Mr. Kennedy responded to The New York Publish story with a protection that solely deepened his conspiratorial theories. He wrote on Twitter that he “precisely identified” that america is “growing ethnically focused bioweapons” — a degree he made in his remarks captured on video, when he repeated Russian propaganda that america is accumulating D.N.A. in Ukraine to focus on Russians with tailor-made bioweapons.
Mr. Kennedy additionally linked to a scientific paper that he stated confirmed the construction of the Covid-19 virus made Black and Caucasian folks extra inclined, and “ethnic Chinese language, Finns and Ashkenazi Jews” had been much less receptive.
However the examine he linked to, printed in July 2020, early within the pandemic and earlier than efficient remedies had emerged, made no reference to Chinese language folks as extra receptive to the virus, nor did it communicate of concentrating on the virus. It stated one explicit receptor for the virus appeared to not be current in Amish and Ashkenazi Jews.
His conclusions had been roundly dismissed by scientists.
“Jewish or Chinese language protease consensus sequences aren’t a factor in biochemistry, however they’re in racism and antisemitism,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist on the College of Saskatchewan.
Mr. Kennedy returned to Twitter just after midnight on Sunday to name prices of antisemitism towards him “a disgusting fabrication.”
“I perceive the emotional ache that these inaccurate distortions and fabrications have precipitated to many Jews who recall the blood libels of poison wells and the deliberate unfold of illness because the pretext for genocidal applications towards their ancestors,” he wrote in a prolonged publish. “My father and my uncles, John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy, devoted huge political energies throughout their careers to supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. I intend to spend my political profession making these household causes my precedence.”
Mr. Kennedy’s feedback aren’t the primary time he has strayed into the intersection of Judaism and Covid. In his zeal for condemning steps to stem the unfold of the virus, he spoke final 12 months at an anti-vaccination mandate rally in Washington, saying, “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you possibly can cross the Alps into Switzerland. You would conceal in an attic like Anne Frank did,” suggesting Covid restrictions had been worse.