Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has backed the notorious anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his 2024 presidential run, and is confident that he will beat contenders like former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Dorsey tweeted a clip of an interview Kennedy gave to Fox News host Harris Faulkner, where Kennedy argued that he could beat Trump and DeSantis in the 2024 race.
Dorsey wrote in his post on Sunday: “He can and will.”
—jack (@jack) June 4, 2023
The tweet has been viewed more than five million times as of press time.
One Twitter user posted a comment asking whether Dorsey was endorsing Kennedy, or “just predicting.” Dorsey gave a one-word reply to the comment: “Both.”
In response to another comment which called out Kennedy for the candidate’s various controversial opinions, Dorsey responded: “Voice is a super power and set him apart.”
Kennedy, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, filed his statement of candidacy on April 4, officially challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic candidate nomination.
However, he has been widely criticized for his position as a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kennedy was also named as one of the 12 people responsible for spreading majority of the COVID-19 disinformation available online, according to a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
His anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, was removed from Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram in August for spreading pandemic misinformation. Kennedy’s also been criticized for saying that Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, orchestrated “fascism” during the pandemic.
In a Washington rally in January 2022, he suggested that having to get a vaccine during the pandemic was worse than having to hide from the Holocaust.
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did,” he said during the rally.
Dorsey is one of only a handful of people endorsing Kennedy’s run. Members of his own family have said that he will not back him, like one of his sisters, Kerry Kennedy.
“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the COVID pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information,” she said in a statement to Insider’s Alia Shoaib.
Dorsey, a billionaire who co-founded Twitter in 2006, stepped down as the platform’s CEO in November 2021 but continues to be the CEO of financial services company Block.
He is not the only tech mogul to wade into politics. Elon Musk hosted DeSantis for the governor’s presidential campaign announcement on Twitter Spaces on May 24, which was marred with technical difficulties.
And billionaire Peter Thiel, PayPal’s co-founder and one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump since the 2016 presidential election.
Musk said in November that he plans to support DeSantis for president. Thiel in May also said he thought DeSantis would “make a terrific president,” but stopped short of a full-throated endorsement.
Representatives of Kennedy and Dorsey did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.
The post Jack Dorsey is backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — an anti-vaxxer who called Anthony Fauci a fascist — for president appeared first on Business Insider.
