HuffPost reports:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday he believes Russia acted in “good faith” amid the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, adding the U.S., in fact, bore heavy responsibility for the ongoing war.

Kennedy, who announced his bid for the Democratic nomination in April, made the comments on SiriusXM’s “The Briefing with Steve Scully.” Scully asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued effort to seize part of Ukraine despite international condemnation. Kennedy claimed the way forward involved “baby steps” toward negotiation, before the host pointed out Putin has so far rejected those calls unless Russia keeps the territory it’s already claimed.

“No, no. Putin has repeatedly said yes,” Kennedy said. “In fact, he negotiated — two times he agreed to agreements. He agreed to the Minsk Accord, and then he agreed in 2022 to an agreement that would’ve left Ukraine completely intact.”

“It was us who forced Zelensky to sabotage that agreement. It was already signed,” he continued. “So, you know, the Russians were acting in good faith. … So, no, I think we’re the ones who have not been acting in good faith.”

The U.S. has repeatedly called on Russia to end the invasion since it began in February 2022. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that the Kremlin could end the war “at any time by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine and stopping its brutal attacks against Ukraine’s cities and people.” But Putin has claimed Ukraine would not win and vowed to push on. [Continue reading…]

Joan Walsh writes:

I’ve been doing my best to ignore the farcical presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His noxious views on vaccines, the origin of AIDS, the alleged dangers of wi-fi and other forms of junk science deserve no wide hearing. Polls showing he’s favored by 20 percent of likely Democratic voters over President Biden are almost as laughable as Kennedy’s views. It’s early; he’s got iconic American name recognition; and there’s almost always an appetite, among Democrats anyway, for anybody but the incumbent. His lies have been thoroughly debunked by Judd Legum at Popular Info, Michael Scherer in The Washington Post, Naomi Klein in The Guardian, and Brandy Zadrozny on NBC News.

But I’ve come to believe I have a responsibility to write about Kennedy because of my own shameful role in sending his toxic vaccine views into public discourse: I was the Salon editor, in partnership with Rolling Stone, who 18 years ago published his mendacious, error-ridden piece on how thimerosal in childhood vaccines supposedly led to a rise in autism, and how public health officials covered it up. From the day “Deadly Immunity” went up on Salon.com, we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data. Some of his sources turned out to be known crackpots.

It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired, but since Rolling Stone founder and then-editor Jann Wenner was on the Salon board at the time, that wasn’t going to happen. Rolling Stone had taken responsibility for the arduous task of fact-checking (a process that, I learned later, was less than thorough). I had only been Salon’s editor in chief for four months. We dutifully (and increasingly anxiously and ashamedly) published correction after correction. At the time, I thought that was the responsible thing to do—leave the piece up, but assiduously correct it, in the name of transparency.

But as subsequent articles and books continued to debunk Kennedy’s conspiracy theory, it felt irresponsible to leave it up. Six years later, in 2011, my successor as editor in chief, Kerry Lauerman, in consultation with me and others, decided we should take it down. [Continue reading…]