Democrats tore into anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a congressional hearing Thursday, reprising the most incendiary claims made by the man challenging US President Joe Biden to be the party's 2024 nominee.
Republican hardliner Jim Jordan had invited the Kennedy family scion to testify at a House of Representatives panel on supposed government censorship of conservatives, defying calls to drop the witness over remarks unearthed at the weekend that were widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds beliefs that are vile, disgusting, racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-science and riddled with conspiracy theories," Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly said ahead of Kennedy's testimony in front of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
"In other words, he is the perfect Jim Jordan witness and has been welcomed with open arms by the Republican majority. By promoting Mr Kennedy, Republicans are deliberately providing a platform to amplify hate speech."
Kennedy, who struggles to make himself heard due to a neurological condition affecting his voice, is running for the 2024 Democratic nomination but trails Biden by an average of 52 points in major opinion polls.
While he has little hope of winning the primary, Democrats fear he may end up running in the presidential election itself as a "third party" candidate, siphoning votes from Biden and clearing the path for former president Donald Trump's reelection.
In a video released over the weekend, Kennedy suggested that Covid was targeted to attack "Caucasians and Black people," while affecting Jewish and Chinese populations less.
It is far from the first time Kennedy has been criticized for anti-Jewish comments.
At a rally last year he stated that things are worse for people today than they were for Anne Frank, the teenager who died in a Nazi concentration camp after hiding with her family in an Amsterdam house for two years.
"Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did," said the 69-year-old, who is married to actress Cheryl Hines, of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
- 'Hateful, abusive rhetoric' -
Kennedy has invoked the Nazis on a number of occasions since 2015, when he spoke of a "Holocaust" of children hurt by vaccines.
He released a video in 2022 that showed Anthony Fauci, then the nation's leading infectious disease doctor, with a Hitler mustache, and he has given speeches comparing pandemic-era public health curbs with Nazi propaganda.
"In my entire life, I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or anti-Semitic," said Kennedy, who is the son of president John F. Kennedy's younger brother, US attorney general and civil rights activist Robert F. Kennedy.
"I have spent my life fighting -- my professional career fighting -- for Israel, for the protection of Israel. I have a better record on Israel than anybody in this chamber today."
But Florida's Debbie Wasserman Schultz called his comments "despicable" while Stacey Plaskett, the panel's top ranking Democrat, excoriated the environmental lawyer for saying Jews in Nazi Germany had it easier than unvaccinated Americans.
"Free speech is not an absolute. The Supreme Court has stated that. And others' free speech that is allowed -- hateful, abusive rhetoric -- (does) not need to be promoted in the halls of the People's House," Plaskett said.
Democrats had urged House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a letter to withdraw Kennedy's invitation after his suggestion that Covid-19 had been "ethnically targeted."
Members of the Kennedy family rushed to condemn the candidate -- who is more popular among conservatives than Democrats -- and the White House called his remarks "vile."
"I don't think censoring somebody is actually the answer here," McCarthy responded, rejecting the request.
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