Independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reiterated Tuesday that he believes President Biden to current a higher menace to democracy than former President Donald Trump.
“Biden has finished one thing that no different president in historical past has finished, which is to order media — significantly social media, Fb, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google — to censor his political opponents,” the 70-year-old told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday.
“If in case you have a president who can censor his political opponents, he has the license for any form of atrocity — that may be a real menace to our democracy.”
Efforts by the Biden administration to flag content material for social media firms to average, particularly in the course of the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been topic to litigation earlier than the Supreme Courtroom.
Justices on the excessive court docket heard oral arguments last month in a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s actions.
In the summertime of 2021, the White Home approvingly cited a report labeling Kennedy as one in every of a “disinformation dozen” who disseminated wrong information about COVID-19 vaccines.
On Monday night time, Kennedy brought about a stir by telling CNN that he “could make the argument that President Biden is far worse” than Trump by way of defending democracy, drawing swift backlash from Democrats.
“With a straight face, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned that Joe Biden is a much bigger menace to democracy than Donald Trump as a result of he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories on-line,” Democratic Nationwide Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill mentioned in an announcement.
“There isn’t any comparability to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on day one. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid to relaxation tonight any doubts that he’s a spoiler candidate.”
“All of this, the usage of the courts, the usage of prosecutors, the usage of all these federal companies to alter our political panorama, it simply is improper, and we ought to be debating about it,” Kennedy informed Fox Information Tuesday.
“You had all these federal companies that have been now capable of silence individuals who have been questioning their insurance policies.”
Biden and his allies have predicated the 2024 election as a referendum on Trump’s purported autocratic leanings and his actions in the course of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Throughout his CNN interview Monday, Kennedy added that he believes the violence of that day was “clearly a menace” to the republic
“I believe that may be a menace to democracy if we’re making an attempt to overthrow the election, clearly a menace,” he informed CNN. “However the query was, ‘Who was a worse menace to democracy?’” he added.
The environmental lawyer and son of the late lawyer common and senator from New York has drawn hearth from each Trump’s and Biden’s campaigns, who worry he might siphon votes away from them on Nov. 5.
Final month, Trump claimed that Kennedy is extra “radical Left” than Biden, whereas the incumbent president has paraded his endorsements from different Kennedy relations.
In a three-way matchup, Trump is scoring 40.7% help, in comparison with Biden’s 35.3% and Kennedy’s 12.3%, based on the newest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
Kennedy might want to high 15% in choose polling as a way to safe a spot on the talk stage later this fall.
