The most followed sporting event in the United States, the Super Bowl, brings together hundreds of millions of people each year in homes, bars and movie theaters, hooked on to a screen that alternates images of the National Football League (NFL) final. ) with highly-rated advertisements from companies that can afford them. This year, the expectation was maximum: a unique stage in the world, Las Vegas; the presence of a superstar, Taylor Swift, cheering her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, from the stands; performances by Post Malone, Reba McEntire, Usher and Alicia Keys, among others; and, on a sporting level, the dispute between the current champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the San Francisco 49ers, after three decades without winning the Super Bowl.
What no one expected was to see the reissue of a 1960 campaign ad. A Political Action Committee that supports Robert J. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate for the presidency of the United States, paid $7 million to gain a foothold among the dozens of commercials broadcast throughout the game. And he did it by copying the advertisement of the winning campaign of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and superimposing his face, with the same music, the same style and the same duration.
Large companies pay millions every year to appear in these advertisements, as anticipated as the first commercials in the New Year. That of the controversial candidate RFK Jr., who is running as an independent after abandoning the Democratic Party race in October, was financed by an associated Political Action Committee – the body in charge of raising money for electoral campaigns in the US. to the bases of the Republican Party, American Values. Timothy Mellon, a businessman who donated $10 million to Donald Trump's campaign, is also a major donor to the PAC that funded the Super Bowl ad.
The announcement provoked outrage from the family of RFK Jr., a controversial candidate due to his anti-vaccine positioning and his closeness to American alt-right media stars such as Alex Jones, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson. Bobby Shriver, the son of former President JFK's sister, said his mother would be "horrified" by the candidate's views: "My cousin's Super Bowl ad used our uncle's faces... and my mother's. "She would be horrified by his deadly views on healthcare," he said in a post on X: "Respect for science, vaccines and health equity were in his DNA."
In response to the outrage from Shriver and other members of her family, Kennedy posted another tweet apologizing: "I'm so sorry if the Super Bowl ad caused anyone in my family pain. It was created and aired by the American Super Values Super PAC. "without any involvement or approval from my campaign. Federal Election Commission rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff."
Nine months before the elections, the independent candidate has little chance of winning: he has 10% of voting intentions, according to a survey published this week by AtlasIntel. But his candidacy, if maintained until November, could become a determining factor and tilt the elections towards one of the other two probable candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Polls suggest that he could attract the support of citizens disenchanted with both candidates, especially the Republicans, due to their anti-vaccine and belligerent positioning with the Democratic Party, which discredited his alternative candidacy to the president in office.
