A campaign event for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was reportedly interrupted when two guests got into a screaming match over climate change and one made a noxious gas emission.
The New York Post's Page Six gave a bizarre account of how Tuesday's press dinner for the Democratic presidential candidate "descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting." A Post reporter who attended the event witnessed a "gaseous exchange" between two old men after Kennedy, who founded the conservationist group Waterkeeper Alliance, was asked a question about the environment.
According to Page Six, the question posed to Kennedy set off Doug Dechert, a former Post gossip columnist and current PR flack who hosted the dinner for Kennedy.
Dechert, who was reportedly drinking, began screaming, "The climate hoax!" His outburst abruptly awoke elderly art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, who Page Six reported was contentedly napping for most of the dinner.
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By Page Six's account, Haden-Guest called his friend Dechert a "miserable blob" and implored him to "shut up."
Reportedly undeterred, Dechert "continued to scream wildly about the climate change ‘scam’ while Haden-Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously ‘f---ing insane’ and ‘insignificant.’"
Dechert then proceeded to "let rip a loud, prolonged fart" while yelling, "I'm farting!"
The other dinner guests, which included journalists and Kennedy's campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, were reportedly left "stunned" by what happened.
Kennedy, who is challenging President Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, watched in silence, according to Page Six.
The situation appeared to improve from there, at least until another guest returned to the subject of climate change, which Page Six reported produced "another round of yelling" from Dechert and Haden-Guest.
Dechert reportedly made an apologetic comment to Page Six the next day "for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence." But the dinner host also said he has "zero tolerance for the climate hoax scam nonsense in any venue that I am personally funding."
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Haden-Guest, who says has known Dechert for three decades, told Page Six the two have "had spats before about this and that."
"We are not quite the same politically, but that doesn’t affect relationships in the U.K. But I thought this was pretty ridiculous," Haden-Guest said. "Doug said it was a hoax and scam. A scam for who? Who is benefiting? That’s not a political thing, it’s a human existence thing."
He told Page Six that fighting in public is "unusual" for him, "but when it is preposterous and it’s a life-or-death issue with the planet, to treat it as a zany political thing is foolish."
