Dear Robert Reich: Your Odious, Unprovoked Attack on Robert Kennedy Jr. Is Unworthy of You

By Blake Fleetwood, The Kennedy Beacon

I am a great admirer of your work. I have read your books; what you say about inequality is perceptive and enlightening.

But your piece “The Growing Disgrace and Danger of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” is despicable.

It is full of misinformation that you gathered from the mainstream media, which routinely distorts Kennedy’s views.

As Kennedy says, “If I believed all the stuff the mainstream media says about me, I would not like me very much either.”

You ignore reporting, distort the facts from The New York Times, and leave the impression that Timothy Mellon gave $7 million to American Values 2024 for the Super Bowl ad. This is clearly not true. As was reported in the Times, Nicole Shanahan, formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, gave most of the money for the Super Bowl ad, not Timothy Mellon.

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You imply that somehow Kennedy is anti-Semitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. You take misinformation from distorted media accounts in which Kennedy quoted a Cleveland Clinic study that COVID-19 was more harmful to Caucasians and Black people and less harmful to Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. Kennedy was having a serious scientific conversation about the dangers of countries developing ethnic bioweapons, a tremendous and growing threat to all mankind. But the tabloid reporter didn’t really understand Kennedy’s point.

Your implication that Kennedy said that Jews unleashed an ancient plague on non-Jews is odious and bizarre. I, and many of his closest supporters, believe just the opposite, that he is too pro-Israel at this time. Kennedy says, “Ironically, I am being condemned by the left as both a Zionist and an anti-Semite.” 

You labeled him “anti-vax.” He is not. All his six children were vaccinated. He is skeptical of new vaccines and wants them to be fully tested. Double-blind testing of new vaccines is hardly ever done, partly due to the long time required. Kennedy writes in one of his books: “I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want vaccines to be as safe as possible.”

How can you and the rest of the mainstream media continue to call him anti-vax?

There must be an ulterior motive for demonizing him. That motive is an unrelenting fear, loathing, and hatred of Donald Trump. The Democratic Party and its media allies are apoplectic at the remotest chance that Trump might be reelected.

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You are convinced that Kennedy’s eloquent candidacy will hurt Joe Biden more than it hurts Trump, but that is unclear. You seem to think this justifies maligning him and distorting his views in the most foul ways possible – a coordinated media smear campaign with similar words that come and go. 

And so – to “Save Democracy” – Robert Reich, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, MSNBC, CNN, the Times, and others must paint Kennedy as a crazed devil. But that is not so easy to do, once people hear Kennedy calmly and eloquently speak and hear his real views.

This is precisely why the Super Bowl ad was necessary and historic. The mainstream media have silenced Kennedy’s campaign for so long that tens of millions of viewers did not even know that he is running for president. The ad was a clever way to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name in front of 200 million people.

Of course Bobby is running because of his name and family history. You act as if he is doing something dishonorable. 

Kennedy has always felt a burning obligation to continue and expand on the legacy of his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, in striving for economic justice and peace. Since the 1970s, Kennedy has seen the middle class diminish while America embarked on a series of counterproductive, endless wars that have turned the world against us. 

It takes courage to run against a sitting president – courage Bobby learned from his father’s and his uncles’ uphill struggles. Senator Edward Kennedy, for example, challenged President Jimmy Carter in 1980 because he knew that a weakened Carter would lose to conservative Ronald Reagan and that America would enter a dark period of regressive, cruel policies – decimating the middle class and waging wars abroad to enrich a growing military-industrial complex. 

Kennedy vows to lead a nonviolent revolution to save the American Dream from the dark forces that have hijacked our democracy. It is no secret that Washington politics is controlled by all-powerful monied lobbyists, neocons, and a war party of Democrats and Republicans. This uni party has led us into conflicts in Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria: endless wars resulting in the deaths of more than six million innocent civilians, and the creation of generations of enemies.

As someone who has railed against inequality for decades, you don’t credit Kennedy with the same compassion for the poor and the neglected middle class. Kennedy has battled tirelessly against the gigantic corporations that are poisoning the poor, the middle class, and minorities with toxic chemicals. He won a $350 million judgment against Monsanto for spreading a cancerous weed killer on our fields and lawns.

Kennedy vows to end the poisonous role money plays in our politics, which is responsible for the horrific inequality we are seeing. 

Kennedy has bravely challenged and provoked the most powerful forces in the nation – the CIA, the military-industrial complex, the ever-expanding military, defense contractors, and the corporate capture of Washington by big business and lobbyists.

Kennedy has an overarching worldview that cannot fathom the idea that America should have an empire of 800 military bases worldwide. Or that the US should have a defense budget larger than the budgets of the next ten countries in the world combined. It is ludicrous that we can expect to afford health care for all, a clean environment, less pollution in the atmosphere, and free higher education while spending $1.3 trillion on military adventures. He proposes to cut the budget by $300–$400 billion, leaving enough to defend ourselves. 

Kennedy is a revolutionary figure who vows to start the process of unwinding our gargantuan empire. This is what Kennedys are supposed to do. This is his legacy. Speak truth to power. 

His uncles and his father would be enormously proud that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is still fighting to realize their dreams.

Blake Fleetwood was a reporter for The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Village Voice, The Atlantic, and Washington Monthly on a number of issues. Blake can be reached at jfleetwood@aol.com.