At least 100 million people are eligible to run for US president. Why are we left with Robert F Kennedy Jr?
Robert F Kennedy Jr likes to talk to dead people. In a recent interview, the anti-vaccine activist, who is challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, said he talks to the dearly departed daily. “They are one-way prayers for strength and wisdom,” he later clarified. “I get no strategic advice from the dead.”
It doesn’t seem as if he needs it. Kennedy, who is the nephew of the former President John F Kennedy and the son of the assassinated presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy, is doing pretty well in the land of the living. While it is incredibly unlikely that the 69-year-old will wangle his way into the White House, his long-shot presidential campaign has gained momentum. According to a recent CNN poll, 20% of Democratic voters say they support RFK to be the party’s candidate and 64% say they would consider supporting him. That is well behind Biden (who came in with 60% of supporters) but nothing to sniff at. Particularly considering that Kennedy doesn’t have many policies, just a famous last name – and a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories and referencing Anne Frank in offensive ways.
On Sunday, Kennedy got a boost to his campaign when Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, retweeted a video of the candidate saying he could beat the former President Donald Trump and the Florida governor Ron DeSantis in 2024. Dorsey captioned the video with: “He can and will.” When a Twitter user asked if the tweet was an endorsement or a prediction, the billionaire replied: “Both.” Dorsey is not exactly a political kingmaker, but he has influence and money so his endorsements matter.
Dorsey isn’t the only tech bro eyeing up Kennedy. On Monday, Elon Musk hosted a conversation with RFK on Twitter Spaces. I imagine Musk was thrilled with how this turned out: it wasn’t plagued with the same technical glitches that affected his conversation with Republican DeSantis last month and Kennedy spent much of the conversation licking Musk’s boots. At one point, RFK compared the Twitter troll to colonists who died during the American revolution in order to give “us our constitution.” He went on to blame school shootings on antidepressants: “Prior to the introduction of Prozac we had almost none of these events in our country,” he said. This was among a number of other questionable statements.
It’s easy to make fun of RFK, to dismiss him as a wacky conspiracy theorist. But it’s more productive to ask why he resonates with so many people. Again, 64% of Democratic-leaning voters say they either support or would consider supporting him being the Democratic party candidate – that’s not a small number. While Kennedy may spread vaccine misinformation, his platform also taps into very real feelings of frustration and desperation in the US. One of RFK’s big talking points is “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power” and the decimation of the middle class. Those aren’t conspiracy theories; they are facts. The middle class is shrinking in the US and polls show that the majority of Americans on either side of the aisle think the government is corrupt and rigged against normal people. Of course it is going to resonate when a politician rails against this. Of course it’s going to resonate when someone says they are going to challenge the deeply unfair status quo.
To be clear: this isn’t an endorsement of RFK. Rather, it’s a primal scream of frustration. Let’s do a bit of quick maths, shall we? There are more than 331 million people in the US. Let’s say more than half of those people can’t run for president because they are too young or don’t fulfil the various technical requirements; that still gives you at least 100 million eligible people. That’s a big talent pool! Surely there should be an inspiring field of candidates standing in 2024?
Well, no. There isn’t. There is Biden, obviously. He has decades of experience, sure, but he is also 80 years old and will be 86 at the end of a second term. And he is not particularly popular. Still, the Democratic establishment have closed ranks around him and he’s the only real candidate: his sole challengers are kooky outsiders. RFK, a man who speaks to dead people, and Marianne Williamson, a woman who once tweeted – before deleting the comment – that hurricanes can be stopped with the power of the mind. And on the other side? The leading candidate is Trump, a sexual predator. Why don’t people have any trust in politicians these days? This might be why.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
antitrust rules.
Owing to such pressures, 11 global insurers have left the NZIA since March. The irony of the Republican crusade against all things ESG (environmental, social and governance investment principles) takes flashy corporate climate pledges at face value, alleging that Wall Street is substituting ideology for what should be a focus on the bottom line. But ESG, for companies, is all about protecting profits. State Farm – which touts its own ESG commitments – is leaving California, it said, “to improve the company’s financial strength”.
Republican lawmakers are trying to ban companies from making similarly pragmatic considerations of climate risk in their planning. Governments, meanwhile, have been slow to do much climate planning at all. There is no comprehensive federal plan to house people – let alone whole communities – wiped out by climate-fueled storms and floods, despite the fact that some 13.1 million people could be displaced by sea-level rise through the end of the century.
When governments don’t plan for such events, corporations fill the gap, raising prices and deepening existing inequalities. Even the relatively welloff will be left to navigate a thicket of piecemeal, neglected public programs and private-sector middlemen to rebuild their lives.
Rising prices and coverage gaps aren’t some moral failure on the part of State Farm or any other for-profit firm, just business: these companies exist to return value to their shareholders. The government’s job, though, is to protect its people. That it’s failing to do that now doesn’t bode well for an even more climate-ravaged future.
Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back
development of a cult following and core audience.
To be a successful video content creator, particularly one who trades in pranks and aggravation, you have to be willing to push yourself to extremes. In the past, this has typically involved self-humiliation content – think the cinnamon challenge or those disgusting mukbangs (a content genre that originated in South Korea and featured people eating strange foods). Jake Paul, whose net worth is estimated at around $310m (£250m), began his career on Vine, staging juvenile but broadly inoffensive pranks and skits.
