I never dreamed hearing the name Kennedy announced for a run for President would elicit anything but sheer excitement for me. Instead, when anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. threw his hat in the 2024 presidential ring on Wednesday, I not only sighed, I groaned.

Bobby Jr may radiate Kennedy confidence and share his father’s toothy grin but any resemblance stops there. Trying to follow in his father’s noble and just footsteps RFK Jr has continually fumbled.

I looked up from my laptop at the vintage Bobby Kennedy campaign poster I have on my wall, and mournfully asked why?

Apparently, his son thinks, why not?

His decision to run seems to mock one of Bobby’s favorite sayings “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not?”

When it comes to Robert Kennedy Jr. being a presidential candidate I can give you plenty of reasons why not.

He’s got the Kennedy pedigree, but he’s also a kook. The punchline to jokes, Juniors an embarrassment and a crank.

Whereas Don Jrs. idiocy is in keeping with the Trump family brand, Bobby Jr went way off, tranishing that hallowed brand.

President John F. Kennedy, with his nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; RFK, Jr., presented his uncle with a salamander. Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C.
Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

At 14, RFK Jr. was a pallbearer at his father’s funeral on June 9, 1968

Politically speaking, Robert Francis Kennedy Junior could have been the biggest nepo baby ever.

His stock is pure gold- An iconic President of the United States was his uncle and his father whose name he bears, a U.S. Senator and an idolized presidential candidate.

A member of American royalty he had the name, the looks, and the brains. But instead, he squandered it to become a loudmouth, crackpot conspiracy theorist.

Once a successful environmental lawyer who focused on issues like clean water, more than 15 years ago he became fixated on the belief that vaccines are not safe. His views are misleading and dangerous.

A long-time anti-vaxxer activist, he gained notoriety by spreading COVID vaccine misinformation after decades of hyping a link between childhood vaccines and autism. His vaccine skepticism includes a book  “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accused the top infectious disease doctor of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against western democracy” and promoted unproven Covid treatments such as ivermectin, which is meant to treat parasites and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.

Kennedy suggested that people in 2022 had it worse than Anne Frank , the teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family in Amsterdam for two years. He later apologized for this offensive remark.

Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. He claimed that  Anne Frank was better off than Americans under supposed vaccine mandates because she could at least hide from the Nazis.

He also managed to alienate his tight-knit family by insisting that Sirhan Sirhan didn’t actually shoot Kennedy’s father and argued for the assassin’s parole against the wishes of his siblings and mother.

But wait, there’s more:

Among his other conspiracy theories worthy of  QAnon and not a Kennedy:

-Bill Gates has a hidden agenda related to vaccines and population control.

– The World Trade Center towers may have been brought down by controlled demolition.

– Suggested that the government is engaged in a secret program to spray chemicals from airplanes, known as “chemtrails’.

Bobby Jr may radiate Kennedy confidence and share his father’s toothy grin but any resemblance stops there. Trying to follow in his fathers noble and just footsteps RFK Jr has continually fumbled.

The thing is we already have one delusional, conspiracy-driven candidate running for president in 2024.

Let the Republicans run with that one.