Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, faced backlash on Wednesday for a “savagely racist tirade” during a campaign event in Michigan, during which he falsely claimed that Arabs had never won prestigious prizes in science or literature.
Kennedy was speaking at Monday night’s event in Grand Rapids to support Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate trailing his Democratic midterm opponent Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, in the polls.
“There are 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel Prize, they don’t win the Fields Prize, they don’t win the Wolf Prize, they don’t produce literature,” Kennedy said.
A fact-check published Tuesday by the Associated Press showed that Arabs have won, or been shortlisted for, all of these awards in recent years.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Kennedy’s Islamophobic remarks “a classic display of unvarnished racism and intolerance”, and the US health care advocacy organization Protect Our Care condemned his “savagely racist tirade”.
Hillary Scholten, a Democratic congresswoman representing western Michigan who declined to endorse El-Sayed this summer, said Kennedy’s comments were “disgraceful and had no place in public service.”
In a statement posted Tuesday evening on his Facebook page, Scholten said, “As Secretary of Health and Human Services, he has a responsibility to serve all Americans, not use his position to demean entire communities with bigoted and blatantly false claims.
“Arab Americans are our neighbors, colleagues, medical professionals, scientists, educators and public servants. Their contributions to science, literature, medicine and countless other fields are undeniable.
“Last I checked, Secretary Kennedy has neither a medical degree nor a Nobel Peace Prize, and his rhetoric has undermined public confidence in health sciences. Perhaps he should leave this issue aside.”
Kennedy’s comments come amid an attack on the Muslim Brotherhood, a global Islamic group whose branches have been designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
The group’s rise “created stagnant societies,” Kennedy said, ending what he called “a golden age (in which) Islamic lands were the center, the foundation of art, literature, science and engineering, and they were very tolerant, pluralistic and cosmopolitan.”
Other Trump administration officials have attempted to portray El-Sayed as a proponent of Islamic radicalism, including the president himself, who at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday called the Democrat a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists.”
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JD Vance, the vice president, stepped up his incendiary attacks at an event in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday in which he sought to link El-Sayed’s policies to violent left-wing protests in Paris that saw thousands of arrests.
“I guarantee you that if these rioters burned down New York or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayed would be there, leading them and cheering them on,” Vance said, referring to Piker, an outspoken socialist commentator and influencer.
Rogers also spoke out against El-Sayed’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, despite questions about his own relationship with the group. In 2012, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he said the United States should begin negotiations with the movement after Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi won Egyptian elections.
El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any connection to the group, and disavowed it during a Michigan town hall event last week that went viral because of a confrontation over the issue with a heckler who turned out to be a former aide to Josh Hawley, the Republican U.S. senator from Missouri.
Chris Murphy, the U.S. senator from Connecticut who joined other top Democratic politicians to campaign for El-Sayed in Michigan last week, also condemned Kennedy’s comments.
“I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this coordinated campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans, not just as citizens but as humans,” he said, reported by Reuters.
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