Tuesday, November 14, 2023

WHY ROBERT F KENNEDY WILL PROBABLY BE PRESIDENT EVEN IF BIDEN AND TRUMP ARE NOT IN PRISON

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back

EXCLUSIVE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Sep 09, 2023
Updated:
Sep 12, 2023

On a steamy summer morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode into a hotel conference room in Columbia, South Carolina, amid a barnstorming town hall tour of a state where Joe Biden won close to 49 percent of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Mr. Kennedy spoke about his 2024 presidential campaign. While Democrat pundits say he's a fringe candidate who spreads conspiracy theories, polls show him with the highest favorability rating of any presidential candidate.

There's no path for Mr. Kennedy to defeat President Joe Biden, critics claim, even amid questions about the current president's age and mental fitness, his low approval ratings, and surveys showing that Americans are concerned about the economy.

Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted to throw its full support to the president.

Mr. Kennedy acknowledges that unseating an incumbent president in the same party is a daunting challenge, although he disagrees with doubters who say he has no chance of securing the nomination.

The 2024 presidential nominee will be announced during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next summer. Until then, Mr. Kennedy intends to continue to press his case.

“The DNC has around $2 billion, and they're spending that money generously to try to marginalize me in many ways, but I think most Democrats care about one thing more than anything else, which is to beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times. “I think President Biden cannot do that. I can.”

President John F. Kennedy with his nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Oval Office of the White House on March 11, 1961. (Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
President John F. Kennedy with his nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Oval Office of the White House on March 11, 1961. (Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Mr. Kennedy is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot and killed after a campaign speech while running for president in 1968.

During his town halls and meet-and-greets, Mr. Kennedy tells stories from time spent with his uncle and father and connects them to his presidential campaign.

He wants to continue his father’s legacy of uniting Americans from all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (L) wants to continue his father’s (R) legacy of uniting Americans from all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (L) wants to continue his father’s (R) legacy of uniting Americans from all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds.

“I think we do that by telling the truth to people. My dad did it that way. He talked about uncomfortable issues but talked about the truth. I think people are tired of being lied to by the government, by the media,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“My dad ran against an incumbent president in his own party (Lyndon B. Johnson) during a divisive time. I’m running against a larger challenge because I am facing an entire infrastructure that is against me, from my own party and Big Tech and the pharmaceutical industry.”

An environmental attorney and the founder of Children’s Health Defense, Mr. Kennedy is widely known for being outspoken about the health risks of vaccines. His stand on these and other issues has drawn support from voters who aren't left-leaning.

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(Left) Then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy speaks to a crowd on racial equality outside the Justice Department on June 14, 1963. (Middle) Then-President John F. Kennedy speaks with his brother Robert F. Kennedy in 1963. (Right) (L–R) Brothers John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. (Public Domain)

Broad Spectrum

Since announcing his 2024 presidential campaign in April, Mr. Kennedy has gained support from a broad spectrum of voters, leading to speculation that he could run as a Republican or an independent.

The candidate, however, has said that he won’t do that, reiterating that stance over the past month in town halls and meet-and-greets in South Carolina, Virginia, and New York City.

“I’m a Democrat. This is my identity, but I want my party back,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I’m running for president because the Democratic Party has lost its way.

"I want to remind the Democratic Party of what we are supposed to represent: A focus on the middle class and labor, the well-being of minorities, a focus on the environment, civil liberties, and freedom of speech."

He frequently talks about "unity" and “healing the divide.”

“I intend to bridge this toxic polarization that is really destroying our country and tearing us apart,” Mr. Kennedy said.

He called his campaign a “peaceful insurgency” that he hopes will appeal to conservative Republicans, independents, moderates, and liberal Democrats.

“During the 35 years I spent as one of the leaders of the environmental movement in our country, I was the only environmentalist who was regularly going on Fox News. I went on Sean Hannity repeatedly—Bill O'Reilly, too,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“I want to talk to media members and voters who share differing opinions than mine, because how else are you going to persuade?

A supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. awaits his 2024 presidential bid announcement in Boston on April 19, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
A supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. awaits his 2024 presidential bid announcement in Boston on April 19, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

“I think we have a lot more in common than what the media portrays. What keeps us apart are things that are rather trivial. We let them feed this toxic polarization. We need to talk. We need to have conversations with people from a wide range of views.”

