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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Bevan Hurley

Woody Harrelson appears to endorse conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr in bid to unseat Biden

Getty Images for HBO

Woody Harrelson appears to have endorsed Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign for president after appearing in a photo wearing a Kennedy 2024 baseball cap with the candidate’s wife Cheryl Hines.

The 62-year-old actor, who has been accused of spreading Covid-19 conspiracies, is seen smiling next to Ms Hines in the photo posted to her Instagram account on Thursday.

“Great seeing you Woody,” Hines wrote to her 143,000 followers, along with several love hearts and and an RFK Jr hashtag.

The post attracted more than 11,000 “likes” and hundreds of comments within hours, with many expressing their disappointment at the Natural Born Killers star.

“Woody, I love you, but I can’t be on your side politically, since a Kennedy candidacy could potentially give us Trump again!” wrote one commenter.

“My enthusiasm is curbed,” another said, referencing Hines role in the HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Harrelson sparked controversy during a Saturday Night Live monologue in February when he told a long-winded story detailing the “craziest script he’s ever read” in which people were forced to take drugs in order to leave their homes.

The comment was widely interpreted as anti-vax, and Harrelson said in an interview with Esquire in May that he was not at all concerned by the controversy.

He described himself as an “anarchist” with a distrust of government, and both major political parties.

In 2020, Harrelson shared a conspiracy theory on Instagram linking 5G to the Covid-19 pandemic.

RFK Jr is running a long shot campaign to unseat President Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary.

He has consistently polled around the 15 per cent mark according to FiveThirtyEight, despite peddling false conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism, claiming that AIDS isn’t caused by HIV, that Wi-Fi causes “leaky brains”, and that chemicals in the water are making children transgender.

The 69-year-old has gained considerable support and airtime from Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity, on Steve Bannon’s War Room, and from far-right media personalities such as Alex Jones.

In July, he claimed that the pandemic had been ethnically targeted “to attack Caucasians and Black people” reviving an antisemitic conspiracy that blamed Jewish people for the emergence of Covid-19.

Mr Kennedy Jr later tried to clarify that he had “never, ever suggested that the Covid-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews”.

Harrelson’s agent Jeremy Plager did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Independent.

The Team Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to questions about whether Harrelson had endorsed his campaign.

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