Some tech industry titans are praising, and fundraising for, the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a candidate known for spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines and COVID-19.
Kennedy’s long-shot Democratic primary bid against President Biden’s reelection campaign has caught the attention of some of Silicon Valley’s wealthy tech executives, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.
In addition to Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who publicly supported Kennedy’s campaign on Twitter last month, the Journal reported that venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, PayPal founding executive David Sacks and LimeWire founder Mark Gorton have given support to Kennedy’s bid.
Palihapitiya and Sacks co-hosted a fundraiser at Sacks’s mansion in affiliation with Common Sense, a group that is supporting Kennedy, last month, with tickets for a cocktail reception of $2,000 and dinner for $10,000, the Journal reported.
Most of the 75 guests at the San Francisco event were from the tech and crypto industries, Common Sense treasurer and actress Sofia Karstens told the Journal.
Sacks and Palihapitiya did not comment to the Journal.
Gorton, founder of the now shut-down file-sharing site LimeWire, created a super PAC that is supporting Kennedy’s candidacy, the Journal reported. Gorton told the Journal his American Values 2024 super PAC started as an organization focused on combating “pharmaceutical industry corruption.”
“It disgusts me that the Democratic Party has become the party of the neocons and the party of big pharma,” Gorton told the Journal.
He told the paper it is “noble” for Kennedy to run to “reclaim the Democratic party from the corrupt interests.”
Kennedy announced his campaign in April.
The prominent anti-vaccine activist has also had criticism piled on, including from his own sister, over recent remarks about COVID-19.
In a video obtained by the New York Post, Kennedy said COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack “certain rates disproportionately.”
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” he said.
After backlash, Kennedy appeared to walk back the comments. On Twitter, he said the New York Post story was “mistaken” and that he “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.”