House Democrats’ campaign arm on Monday blasted Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for what it described as antisemitic and anti-Asian “racism and hate,” calling him “unfit for public office.”
The statement comes as Kennedy faces mounting criticism after The New York Post reported on comments Kennedy made during an event last week, in which he claimed that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack” certain groups of people while circumventing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said, according to the Post. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy reportedly added.
In a statement Monday, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Kennedy’s comments “demonstrate him to be unfit for public office.”
“Last week, RFK Jr. made reprehensible anti-semitic and anti-Asian comments aimed at perpetuating harmful and debunked racist tropes,” DelBene said.
“Such dangerous racism and hate have no place in America, demonstrate him to be unfit for public office, and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” she added.
Other Democrats have condemned Kennedy as well.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison blasted Kennedy’s remarks on Twitter and said they do not reflect the views of the party.
“These are deeply troubling comments and I want to make clear that they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party,” Harrison said.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) also slammed Kennedy, writing on Twitter, “Hard to imagine a son who has done more to dishonor his father’s name than RFK Jr.”
Kennedy responded by saying the Post was “mistaken” and that he “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews,” adding, “I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
Kennedy in the past has come under fire for remarks against the COVID-19 vaccine and for invoking the Holocaust. In a 2022 speech in Washington, D.C., he compared Nazi Germany’s oppression and extermination of millions of Jews to restrictions on Americans during the pandemic. He later apologized for those comments.