Colorado senator presses Trump’s Health and Human services nominee on 2023 comments suggesting COVID-19 may have been engineered to specifically target some ethnic groups, while leaving others, including Ashkenazi Jews, more immune.
By World Israel News Staff
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, faced questions last week in the U.S. Senate regarding past comments on the COVID-19 virus and its differential impact on various ethnic groups, including Ashkenazi Jews.
During a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet took aim at a number of Kennedy’s positions and past comments on issues ranging from vaccines to AIDS to the coronavirus pandemic.
Bennet, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, questioned Kennedy over comments made during a Manhattan gathering in 2023, including claims that COVID-19’s disparate impact on various ethnic groups – including its allegedly diminished impact on Ashkenazi Jews – may have been engineered.
“Did you say that Covid-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people and spares Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people,” Senator Bennet asked.
Kennedy denied that he claimed the virus was “deliberately targeted” at any ethnic group.
“I just quoted an NIH funded, an NIH published study.”
The questioning hinged on Kennedy’s phrasing of the comments during a private meeting.
“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said at the time.
“COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Citing a study published by BMC Medicine which showed greater susceptibility to COVID-19 among people with certain variants of the Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, Kennedy said it was unclear “whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
Days later, Kennedy rejected claims he had said COVID-19 was engineered specifically to “spare Jews.”
“I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews,” Kennedy tweeted. “I accurately pointed out…that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews.”
“In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
At the time, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, defended Kennedy, saying that “recent statements have been wrongly misinterpreted to falsely claim hostility to Jews. This has caused Bobby much pain.”
The post RFK grilled in Senate over claims of Jewish ‘immunity’ to COVID-19 appeared first on World Israel News.