Days after a House hearing on censorship in July that saw Democrats attempt to block Mr. Kennedy from testifying, a Harvard–Harris poll showed that he has a higher favorability rating than any other 2024 presidential candidate.

Mr. Kennedy drew a favorable rating of 47 percent and an unfavorable mark of 26 percent, according to a survey of 2,068 registered voters, conducted from July 19 to July 20 and released on July 23. Former President Trump carried a favorability rating of 45 percent compared with an unfavorability number of 49 percent. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a 40 percent favorable rating and 37 percent unfavorable, and President Biden's rating was 39 percent favorable and 53 percent unfavorable.

Mr. Kennedy also had the highest net favorability of all 2024 presidential candidates in a June poll from The Economist/YouGov.

Kennedy campaign manager Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio who ran for president in 2004 and 2008, believes that Mr. Kennedy can "rebuild and save" the country and that there's a path to victory over Biden.

“He is the only Democrat who can reach across the political spectrum, which means he can win in 2024,” Mr. Kucinich told The Epoch Times.

“Conservatives, liberals, independents, and libertarians are responding to this campaign because of the unique qualities of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and because there is an understanding he stands for unity, freedom, truth, and authenticity. That is what’s resonating with people.”

When asked about President Biden and former President Trump, Mr. Kennedy was measured in his responses.

“I’m not going to attack other people personally,” he said. “I don’t think it’s good for our country. And what I’m trying to do in this race is bring people together, is try to bridge the divide between Americans.”

'Poison, Hatred, and Vitriol'

Mr. Kennedy stands for "de-escalating” what he called "poison, hatred, and vitriol."

He has repeatedly expressed his disapproval of President Biden’s job performance but has refrained from personal attacks about the 80-year-old’s mental fitness.

“If there’s a policy I disagree with—like the war, like censorship, the lockdowns—I’m going to criticize those, but I’m not going to attack him as a man,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“I will say, whether he's up to it or not, whether he's making his own decisions—the decisions that are coming out of the White House are bad decisions.”

President Biden isn't scheduled to appear in Democrat primary debates, a decision that Mr. Kennedy believes the president should reconsider.

“I think it would be better if we have a democracy where every candidate debates,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“I suppose he is making a strategic decision that's based upon his own interest, but I think we’re living in a period when people have lost faith in the democratic process, and they think the system is rigged.”

President Joe Biden and President Trump should take the debate stage as a sign of respect for American voters, Mr. Kennedy said.

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Then-President Donald Trump and then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden participate in the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. (Jim Bourg/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

“Americans shouldn't feel like we live in the Soviet Union, where the party picks the candidates. I think it would be much better for our democracy—and we'd be a better example for the world and improve our credibility with the American people—if we actually allowed democracy to function and all the candidates participated in debates and town halls and retail politics.

“It is important for the Democratic Party that there is a primary debate. Ultimately, a Democrat will debate a Republican, and the Republican will likely be Trump. He is probably the most successful debater in this country since [the Lincoln–Douglas debates].”

Mr. Kennedy noted how President Trump defeated a crowded pool of Republican primary candidates in 2016.

“He has his own technique that people like. It’s like going into a prize fight. You need practice, and that usually happens in the primary,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“Asking the president to not debate in the primary is like asking a prizefighter to practice by sitting on the couch.”

In South Carolina, Virginia, and New York City, Mr. Kennedy talked to voters about the economy and issues on which he disagrees with President Biden.

In Charleston, he criticized the president for continued financial support to Ukraine.

“One of the big problems we have in our federal government is the addiction to war,” Mr. Kennedy said. “President Biden went to Congress and asked for another $24 billion for the Ukraine war.

“We’ve spent $8 trillion on wars since 9/11. If we kept that money home, we would’ve had child care for every American. We would have free college education for every American. We’d be able to pay for our Social Security system.”

He believes that he, and not President Biden, is the candidate who will best represent Democrats in 2024 and beyond.

“I am the only choice that is going to end the war machine, that is going to really focus on rebuilding the American middle class, taming inflation,” he said.

