Keller @ Large: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wins "Lie of the Year" award
BOSTON - It's a dubious honor, but still a hotly-contested one.
We're talking about the fact-checking website Politifact's annual Lie of the Year award.
In a nation full of conspiracy cranks and politicians who don't always give it to you straight, this isn't easy to earn. But this year Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done it by building a campaign the fact-checkers say "seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories."
Kennedy styles himself as a classic outsider with rhetoric that taps into suspicion of the establishment. And there's no doubt there's a significant audience for it.
Kennedy, running as an independent, has done well so far by fringe-candidate standards, pulling nearly 40% of what the major-party frontrunners are getting in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
But there are certain topics where Kennedy - a longtime anti-vaxxer - just flat-out steps in it.
"COVID-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted," he told a meeting of the New York Post editorial board in July. "COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese."
Politifact gave that rant it's lowest rating of "pants on fire." And the study Kennedy cited to back that up doesn't even imply what he claims.
Kennedy's support is comparable to what independent candidate Ross Perot drew in 1992 when he wound up tipping the race to Bill Clinton over incumbent George H.W. Bush.
And make no mistake, Kennedy could be a spoiler in a close race next fall. The question is - for whom?
Recent polling shows him pulling more votes from Donald Trump than Joe Biden, a reversal from when he initially started running as a Democrat. For now at least, there appear to be more Republican voters hanging out in the fever swamps of political conspiracy theories than there are Democrats.