Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says he isn’t confident in the government’s explanation of what happened in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, continuing his penchant for entertaining conspiracy theories.
“I don’t know what happened on 9/11,” Kennedy said in a podcast interview with journalist Peter Bergen released Tuesday. “I know there’s strange things that happened… One of the buildings came down that wasn’t hit by a plane.”
Kennedy referred to the conspiracy theory surrounding World Trade Center Building 7, a smaller office building in the World Trade Center complex that collapsed after debris from the two towers started fires.
“I don’t want to argue any theories about this because all I’ve heard is questions, I have no explanation, I have no knowledge of it, but what you’re repeating now I know not to be true,” Kennedy told Bergen, who contested the candidate’s questions about Building 7.
He was clear that he didn’t explicitly endorse the conspiracy theory, but at the same time doesn’t necessarily agree with the two-year government investigation into the terrorist attack.
“It’s not a thing that I endorse one way or another, but I do think that it ought to be permissible in this country to question official narratives,” he said. “I don’t always accept official explanations.”
It’s far from the first time Kennedy has shown interest in conspiracy theories. He previously made racist and antisemitic remarks about the origins of COVID-19 and said that the CIA was involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy’s presidential campaign has floundered after a brief bump in interest over the summer, with recent polls showing him with about 15 percent support versus President Biden.
His run has come under fire from members of his own family, with President Kennedy’s grandson — the candidate’s cousin — calling the campaign “an embarrassment.”