The controversial Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the grandson of US President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, announced on Wednesday that he is a candidate for the US presidential election in 2024, AFP reported.

“I am announcing my candidacy for the Democratic inauguration,” the sixty-year-old, whose chances of success are limited, told his supporters in Boston.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is the son of former Democratic attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, and the grandson of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was assassinated five years earlier.

An environmental lawyer, he has been known since 2005 for spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines, particularly linking autism to one of their components.

At a rally held in the state of Massachusetts – the Kennedy family’s estate, Robert Kennedy Jr. promised to “remove the differences” affecting the United States by finally telling “the truth to the American people.”

Kennedy used his campaign opening speech to criticize the closure of schools and businesses during the coronavirus pandemic and to insist that the government and the media are “lying to us.”

“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency,” he said, “will be to put an end to the corrupt fusion of state and corporate power that now threatens — now threatens — to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country; to monetize our children, (…); to poison our children and our people with chemicals and medicines; withdraw our assets; (…) and keep us in a constant state of war.”

Among the crowd that attended the rally were several of his supporters wearing anti-vaccination caps.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the few candidates who has officially joined the Democratic camp, pending a decision by President Joe Biden. At the age of 80, the leader of the White House says he intends to run for a second term, but has not yet formalized his entry into the campaign.