Robert F Kennedy Jr apologizes for Super Bowl ad that referenced JFK

Robert F Kennedy Jr apologized for a presidential campaign commercial during Sunday’s Super Bowl that alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run.

“I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” Kennedy wrote on social media late on Sunday. He said the ad was created by American Values 2024, a pro-Kennedy political action committee (Pac), “without any involvement or approval” from his presidential campaign.

Nonetheless, the commercial remained pinned to the top of his X page, directly above his apology.

The commercial – which cost $7m – was criticized by many observers. It featured the same lyrics of “Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy for me” that JFK’s campaign used in a commercial ahead of his victory over Richard Nixon.

A speechwriter for another of Kennedy’s late uncles – the former US senator Ted Kennedy – said the ad constituted intellectual theft.

“This RFK Jr Super ad is a straight out plagiarism,” Bob Shrum wrote in part. “What a fraud.”

Kennedy’s cousin, Bobby Shriver, posted that his mother – JFK’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver – would be “appalled” that the commercial used images of her and her brother. While Robert F Kennedy Jr is a vaccination skeptic and conspiracy theorist, Shriver said of his mother that “respect for science, vaccines … [was] in her DNA”.

Shriver’s brother, Mark, added in a separate post: “I agree with my brother … simple as that.”

Sunday’s ad, which also described its subject as “a man who’s old enough to know and young enough to do”, aired two days after the Democratic National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint accusing the American Values fund of colluding with Kennedy’s campaign.

The DNC alleged