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Kennedy, 69, faces little chance of success, but his campaign
could help him to advance claims that childhood immunizations
pose health risks -- a theory that has been repeatedly
discredited by multiple scientific reviews.
Kennedy has been banned from YouTube and Instagram for spreading
misinformation about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic.
He is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who was
assassinated in 1963, and the son of former U.S. Senator Robert
F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his own
presidential bid.
Kennedy is likely to highlight these links when he makes his
announcement in Boston, the city where his uncles -- also
including the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy -- launched their
political careers.
His anti-vaccine activism has earned him allies on the right. In
2017, Republican then-President Donald Trump tapped him to
oversee a vaccine review panel, drawing criticism from
scientists who said it could legitimize unfounded skepticism.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy criticized
social-distancing requirements and vaccine mandates. At a
January 2022 rally in Washington he suggested that Americans had
fewer freedoms during the pandemic than Jews living in Nazi
Germany. He later apologized for his remarks.
Kennedy said on Twitter last month that he was considering a
presidential run to "end the corrupt merger between state and
corporate power."
Self-help guru Marianne Williamson has also said she will
challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination.
Biden, 80, said last Friday that he will run for re-election and
will make a formal announcement "relatively soon."
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone and
Jonathan Oatis)
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