🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
A video of Democratic presidential primary candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doing a backflip into a lake has gone viral, being viewed more than two million times after it was posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday night.
The 69-year-old has earned a mixture of ridicule and praise from social media users for the stunt, which he undertook to celebrate donors "taking our support base to the next level!"
It came after a midnight Saturday deadline for a Federal Election Commission fundraising filing. He said such filings were used "to judge the strength of our campaign."
"Maybe it shouldn't be that way. But it is," he added, suggesting he was looking to raise a total of $3 million for the quarter.
"That might be the worst backflip ever, props to you for going for it though," Ty Moss, a YouTuber, wrote in response to the video of Kennedy Jr. making a splash.
"You'd better not flip on any positions once you're in, else you'll be seeing this non-stop," another X user commented.
After one user wrote that "somebody needs to create [an image of] you on a horse with some kind of gun using AI and it would go viral in minutes," Kennedy Jr., a long-time environmental lawyer, responded with an image from his youth riding a rhinoceros topless.
Newsweek approached the Kennedy campaign via email for comment on Monday.
It is not the first time Kennedy Jr. has attempted to show off his physical prowess to his online audience.
In June, the son of assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, shared clips of himself working out shirtless in the sun at the famed Gold's Gym in Venice Beach, California, which has since been viewed 17.6 million times.
"Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!" he wrote at the time.
Kennedy Jr. is running second in the Democratic presidential primary field behind incumbent President Joe Biden, trailing by around 22 points, according to the latest HarrisX poll of 440 registered voters.
The viral videos come as the president, 80, has faced questions about his age and mental acuity after a series of public gaffes.
Biden—already the oldest serving president in U.S. history, who will turn 82 shortly after Election Day in 2024—has brushed off concerns about his physical and mental health, stating in 2022: "I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than a fly."
Update 10/02/23, 6:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include further details.
About the writer
Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more