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(Left) A man shows a Remington 700 hunting rifle and a Remington 1100 shotgun available for sale at Atlantic Outdoors gun shop in Stokesdale, N.C., on March 26, 2018. (Right) Syringes of Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at a vaccination site in Los Angeles on Feb. 16, 2021. (Brian Blanco/Getty Images, Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

About gun control, Mr. Kennedy said: “I do not believe that, within that Second Amendment, there is anything we can meaningfully do to reduce the trade and the ownership of guns.

“Anybody who tells you that they’re going to reduce gun violence through gun control at this point, I don’t think is being realistic. I think we have to think about other ways to reduce that violence.”

Mr. Kennedy did note that he would sign an assault weapons ban if he were president and legislation was placed on his desk.

A vocal opponent of the pharmaceutical industry, Mr. Kennedy vowed at a town hall in Brooklyn on Sept. 1 that he would ban pharmaceutical advertising.

He's outspoken about the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine for some in the population who were coerced to take them, but he told the Epoch Times that he isn't “anti-vaccine.”

“I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” he said. “I’ve said that hundreds and hundreds of times, but it doesn’t matter because that is a way of silencing me. Using that pejorative to describe me is a way of silencing or marginalizing me.”

Mr. Kennedy has said that, initially, he wasn't in favor of President Trump’s border wall. But after seeing the border firsthand in Arizona in July, he changed his mind. He said there's a need for increased infrastructure and technology at the border, including more segments of a physical wall and sensors in areas where a wall isn’t feasible.

Until the United States can seal the border, he said, he doesn’t think it's possible to get an immigration package through Congress.

Illegal immigrants wait in line to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing through a gap in the U.S.–Mexico border barrier in Yuma, Ariz., on May 21, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Illegal immigrants wait in line to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing through a gap in the U.S.–Mexico border barrier in Yuma, Ariz., on May 21, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Mr. Kennedy visited the Arizona–California border with Mexico in early June and met with illegal immigrants, Border Patrol agents, and other stakeholders.

“The Democratic Party thinks our function should be welcoming all immigrants into the country no matter what, and to basically open the borders. And the experiment has been a disaster, a humanitarian catastrophe,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“I watched it firsthand. I watched 300 people come across the border and then be processed and sent to locations all over the country with court dates seven years down the road.

“There’s now 7 million people who have come across illegally and have no legal status in this country. Those people are very vulnerable now to unscrupulous employers who are paying them $5 and $6 an hour.”

Mr. Kennedy called the Biden administration’s open border policy “a way of funding a multibillion-dollar drug and human trafficking operation for the Mexican drug cartels.”

“As president, I will secure the border, which will end the cartel’s drug trafficking economy. I will build wide doors for those who wish to enter legally so that the U.S. can continue to be a beacon to the world where diversity and culture make us great,” he said.

“Immigration is good for our country, but this kind of immigration is unfair to everybody.”

Ending the Russia–Ukraine War

Mr. Kennedy has called for de-escalating the war in Ukraine. He says he's sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause and that Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded the country illegally, but he chastised the United States for its role in the conflict.

“We have neglected many, many opportunities to settle this war peacefully,” he said. “We have turned that nation into a proxy war between Russia and the United States.”

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Ukrainian soldiers preparing a U.S.-made MK-19 automatic grenade launcher at a front line near Toretsk, Ukraine, on Oct. 12, 2022. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

Mr. Kennedy has urged President Biden to negotiate a peaceful end to the Russia–Ukraine war, which started when Russia invaded the neighboring nation in February 2022.

“Russia is not going to lose this war. Russia can't afford it,” he said. “It would be like us losing a war to Mexico.”

As part of his reasoning for ending the war, Mr. Kennedy referenced his uncle President John F. Kennedy.

"My uncle Jack said that the primary job of an American president of the United States is to keep the country out of war. He kept out of Vietnam. He sent only 16,000 military advisers there—mainly Green Berets,” he said.

“In October 1963, he learned that one of his Green Berets had died, and he asked his aide to give him a combat casualty list, and the aide came back and said 75 had died so far. He said: 'That's too many.'”

The American Dream

When it comes to supporting labor unions, Mr. Kennedy's ideas are similar to President Biden's.

