CNN
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued Monday that President Joe Biden poses a greater threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump.
His argument made on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” centered on the blocking of social media platforms under the Biden administration, which he called an effort to “censor political speech” and undermine the First Amendment.
“I can make the case that President Biden poses the worst threat to democracy, and the reason is that President Biden is the first candidate in history – the first president in history to have used federal agencies to censor political speech, in order to censor his opponent,” he said.
Kennedy pointed to his removal from social media platforms, which he attributes to pressure from the Biden administration, as evidence of the president’s efforts to censor political speech.
Kennedy’s Instagram account was suspended in 2021 “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” but was reinstated last year shortly after announcing his presidential campaign. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, cited his candidacy for the White House as a reason to restore Kennedy’s account in a statement.
In December, the Supreme Court blocked Kennedy from joining a challenge to a case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana regarding the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies over posts that the government considers to be disinformation. Kennedy currently has a similar case pending in lower court.
Kennedy, who has made free speech issues a central focus of his campaign, testified last year before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the militarization of the federal government. Kennedy was invited by House Republicans to speak as part of their investigation into allegations of censorship against conservatives at social media companies.
Kennedy said that while he believes Biden and Trump are both unsuitable for re-election in November, he doesn’t believe the rhetoric suggesting either candidate would “destroy democracy.”
He added that if he had to call one a greater threat to democracy than the other, he would choose Biden because he believes the president has “weaponized federal agencies” against his opponents.
The independent candidate acknowledged that Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election “clearly poses a threat to democracy” but maintained his belief that Biden is the greater threat.
“I think it’s a threat to democracy, overthrowing (Trump) — trying to overturn the election is clearly a threat to democracy,” Kennedy said. “But the question was: who poses the greatest threat to democracy? And what I would say is… I’m not going to answer that question. But I can say that President Biden is because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important.
“I’m not going to defend President Trump on this, and it was terrible. And there are a lot of things that President Trump has done that are terrible,” he added.
The Democratic National Committee responded to Kennedy by saying in a statement that “there is no comparison” between Biden and Trump.
“With a straight face, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Joe Biden posed a greater threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was prohibited from spreading conspiracy theories online,” Mary Beth Cahill said , senior advisor to the DNC, in a statement. “There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator from day one. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tonight dispelled any doubt that he is a spoiler candidate by pushing his MAGA talking points into prime time.
In the interview, Kennedy downplayed the potential risks of calling into question the integrity of the election, as he has in previous presidential elections, but said he believed it was important that voters who believe the election was stolen are not persecuted for their belief.
“People who say the election was stolen…we shouldn’t make outcasts out of those people. We should not demonize them. We should not vilify them. What we should do is say, let’s all come together, Republicans and Democrats, and fix the election system,” he said.
Kennedy said during the interview that he believed the 2000 presidential election was “stolen” and cited a Rolling Stone article he wrote in 2006 in which he questioned whether the presidential election from 2004 had been stolen.
Kennedy, 70, initially launched his presidential campaign as a Democrat challenging Biden in last year’s primaries, before running as an independent in October. Last month, he announced that attorney Nicole Shanahan, 38, would be his running mate at a campaign rally in Oakland, California.
He never held office but inspired a small contingent of supporters drawn to his advocacy against public health mandates and the influence of money on decisions made by government and private business. Kennedy has tried to distance himself from his previous anti-vaccine rhetoric since launching his campaign last year, but he continues to attack Covid-19 vaccination mandates and pandemic lockdowns at events campaign.
RFK Jr. reacts to family members who spoke out against his White House bid
The son of former Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former Democratic President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Jr. regularly uses his family’s legacy to bolster his campaign message — but several members of his family criticized him for defying Biden.
Kennedy called Biden a “friend of 40 years to me and my family” but said he wasn’t worried about running for president without his family’s support, adding that he felt “loved by them” despite their political differences.
Kennedy’s comments come after members of his extended family, including some of his siblings, celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at the White House last month and shared their support for Biden in a social media post. Biden responded to a message from Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy: “From one proud Irish family to another, it was good to see you all back at the White House.” »
And in a CNN interview last week, Kennedy’s sister, Rory Kennedy, said she feared he was hurting Biden’s chances of defeating Trump.
Kennedy told Burnett on Monday that he grew up regularly disagreeing with his family members and that he still loves his family members who supported Biden for president.
“I have a big family, about 105 cousins at last count,” Kennedy said. “I have a big family. I don’t know anyone in America whose family agrees with him on everything.”
“I come from a family, from an environment where we came home in the evening, we had dinner with my father and he orchestrated the debates between us and we were – in the same way that his father did with him. And we could disagree on issues, and we could disagree on passion and information, but we still loved each other. And I love Rory. I love my family. I feel loved by them.
Kennedy also noted that some members of his family support his campaign, including his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, his campaign manager, and his first cousin Anthony Shriver, who he said also works for his campaign.
Kennedy also downplayed fears of playing a spoiler role, arguing that he believed neither Biden nor Trump would advance policy goals he wants to prioritize, such as the national debt and reducing the U.S. defense budget.
“I don’t think either President Trump or President Biden will solve this country’s debt crisis, which is existential. I don’t think either will get us out of foreign wars, out of this dependence on forever wars,” he said.
“The opportunity for me to really change the nature of governance in this country, to restore democracy, to restore the moral authority of our nation abroad, to give us a foreign policy that is not based on war or the projection of military power abroad, but on the projection of economic power. and moral force. The chances of this happening are too great and too important for me to give up this competition, “he said. he adds.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
