Independent presidential candidate and notable anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has chosen Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer, as his running mate. Shanahan previously contributed $4 million to Kennedy's super PAC, helping finance a 30-second campaign ad during this year's campaign. Super Bowl.
Shanahan, who was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has donated large amounts to Democratic candidates in the past. In his campaign announcement speech, Kennedy called his running mate “exactly the right person,” someone who “shared my passion for healthy, chemical-free foods, for regenerative agriculture and for good soils.” He called her a “technologist at the forefront of ai” who uses “neural networks” to “identify abuses in our government.” He also praised her use of “cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, to calculate the catastrophic health consequences of toxins in our soil, our air, our water and our food.”
In his own follow-up speech, Shanahan called Kennedy “the only anti-war candidate today.”
Kennedy, who is married to Curb your enthusiasm Actress Cheryl Hines has previously promoted vaccine misinformation, and the Center to Counter Digital Hate has cited him as a top spreader of Covid misinformation. In 2021, he was banned from Instagram for repeatedly sharing misinformation. The ban was lifted in 2023.