“In my administration, you can expect vigorous action by the Justice Department and the Department of Labor to enforce laws against union-busting and unfair labor practices,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“We will also raise the minimum wage so that unions have a higher floor from which to bargain. We will negotiate trade treaties that don’t pit American workers against low-wage foreign workers in a race to the bottom.”

At his campaign stops. Mr. Kennedy likes to talk about the flourishing economic period that the nation experienced after World War II.

“I grew up during the heyday of American economic prosperity. It was in the 1950s and 1960s that the archetype of the American Dream was born. It was not something available only to a lucky few; it was within the reach of most Americans,” he said.

A family watches television in their home in 1955. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
A family watches television in their home in 1955. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“A single wage-earner with a high school education at that time could own a home, raise a family, have vacations, and save for retirement. That is how it should be. If you work hard, you should have a decent life.”

Mr. Kennedy said that if elected president, he would create a 3 percent mortgage for Americans guaranteed by the government and funded by the sale of tax-free bonds. He would also work to make it less profitable for large corporations to own single-family homes in the United States.

“If you have a rich uncle who co-signs your mortgage, you will get a lower interest rate because the bank looks at his credit rating," Mr. Kennedy said at a recent town hall in Spartanburg, South Carolina. "I’m going to give everyone a rich uncle, and his name is Uncle Sam.”

The first 500,000 of those 3 percent mortgages would be reserved for teachers, he said.

“Both President Trump and President Biden are running on platforms that they’ve brought prosperity to this country. But when I travel around South Carolina and other states, I’m not seeing that,” Mr. Kennedy told an audience in Charleston, South Carolina. “I’m seeing people who are living at a level of desperation that I have not seen in this country—ever.”

Corporations Killing the Dream

Making it easier for Americans to buy single-family homes without competing against institutional investors is a priority, he said.

A Wall Street Journal report in 2021 showed that 200 corporations were aggressively buying tens of thousands of single-family houses, including entire neighborhoods, and significantly increasing rental prices.

According to data reviewed by Stateline, investors purchased 24 percent of the single-family homes bought in 2021. In 2022, the number climbed to 28 percent, according to the organization.
A MetLife Investment Management study contends that institutional investors could own up to 40 percent of single-family homes by 2030.

Calling the issue a "crisis," Mr. Kennedy put the blame on asset management behemoths such as BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.

A 2017 paper published by Cambridge University Press reported that the three firms constitute the largest shareholder in 88 percent of S&P 500 firms.

“And now they have a new target, which is to gain ownership of all the single-family residences in this country. And they are on a trajectory to do that,” Mr. Kennedy told an audience in Greenville, South Carolina.

“Usually, when a company buys a home with a cash offer, there is an LLC with an ambiguous name. It often can be traced back to one of those big companies.”

Mr. Kennedy noted that Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, is a World Economic Forum (WEF) board member.

“The WEF is a billionaire boys club that meets in Davos every year and has a plan, which is a 'New World Order' and what they have called the 'Great Reset,'” he said. “Klaus Schwab, who wrote the book on that agenda, says that 'you will own nothing and you will be happy.' They are well on their way to accomplishing that first part.”

At every stop in South Carolina, Mr. Kennedy said that one of his first priorities as president would be to change the tax code so that “it will be less profitable for large corporations to own single-family homes.”

Curbing credit card debt is another way to help more Americans achieve home ownership and become more financially comfortable.

“Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The average income in this country is $5,000 less than the average cost of living. What that means is people have to make up the difference by putting those expenses on credit cards,” Mr. Kennedy told a crowd in Richmond, Virginia.

“We recently reached a milestone in this country with more than $1 trillion in personal credit card debt.”

He noted that many creditors are charging interest rates of 22 percent and higher.

“If it was the Mafia, it would be loan sharking, and they would go to jail, but for banks and credit card companies, it's considered the cost of doing business,” he said.

Before concluding his remarks about credit card debt, Mr. Kennedy posed a question to the audience.

“Who do you think owns many of those companies?" he asked.

"BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. They are strip mining the wealth of the American public, and their political clout allows them to do that.”

Primary Season

Under a new format, South Carolina will hold the first Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 3, 2024. The DNC, encouraged by President Biden, voted earlier this year to strip the Iowa caucus of its traditional lead-off spot in the party's presidential nominating process and replace it with South Carolina.

