Anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose longshot Democratic presidential campaign has largely been boosted by right-wing media and MAGA activists, personally thanked Fox News on Friday for constantly giving him airtime. Kennedy, whose nascent White House run against President Joe Biden has crashed and burned since he baselessly claimed COVID-19 was “ethnically” engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews, appeared on anchor Martha MacCallum’s program to fume about the Democratic primary process. Along the way, he also groused that CNN and MSNBC, which he called “DNC channels,” don’t invite him on air. “Jake Tapper has said publicly that he will not do a town hall for me,” he griped. (The CNN anchor said this in June, noting Kennedy “spreads dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines.”) “They refuse to talk to you. You say they call you longshot. When they don’t call you longshot, they call you conspiracy theorist. So there appears to be a very coordinated effort against your candidacy,” a sympathetic MacCallum said. “How do you break through that?” Saying his strategy included doing “a lot of long-form interviews on podcasts,” he then praised Fox News for helping get his message out. “You guys have been very, very generous,” he stated. Through early August, Kennedy had appeared on Fox News airwaves 13 times in four months.
