RFK Jr. seeks major boost with VP announcement https://t.co/EUthd3RQb0 — The Hill (@thehill) March 24, 2024 It’s supposed to happen Tuesday, but who knows? … Kennedy’s decision to unveil his vice-presidential pick next Tuesday shows a longevity to his bid that many Democrats hoped would have fizzled out by now. Announcing a running mate means …
Late Night Reading Open Thread: RFK Jr, Chasing the Dragon of CelebrityPost + Comments (44)
From Peter Jamison at the Washington Post, “How RFK Jr. hiring a bird smuggler threw his environmental group into turmoil” [gift link]:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at a midtown Manhattan law firm’s office on a summer night in 2000 ready for a fight. His adversary was not one of the polluters he had spent years driving from the Hudson River. It was his mentor, friend and boss, the renowned environmentalist Robert H. Boyle.
Boyle had helped Kennedy rehabilitate himself, personally and professionally, after an arrest for heroin possession in 1983 at the age of 29. But now the two men were locked in a power struggle for control of Riverkeeper, the group that Boyle founded and where Kennedy had built a career as a crusading environmental attorney.
Their battle at that night’s board meeting was over Kennedy’s push to hire a staff scientist who had just been released from federal prison. His crime: running an international wildlife smuggling ring that prosecutors said had damaged rare bird populations.
Boyle argued that employing such a figure at one of New York’s premier environmental organizations was like hiring a robber as a bank teller. Kennedy was equally insistent that the man be brought on.
By the time Riverkeeper’s board adjourned that night, Kennedy had won, leading Boyle and seven other directors to resign. It was a pivotal moment for the group — whose board would henceforth be dominated by the faction of celebrities and socialites who had backed Kennedy — and for Boyle, who never recovered emotionally from what he saw as his former protégé’s betrayal, according to people close to him.
Above all it was a crucial victory for Kennedy, who for the next two decades would indelibly merge his public profile with that of Riverkeeper, eventually claiming — falsely — that he had co-founded the organization. He would frequently invoke his bona fides as a warrior for New York’s waterways as he took up anti-vaccine activism, the cause he is most associated with today…
Kennedy’s detractors often divide his career into two phases: a laudable period as a workhorse of the environmental movement and a swerve into the conspiracist worldview that defines his independent bid for the White House.
But a close examination of Kennedy’s early years as a lawyer in the Hudson Valley shows that the same qualities that today inspire his supporters and alarm his critics — obstinacy, an itch to challenge authority, a mastery of scientific minutiae that is paradoxically coupled with a loose allegiance to facts — were causing controversy long before he trained his sights on Bill Gates or Anthony S. Fauci…
In March 2017, Kennedy resigned from Riverkeeper, citing the toll on his family by his cross-country commute from California and the demands of his work with World Mercury Project, the anti-vaccine group that would soon become Children’s Health Defense. Under Kennedy’s leadership, the annual revenue of Children’s Health Defense would balloon from a half-million dollars to more than $23 million, placing it in the vanguard of anti-vaccination advocacy groups.
In a resignation letter that was published on Riverkeeper’s website, Kennedy made claims that appear to be at odds with the historical record. The man who had discovered an already successful environmental group while doing court-imposed community service now falsely claimed to have founded Riverkeeper, which he said had “a budget of zero” before he arrived.
“It is extraordinarily difficult to leave the organization which I co-founded thirty-three years ago, built from the ground up and to which I’ve devoted most of my career,” Kennedy wrote.
In an interview with The Post, Kennedy said his resignation letter “was certainly accurate as to what I believed at that time.”
He added, “I have no memory of writing that letter, and I have no memory of anybody disputing anything that I said about my role at Riverkeeper.”…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr is not, and apparently never has been, a trustworthy person. Of course his defenders are comparing him to Hunter Biden — but Hunter is not running for President
RFK Jr, is a plant from MAGA/GOP to take votes away from Biden. The Kennedy’s are not backing RFK Jr and that makes a big statement!
RFK Jr. seeks major boost with VP announcement https://t.co/QMVPss4tHu pic.twitter.com/zwEM1zYKOD— Coffee® ❥𝗪𝗼𝗸𝗲 𝗔𝗙🦅🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@CandyCoffiee) March 24, 2024