In late August, as Mr. Kennedy traveled around South Carolina, he stopped in Orangeburg to officially open a statewide campaign office.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a town hall at a home in Spartanburg, S.C., on Aug. 22, 2023. (Jeff Louderback/The Epoch Times)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a town hall at a home in Spartanburg, S.C., on Aug. 22, 2023. (Jeff Louderback/The Epoch Times)

New Hampshire has long been the country’s—and the GOP's—first primary after the Iowa caucuses. Under the Democrats' new primary calendar, which differs from the Republicans', it would vote with Nevada on Feb. 6, 2024.

Because of the move, President Biden’s name might not appear on New Hampshire's Democrat primary ballot.

The DNC rules panel gave New Hampshire and Iowa until Sept. 1 to comply with new rules or face possible sanctions. Republican and Democrat legislators in New Hampshire have said that they won't adhere to the schedule change, saying state law prohibits the move.

If President Biden's name doesn't appear on the ballot, that would leave Mr. Kennedy to compete with author Marianne Williamson in the New Hampshire primary.

New Hampshire’s Democratic party leaders have said that a longtime state law requires that their primary be scheduled ahead of any other primary.

Democratic presidential candidates participate in the party's presidential primary debate at the Charleston Gaillard Center in Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 25, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Democratic presidential candidates participate in the party's presidential primary debate at the Charleston Gaillard Center in Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 25, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In 2020, candidate Joe Biden lost the Democratic caucus in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire before winning decisively in South Carolina. He has said that South Carolina more accurately represents the party’s diverse voting base.

“Everyone knows the real reason the DNC made the change. The people of South Carolina didn’t ask for it. No, it is simply another undemocratic attempt to rig the primary process in favor of their anointed candidate, Joe Biden,” Mr Kennedy said.

"The DNC seems to have forgotten the purpose of the modern primary system to begin with, which was to replace backroom crony politics with a transparent democratic process. If the Biden campaign thinks they can win with administrative tricks and evasions, they will be in for a rude surprise in both New Hampshire and South Carolina."

First Office in New Hampshire

Mr. Kennedy opened his first office in New Hampshire in August.

“New Hampshire plays an important role in American democracy because they have this history, and they have a cultural affinity for vetting candidates early on in the process, and they do a very good job of it,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

“In many other states, politicians can fly over at 30,000 feet and carpet bomb the state with billions of dollars in advertising. It’s kind of a Kabuki theater of democracy rather than real democracy.

"In Iowa, you go to the farms and stock sales. In New Hampshire, you have to go to the barber shops and the nail salons and the diners, and you have to shake hands with people, and you have to answer difficult questions and then follow-up questions. You get to know people, and that is important.”

Mr. Kennedy recalls campaign trips with his uncle and father in the 1960s.

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Supporters gather around then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy during one of his campaigns at a shopping center in Maryland on May 12, 1960. (Library of Congress)

“I remember the crowds and the enthusiasm. That is what we are seeing at our events. Enthusiasm. Intensity,” he said.

“There’s nothing like meeting people face to face and hearing their concerns. When we were in New Hampshire, we had one event in a sparsely populated area in one of the most northern counties, and we drove down a long dirt road. I thought, ‘How is anyone going to show up at this event?’ and we had 500 people there. That is inspiring.”

Mr. Kennedy supports abortion in the first three months of pregnancy.

“I can argue there's nobody in this country that has worked harder for the rights of medical freedom and personal bodily autonomy than me," Mr. Kennedy said. “That applies to the vaccines and abortion.

“I don't think the government should be telling us what to do with our bodies and dictating for Americans what we can and cannot do in the first three months of pregnancy. It’s a woman’s choice.”

That stance could cost him potential support from conservatives, he conceded.

“I've seen photos of late-term abortions, and they're horrifyingly troubling,” he said. “I respect people who have different points of view, and for people who say that ‘it's the only issue that I care about,’ they will likely vote for someone else because of my beliefs.

“If you're a one-issue voter, and that's something that you deeply care about, I might not be the right candidate for you. But I feel like there's a lot of people now who want authenticity in their political leadership, and they want somebody who's going to tell them the truth.”

