A bronze bust of his uncle, President John F. Across the room hangs his dad’s voter–registration card. In a corner of the living room, there’s a picture of his father, beaming in a bright red snowsuit, on a framed 1965 cover of Life magazine celebrating his summit of a Canadian peak, which was rechristened Mount Kennedy. While he usually goes by Bobby, like his father, his campaign decided to go with the more formal Robert. His speeches are delivered in a voice strained by spasmodic dysphonia, a vocal disorder that came on suddenly when he was 42, and which he has suggested is a side effect of the flu vaccine. He is a vision of what his father might have looked like had he been allowed to grow old, with the same rolled-up sleeves, sharp blue eyes, and weathered tan. Kennedy Jr., age 69, is the fifth member of the Kennedy clan to run for President, and his campaign has sought to capitalize with a heavy dose of 1960s nostalgia, from vintage signs to constant references to “my uncle” and “my father.” Watching him hold forth with a cup of tea in his living room, his three dogs playing by his feet, feels like looking through a fun-house mirror at a figure both familiar and distorted. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.” ![]() ![]() “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. He speaks about a time when the country’s waters were not polluted, pharmaceutical companies did not poison children, bioweapons did not threaten to destroy humanity, and people trusted the government not to lie to or silence them. Kennedy sounds simultaneously stuck in the past and jarringly online, his worldview dark and suspicious. ![]() More striking than the medium is the message-a kind of MAGA for Democrats that stands in stark contrast to the optimism that defined the campaigns of his father and uncle. Instead of dropping in on New Hampshire coffee shops, he’s given a speech at a Miami Bitcoin conference, appeared on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, and is slated to be interviewed on June 14 on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast. So far, the candidate has spent more time chatting on podcasts and livestreams than visiting with voters. It’s a guerrilla operation staffed by longtime friends and colleagues from Kennedy’s many previous lives-as an environmental lawyer, prolific author, master falconer, Hollywood husband, and anti-vaccine crusader. Weird is one word for Kennedy’s bid, which has won support from figures as disparate as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Alicia Silverstone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
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