rose
@Tony G: Wouldn’t shock me in the least if he ever called it Jew York City.
Brachiator
@bbleh:
Of course , Biden is a sensible moderate centrist, so where is a more moderate Democratic Party challenger coming from?
Turnout in 2020 was high. Where are all the supposed GOP moderates hiding?
Cliosfanboy
@Jinchi:
it’s called “crank magnetism ” (seriously).
I keep thinking there’s a Chinese food at Christmas joke in this somewhere.
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: We visited Cochin in 2001. We went to Jew Town, none left, sadly. Cochin is 8° North, very hot. It was a major trading port for millenia which I believe explains the Jewish presence. Kerala is a communist state – democratic.
Ruckus
@Denali5:
How on earth can this person claim to be a Democrat?
If it wasn’t for history it would be easy to ask how can this person claim to be human.
tobie
@JCJ: Funny you should mention Mnemosyne. I was wondering what happened to her. I liked her comments, her irreverence and her impatience with bullshit.
Yutsano
Oh Cole. You know this won’t be the end of him. If anything, he’ll probably pick up steam because now the MSM have a new shiny exciting toy to write about and rack up their expense accounts. So fresh! So new! So little work they need to put in now!
Soprano2
@Honus: They don’t care if he’s articulate; he’s willing to criticize Democrats, so that’s good enough for Fox.
BR
@Baud:
This is my takeaway as well. Team Biden can ignore him now (not that they weren’t already, but even more).
Ohio Mom
@tobie: Mnemosyne gave up commenting to have time to write romance novels, which she is doing successfully. She dropped back in for a thread when Roe was overturned, and it was lovely to see her again, I also miss her.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: My former professor – Nathan Katz – wrote a book on that community.
Bill Arnold
If RFK Jr actually even skimmed the papers that he pontificates about, he would not have made this particular mistake (or many others). E.g. a gene of interest is present in 1.2 percent of the Askenazi Jewish population. Not significant.
ACE2 coding variants in different populations and their potential impact on SARS-CoV-2 binding affinity (Fedaa Ali, Menattallah Elserafy, Mohamed H. Alkordi, Muhamed Amin, December 2020)
Curiously, I found the paper linked above in the long list of references for a anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist’s long rant about COVID-19 and vaccines against it as a Jewish plot. Flavor, not gonna link because it the url is a personal one that probably has a watched access log.
I would not be surprised if it were revealed that JFK Jr or people who he closely associates with have read it.
mrmoshpotato
Not going to read. Not even the comments.
Ain’t that the fucking truth! Godfuckingdamnthem!
yellowdog
@Tony G: I am of Sicilian descent. The part of Sicily closest to Tunisia. I some times refer to my self as Off-White.
Chris T.
@Adam L Silverman:
Splitters!
Chris T.
@bbleh:
What, you’re gonna deny me my whiteness for being half Irish? I guess I’ll have to fall back on the other (Slavic) half… oh, wait, oops.
goldengirl
Can I donate by cold hard cash or check not thru those portals?
jlowe
That should be the end of him? Nah. There’s still too much squeaky ad revenue left in that media chew toy.
pluky
@Amir Khalid: Why does no one ever remember the Mizrahi?
pluky
@yellowdog: Northern Italians often (disparagingly) refer to Sicilians as ‘i Arabi’.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Jinchi: The box sets are cheaper.