At a private fundraiser held Monday night in Los Angeles, musician Eric Clapton raised more than $2 million for Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, Kennedy announced Tuesday night.
According to Kennedy, $1 million will go directly to his campaign, and $1.2 million will go to a PAC supporting him.
The fundraiser was held at a private residence in Brentwood, Kennedy said. It’s unknown at this time who else attended the event.
Clapton, like Kennedy, has endorsed a range of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and its related vaccines. He canceled a series of shows in 2021 due to vaccine mandates, which he said created a “discriminated audience,” having earlier teamed up with Van Morrison for a song protesting COVID lockdowns. Clapton later blamed symptoms of a previously disclosed neurological illness on vaccines, and has called efforts to encourage vaccination “propaganda.”
Kennedy’s expressed views on the virus, meanwhile, have ranged from outright vaccine denialism to racist conspiracy theories.
In July, for example, at a New York fundraiser, he said in part that the virus might be “ethnically targeted,” saying baselessly that it “attacks certain races disproportionately.” He also said that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Kennedy later denied he said these things despite the whole thing being captured on video.
Similarly, in July he falsely asserted while speaking at a congressional hearing that he has never discouraged people from taking vaccines. In fact he has a years-long record of vaccine denialism. This includes false claims that HIV was the result of vaccine research and bragging that he has approached strangers unsolicited to urge them not to have their children vaccinated.
Kennedy, who has endorsed closing the border with Mexico and also blames the epidemic of mass shootings on antidepressant medicine, is nevertheless campaigning to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential primary.
