The White House on Monday blasted comments made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about COVID-19 as “vile” amid broader condemnation of the Democratic presidential candidate’s claim that the virus was manipulated to target white and Black people.

The firestorm began after The New York Post reported Kennedy Jr.’s comments, in which he said during an event last week that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack those groups of people while avoiding Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews.

“The claims made on that tape is false, it is vile, and they put our fellow Americans in danger,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing with reporters. “If you think about the racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories that come out of saying those types of things. It is an attack on our fellow citizens, our fellow Americans. And so it is important that we essentially speak out when we hear those claims made more broadly.”

Democratic officials and anti-discrimination leaders immediately challenged the veracity of Kennedy’s claims, which he sought to backtrack by saying in part he didn’t think the virus was “deliberately engineered.” 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a statement saying the environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist should be prevented from serving as an elected official.

Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, also called the comments “deeply troubling,” tweeting that “they do not represent the views of the Democratic Party.”