Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2024 presidential hopeful, announced today that he will be joined by rocker Eric Clapton for a campaign fundraiser at a private estate in Beverly Hills on Sept. 18. Clapton will perform live at the event, with tickets starting at $3,300, up to a maximum contribution of $6,600.
“We expect supporters from across the U.S. to fly in for the evening,” Kennedy’s website noted. High-end donors will enjoy an exclusive reception before Kennedy delivers remarks, followed by Clapton taking the stage.
Neither the location of the fundraiser nor the special guest comes as a surprise: Kennedy, married to Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines, has already made inroads with the Hollywood set, picking up endorsements from Woody Harrelson and Alicia Silverstone. Clapton, meanwhile, is one of the few anti-vax celebrities on par with Kennedy himself, having devoted the the past few years to writing songs condemning the Covid-19 vaccines, funding anti-vax propaganda and even comparing pandemic lockdowns to slavery.
In 2021, RFK Jr. interviewed Clapton for The Defender Show, a program produced by Children’s Defense Fund. (Kennedy chairs this activist nonprofit, which is known for disseminating vaccine misinformation). In that conversation, the pair discussed their mutual grudge against Rolling Stone — Clapton due to unfavorable coverage of his music and statements raging against health mandates, which he referred to as a “slur campaign,” and Kennedy because the magazine retracted a 2005 piece he authored on vaccines that proved to be inaccurate.
Both Clapton and Kennedy have remained outspoken vaccine skeptics and dabbled in conspiracy theories around Covid. Clapton, who claims to have suffered adverse effects from the AstraZeneca vaccine, baselessly suggested last year that he and many others were subliminally hypnotized into receiving the jab. Kennedy faced backlash this past July for asserting without evidence that Covid is an “ethnically targeted” bioweapon that disproportionately attacks Blacks and Caucasians while sparing Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews.
Presumably, though, none of this will bother deep-pocketed L.A. donors nostalgic for the Kennedy dynasty and 1960s rock and blues. Too bad they’ll be paying top dollar to hear Clapton play his new stuff.