White House responds to 'vile' RFK Jr. comments on Covid and race

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US 2024 Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to press at the State House in Concord, New Hampshire, on June 1, 2023. WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday condemned Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for making "vile" and "false" claims that Covid-19 was bioengineered to spare Jews and Chinese people. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Kennedy's comments "put our fellow Americans in danger." "If you think about the racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that come out of saying those types of things ... it's an attack on our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans," Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing. She spoke as Democrats and Republicans rushed to condemn Kennedy's conspiracy theories that were made at a campaign press dinner on July 11 and captured on video by a reporter for the New York Post. Kennedy is challenging President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. In the video, Kennedy answers a question about alleged Covid-19 "bioweapons" by suggesting that the virus is "ethnically targeted" to disproportionally affect some races more than others, and to spare "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese." "We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not," Kennedy said. He then claims that the United States and China are "developing ethnic bioweapons .... so we can target people by race." Kennedy later contended that his comments were not antisemitic, and he did not retract them. "I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons," he wrote on Twitter shortly after the Post published the video. Speaking on Monday, Jean-Pierre was careful to avoid any mention of Kennedy's political campaign against the president, instead saying the nature of his remarks demanded a response. "Every aspect of these comments reflect some of the most abhorrent antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout history and contributes to today's dangerous rise of antisemitism," she said. "So this is something ... this president and this whole administration is going to stand against."