She has said China’s “war on coal” is “awesome,” celebrated climate protesters occupying government buildings, and consulted for a left-wing diversity, equity, and inclusion group funded by Democratic megadonor George Soros.
Meet press secretary Stefanie Spear for the 2024 campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmental lawyer turned independent presidential candidate. To those close to former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, Spear’s climate activism over the years is a window into how Kennedy is far to the left on energy even as he works to distance himself from the Democratic Party and surrounds himself with like-minded aides who could have a seat at the table in a hypothetical Kennedy administration to oversee a sweeping crackdown on fossil fuels.
“RFK is trying to fool voters into believing he opposes the globalist establishment, but no one has bought into the globalist scheme of fear mongering over climate change to limit energy consumption, kill jobs and reduce the quality of life for normal people more than he has,” Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the former president, told the Washington Examiner.
Spear is a longtime associate of the 2024 independent candidate, who is polling at under 10%. In 2011, Kennedy helped Spear launch the environmental website EcoWatch, which Spear has used to lobby against coal plants and urge the public to contact lawmakers to expedite green energy policies, archived records show.
EcoWatch, in turn, has long promoted anti-fossil fuels remarks by Kennedy, including those he made during his “provocative unscripted keynote” in 2015 at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, in which he declared the United States to be “engaged, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘in a great Civil War,’” or rather, a “defensive war against toxic and economic aggression by Big Oil and King Coal.”
“We have been working together for 15 years and have devoted our careers to unraveling corporate capture of government agencies,” Spear told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “From Big Food to Big Energy to Big Pharma, Mr. Kennedy and I believe government agencies need to stop protecting corporations and return to their roots of serving the people.”
Since 1999, Spear has worked to “mobilize millions of people to engage on the most important issues impacting people and planet, including the devastating environmental and health impacts of single-use plastics,” through her firm Stellar Consulting. One client is As You Sow, a Soros-backed group pressuring corporations to adopt environmental, social, and governance, as well as DEI, policies, tax records show. As You Sow, which rates companies through a “racial justice scorecard,” also receives donations from left-wing groups such as the Tides Foundation, New Venture Fund, and Chinese government-linked Energy Foundation, according to financial disclosures.
Spear hasn’t shied away from promoting China’s energy policies.
During a 2014 podcast episode, Spear discussed how Greenpeace International worked on climate projects in India, noting how that effort and Beijing’s “war on coal” were “just awesome.” EcoWatch has also promoted China’s lower use of coal, a result of state-enforced emissions standards, and praised the country for “showing the world what renewable energy dominance looks like.”
The website has a history of publishing pro-China stories on topics such as its Transit Elevated Bus plans, which were scrapped over alleged investment fraud problems, electric vehicles, the controversial U.S.-China climate deal under former President Barack Obama, and other topics.
Meanwhile, Spear, who penned an op-ed in 2015 praising Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for being “a longtime supporter of immediate action on climate change,” has in the past appeared to support extremist activists occupying government buildings. The EcoWatch leader emphasized in a 2012 op-ed, for example, how she took part in an anti-fracking rally led by activists who later marched to the Ohio Statehouse and occupied its rotunda.
“Though the rally on Sunday was certainly the high point of the four-day gathering, the days leading up to the march to the Ohio Statehouse had a huge impact on moving the anti-fracking movement forward,” Spear wrote at the time. Separately, Spear once celebrated in another 2012 op-ed how left-wing activists planned to “occupy the Kentucky State Capitol to demand an end to corporate domination of our politics.”
“Both Mr. Kennedy and I believe climate change is real but we aren’t going to try and force others to believe it too,” Spear told the Washington Examiner. “We also believe climate should not be an excuse to impose authoritarian policies.”
Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., said Kennedy “is trying to out compete Joe Biden for who can have wackier left-wing views.” Trump has continued to hammer Kennedy over his policies, notably writing on social media in April that the independent candidate is “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat.”
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supports reparations and banning fracking, so it’s no surprise he’d have a radical leftist with similar views as his press secretary,” Pfeiffer told the Washington Examiner.
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On Thursday, Biden and Trump will face off in their first debate, for which Kennedy did not qualify. The independent candidate accused CNN, who is hosting the debate, of illegally colluding with the other two campaigns to keep him off the stage. CNN denied the accusation.
“Presidents Biden and Trump do not want me on the debate stage and CNN illegally agreed to their demand,” Kennedy said last week. “My exclusion by Presidents Biden and Trump from the debate is undemocratic, un-American, and cowardly.”