Censorship

Also ranking high among issues that Mr. Kennedy feels strongly about is censorship—from the government as well as Big Tech.

He has filed legal action against the Biden administration and Google, among other entities, for alleged censorship. He has appeared before Congress to testify about the issue.

“I was censored not just by a Democratic administration, I was censored by the Trump administration. I was the first person censored by the Biden administration, two days after he came into office,” Mr. Kennedy told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in July.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R), 2024 presidential hopeful, is sworn in before testifying at the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 20, 2023. (Jim WATSON / AFP)
In February 2021, he was barred from Instagram for what Meta, which owns the platform, described as breaking its rules regarding COVID-19.

At the time, a company spokesperson said Instagram removed Mr. Kennedy's account for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”

In June, Instagram restored the account.

“As he is now an active candidate for president of the United States, we have restored access to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Instagram account,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta, said in a June 4 statement.

Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook account has remained active.

Meta removed Instagram and Facebook accounts belonging to Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Mr. Kennedy’s nonprofit. CHD, according to its website, advocates to “end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable, and establish safeguards to prevent future harm.”

Meta said that the CHD accounts were banned because they repeatedly violated the company’s COVID-19 policies. Mr. Kennedy still bristles at the move.
“Silencing a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic,” he said. “Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?”

Allegations of Anti-Semitism

What bothers Mr. Kennedy even more are accusations earlier this year that he's “anti-Semitic.”

At a gathering in July, secretly recorded video footage was leaked to the media in which Mr. Kennedy can be heard describing research that reported that the COVID-19 virus disproportionately affected Caucasian and black people while being comparably mild for Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, whom Mr. Kennedy suggested had a stronger immune response to the virus.

Democrats and other critics of Mr. Kennedy condemned the comments as “racist” and “anti-Semitic.”

Mr. Kennedy has vehemently denied the allegations.

At the July 20 House hearing on censorship, Democrats attempted to prevent him from testifying. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) introduced a motion to move the hearing into executive session, which would have closed the hearing from public view.

“Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly made despicable anti-Semitic and anti-Asian remarks as recently as last week,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said, citing a section of House rules that she said Mr. Kennedy’s comments violated.

In a recorded vote, all 10 Republicans present at the hearing voted to shelve Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s motion. All eight Democrats present voted in favor of the motion.

Mr. Kennedy testified that he has “never uttered a phrase that was racist or anti-Semitic,” and he continued to defend himself on July 25 in New York at a World Values Network presidential candidate series event.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during The World Values Network's presidential candidate series at the Glasshouse in New York on July 25, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during The World Values Network's presidential candidate series at the Glasshouse in New York on July 25, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Just as he said in July, Mr. Kennedy pointedly refuted the claims that he's anti-Semitic.

“I've been involved in controversial issues for most of my career. Usually, it doesn’t affect me,” he said. “The accusation of anti-Semitism cuts me and hurts me. It hurts Cheryl [Hines, Mr. Kennedy's wife]. It hurts our family, and so that was painful.

“I've literally never said an anti-Semitic word in my life, but I believe they [Democrats on the House committee] probably thought whatever they were doing was right in one way or another.

“There’s a way to censor people through targeted character assassination. You use vile accusations to marginalize them, and that is the kind of censorship I’m now dealing with.”

The Democratic contender concluded his comments about censorship with a message that reflects a key component of his campaign platform

“If we're going to really heal the divide between Americans—which is one of the things that I'm trying to do with this campaign—we can’t react even to hatred with hatred. We have to react with forgiveness. React with kindness and react with generosity,” Mr. Kennedy stated.

“Harboring resentment is like swallowing poison and hoping someone else dies. It corrodes our souls."


WaPo Hides Donors’ Migration Money Motive in Anti-Trump Opposition

DES MOINES, IOWA - AUGUST 12: Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the Steer N' Stein bar at the Iowa State Fair on August 12, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa. Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President …
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The Washington Post produced a three-byline, 2,150-word article on tech investors’ conflicts with former President Donald Trump but did not mention the overriding, all-important divide over migration.

The November 12 article is titled “Why Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel turned against Trump.”

