RFK Jr.’s Long-Shot Bid Is Shockingly Alive. Thank His Brain Worm Coalition.

The worm that allegedly ate part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain may be dead, but the man’s presidential campaign certainly isn’t. You might call them RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm Coalition. Of particular interest are the tech and finance members of this Brain Worm Coalition, who include the candidate’s VP pick, Nicole Shanahan, a well-connected venture capitalist who was formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and donated to both Joe Biden and Marianne Williamson in 2020; Bill Ackman, the short seller and onetime Democrat whose pro-Israel, anti-diversity crusades have led him to embrace RFK Jr. and Donald Trump; Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO and ice-bath enthusiast who withdrew a planned $5 million Bitcoin donation to RFK Jr.’s campaign after employees from his company Block began expressing their concerns; the megawealthy VCs behind the All-In podcast, whom Kennedy credits with boosting his candidacy; Elon Musk, who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and has since completely enmeshed himself in racist right-wing paranoia related to immigrants and nonwhite Americans; cryptocurrency and blockchain pioneer Charles Hoskinson, who says he’s done with “voting for the lesser of two evils”; Eric Weinstein, the former managing director of Peter Thiel’s VC fund; and LimeWire creator Mark Gorton, whose COVID-era vaccine skepticism led him to co-found and co-chair an amply funded pro–RFK Jr. super PAC called American Values 2024. There are a few key ideas that united the Brain Worm Coalition behind the imperfect avatar of RFK Jr. For one, rich guys like Chamath Palihapitiya who funded Biden in 2020 are fed up with his supposed “radical” policies. With such acts, Kennedy endears himself to tech guys’ most fervent fixations while also presenting himself as so ideologically heterodox as to appear “moderate.” United only in certain superficial commonalities—lots of money, a disaffection with liberalism, COVID-era journeys down online rabbit holes—the techie members of RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm Coalition want to leverage their influence through a particular type of candidate.