Democratic presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his past antisemitic comments at a congressional hearing on Thursday, claiming he was being smeared.
Last week Kennedy said that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” and that “COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.”
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“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he said, adding that, “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.”
On Thursday, during a hearing on censorship hosted by the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Kennedy defended those statements and refuted that he actually said them, despite the statements being on video.
“In my entire life, I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic,” Kennedy said.
He claims people calling his statements racist and antisemitic are trying to censor him “through smears, misinterpretations of what I said, through lies.”
While members of House Republicans leadership denounced his statements, they defended their decision to have him testify before the committee.
“I disagree with that statement. I disagree with a lot of things he’s said, he’s a Democrat, but I don’t believe in censorship,” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), said on Tuesday. “The Democrats, literally the White House on the third day the administration, tried to censor and labeled him as part of the disinformation dozen, for goodness sake. So we’re coming to talk about the First Amendment.”
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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) condemned Kennedy’s comments but also defended the subcommittee having him testify before the committee.
“Well, I mean, he’s a Democrat that’s coming before talking about how you’re seeing a kind of selective shutdown of opposing viewpoints by the Democrats,” Scalise said Tuesday at a press conference. “We’ve spoken out against [his statements]. I surely speak out against any kind of expressions of anti-Semitism.”
