Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential running mate Nicole Shanahan hit out at “cowardly” Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly censoring a new documentary about the independent candidate.
“Mark Zuckerberg, are you kidding me?! No amount of MMA fighting will make you look strong if you continue to behave so cowardly,” Shanahan, the Bay Area lawyer and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, wrote on her X account on Sunday.
Zuckerberg is CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Shanahan’s post made reference to his ongoing training in mixed martial arts.
Shanahan’s post on X included a short video montage which shows several users of Facebook and Instagram being unable to upload the half-hour documentary.
A spokesperson for Meta Platforms told The Post that the link to the documentary “was mistakenly blocked and was quickly restored once the issue was discovered.”
Several Facebook and Instagram users reported that they were unable to access the documentary over the weekend.
Meta said that the documentary was mistakenly flagged by some users as spam and that was the reason it was blocked for several hours between late afternoon on Friday and midday Saturday.
Tony Lyons, founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC that paid for the ad, told The New York Times that his group plans to file suit against Meta in federal court alleging that they violated First Amendment rights.
“When social media companies censor a presidential candidate, the public can’t learn what that candidate actually believes and what policies they would pursue if elected,” Lyons told the Times.
“We are left with the propaganda and lies from the most powerful and most corrupt groups and individuals.”
The 30-minute documentary is narrated by “Cheers” actor Woody Harrelson. It was produced by Jay Carson, a Hollywood screenwriter who was also an aide to Hillary Clinton.
The documentary begins with Kennedy reading press clippings about himself in which he is referred to as “clearly disturbed,” “so crazy,” and “a walking, talking conspiracy theory.”
Kennedy supporters over the weekend began posting screenshots of messages they received from Instagram and Facebook indicating that the link to the ad was a violation of the platforms’ terms of service and that they therefore were unable to view it.
The Kennedy campaign then blasted out a fundraising email to supporters urging them to document what they said amounted to “election interference.”
Kennedy took to Facebook and wrote that the ad was “the Bobby Kennedy video Facebook doesn’t want you to see.”
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and the son of late US attorney general and US senator Robert F. Kennedy, was a lifelong Democrat, but his controversial stances on the efficacy of vaccines have put him outside the party’s mainstream.
A Kennedy candidacy threatens to siphon votes from both major party nominees – President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
A recent poll by The Hill gave Biden a 0.1% lead over Trump – 45% to 44.9%.
When Kennedy is factored into the voting, Trump is ahead of Biden by 1.1% – with Kennedy coming in third with 8.5% of the vote.
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