What Mizzy has alsodone is exploit the distinctly British irritation and discomfort with any type of antisocial behaviour by teenagers – he knows exactly what it is that riles British people.
Take his interview with Piers Morgan (it was the most obvious platform for someone seeking the greatest return in the form of attention, opposite a man whose profile is also built off bullish divisiveness). The showdown itself was not exactly great television but I was most struck by the moment Mizzy said to Morgan: “You’re trying to get on to me because I’m black.” Unsurprisingly, it became the most viral clip from the interview.
Does Mizzy really believe he’s receiving this backlash because he’s black? (It isn’t a baseless idea, there is a kind of pervasive “know your place” racism directed against black youth that is inescapable.) What Mizzy surely does know is that “playing the race card” is something that angers the kind of people who watch Piers Morgan like nothing else. In the interview, Mizzy also teases the public about how British laws aren’t strong enough to contain him – a contrarian line that must have both enraged and been music to the ears of Tory authoritarians.
So what can be done about Mizzy? Not a lot, really (as much as everyone on the internet thinks they can change someone’s mind with one firm conversation). But it helps to properly understand him in context: as a cultural figure who has been responding to the incentive structures of a system that many people – adults, that is – have helped build and legitimise.
The fury of the nation might seem a high price to pay, but for Mizzy it’s clearly worth it: as he told Morgan, “Hate brings likes, hate brings views.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he joins the increasing pool of influencers-turnedboxers – I’m sure you’ll soon be able to pay good money to watch him get knocked out, if you really hate him that much. But here’s the catch-22: so long as your eyes are on him, he’ll have won.
Jason Okundaye is a London-based writer and researcher
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ing seeing his Hollywood roles in films such as Patriot Games. “Being a movie fan … to see him plotting with Harrison Ford on how to save America was wonderful.” That 2022 Broadway opening sounds like a light at the end of a tunnel, more than 50 years after what should have been the joyous occasion of her major London premiere. She says she never even read the final version of The Lennon Play, the project which had been sparked by her children’s musical passion. “I had no more interest … It held a darkness.” She had proudly told her own mother about its potential run.
On opening night, “she sent me a gigantic bouquet of flowers addressed to the Old Vic. She seemed quite shocked when I tried to explain what had happened, and very let down.”
Mom, How Did You Meet the
Beatles? is at the Minerva, Chichester, 16 June-8 July
as unobjectionable as possible. I bet he doesn’t say that to most of his adversaries in court.
In fact I know he doesn’t. He’s already left previous witnesses on the verge of tears. Barely able to remember their own names. Green hasn’t become one of the country’s top barristers by charm alone. There’s a shard of ice in his heart. But for Harry, he’s prepared to make an exception. At any rate, for now we get to see Mr Nice Guy. A man falling over backwards to be fair. Well, as close as he can get.
“MGN unreservedly apologise for the one instance of phone hacking,” Green says. Mmm. We’re now being expected to believe that at a time when hacking was rife among the tabs, MGN spotted just one example and then clamped down on it hard. So much so, that it never, ever happened again. Well. Whatever. I guess it’s all down to what anyone can prove. “And if the judge finds that you are right,” he continues, “then there will be a bigger apology.” I bet there will be. Though the prince might want slightly more than that. He hasn’t flown half way across the world just to hear someone say sorry. He wants the press to grovel.
We then lapse into a familiar routine for the rest of the day. Starting with the newspaper stories where he believed Harry’s claims of illegality were weakest. The time when his mother, Princess Diana, had come to visit him at school. His phone couldn’t possibly have been hacked for that one because he hadn’t even had a phone then. “Well someone else’s could have been,” Harry mumbled. He wasn’t at his best being faced with barbed questions. And had he actually read the story in the paper? Probably not. But his friends had. In any case, he had trust issues.
On we went. The time when Harry went off for a pizza. The time he had lunch with a bodyguard. The Highgrove gardener. The glandular fever. The drugs. Always the same. Had he actually read any of the MGN stories? Then how could they have caused distress? And was it just coincidence that the same stories had already appeared in other papers. And if they had hacked phones to get them, it was no skin off their nose. They were just there to copy. So much easier than getting any stories of their own. And always Green took us back to the proof. He didn’t care what things looked like or what Harry felt. Just prove that MGN hacked. Or shove it.
Harry rarely raised his voice above a whisper. He never lost his temper. Never lapsed into therapy speak. But he never looked entirely comfortable. Whatever he had been hoping for out of his day in court, he wasn’t getting. There was no catharsis. No magic moment when the scales of justice came swinging down in his favour.
It was all too much of an effort. He wasn’t even getting asked about some of his bigger claims. Just lost in the detail. Strangled by the weeds. Time and again, his most frequent answers were, “I don’t remember” and “You’d have to ask the journalists concerned.” He was beginning to see why so many had advised him not to throw himself on the court’s mercy. The law could be pitiless.
Long before the end, Harry began to flag. We all did. Eventually the judge called it a day. Sherborne took off his wig and primped his hair. The volume, darling. He needed to look his best for the camera run outside court. At least someone was enjoying himself.