However, the article does not mention voters’ rational support for Trump’s popular promise to curb what investors want — more wage-cutting, rent-spiking migration of foreign consumers, renters, and workers.

The article said:

Just two months before [the] Republican primary season kicks off in Iowa, [tech investor Peter] Thiel is one of several powerful Silicon Valley conservatives reevaluating their participation in politics. Tech heavyweights who helped ignite Trump’s candidacy have told close associates they feel alienated from the GOP and are casting about for a candidate who more closely aligns with their extreme pro-business agenda. 

By excluding migration, the article suggests investors have broken with Trump over his claimed failure to reduce regulation. “‘Look at the major agencies. The FTC, the FDA. Did they have any less when Trump left office than when he started? The answer is no,’ said one of the advisers to major Silicon Valley donors.”

The failure to mention immigration “does seem like an absence, a gap, in the story,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

He continued:

You would think a reporter would have asked because, if anything, Silicon Valley folks are, generally speaking, the boosters of immigration. If I were a reporter, one of the things that [I] would have asked is “How does the Republican Party’s stance on immigration have anything to do with your own changing attitudes?” Maybe they asked, but they got nothing worth reporting.

These days, there is much evidence that Silicon Valley investors strongly and rationally — from their self-serving perspective — oppose the GOP’s populist opposition to mass migration.

For example, the top-level FWD.us advocacy group for tech investors is loudly opposing Trump’s latest promises to curb illegal migration, according to three reporters at the New York Times:

“Americans should understand these [Trump] policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike,” Mr. [Todd] Schulte said.

Todd Schulte runs FWD.us — the very influential lobby group for billionaire investors founded by Mark Zuckerberg and many other Silicon Valley investors to push the failed “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill in 2013.

FWD.us lobbies because investors recognize that Wall Street’s stock values spike when the federal government skews the economy by importing more renters, consumers, and cheap workers, regardless of the pocketbook damage to ordinary Americans.

The breadth of investors who founded and still fund FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website, but copies exist at the other sites.

Other investors cite migration as a reason to walk away from the GOP’s populists.

“Let me say the quiet part out loud: Trump supporters need to move on from Trump. And from Trump-style politics,” said an April 2022 statement from Jeff Giesea, another tech investor who backed Trump in 2016. He wrote:

I look back on the Trump era with mostly negative emotions. On the one hand, the American political establishment needed a wake-up call to listen to voices it had forgotten. Trump succeeded as a sort of wrecking ball and court jester. He forced necessary conversations and electoral reconfigurations.

[But] Many of the issues and grievances that fueled Trump in 2016 remain. Immigration is a mess. The country still lacks basic sovereignty. Bold, forward-looking policies around healthcare, energy, and education remain to be seen. Middle Americans are still underserved and taken for granted by our government.

Billionaires are also abandoning Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who promoted himself as a competent governor who could bridge the GOP’s pro-migration donors and low-migration voters:

The right-wing venture capitalist David Sacks was a major DeSantis backer, hosting the launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign on X, formerly Twitter, in the spring. But in recent months, Sacks has soured on DeSantis, according to two people familiar with his thinking, and has thrown fundraisers for rivals Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, then running as a Democrat.

Many polls show that the party cannot accept the investors’ demands for more and more migration, no matter how much money the investors dangle in donations.

For example, immigration is the top issue for 26 percent of Republican voters, according to a poll by Reuters announced on November 7. The 26 percent score is four points above the 22 percent who said the closely related economic issue is the most important.

Swing voters also oppose migration. In October, for example, a majority of the Democrat-leaning Jewish community in New York agreed that migration is more of a burden than a benefit.

Curiously, the Washington Post’s do-not-mention-migration article mentioned Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley just once — even though she is getting funds from Silicon Valley investors while promising them an immigration giveaway.

In September, Politico reported on Haley’s investor donors:

They include billionaire WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, who has donated $5 million to a super PAC supporting her campaign, venture capitalist Tim Draper, who gave $1.1 million, and million-dollar donor Steven Stull, another venture capitalist, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

“We need to [think about immigration] based on merit. We need to go to our industries and say, ‘What do you need that you don’t have?'” Haley told supporters in New Hampshire on November 2. “So think agriculture, think tourism, think tech, we want the talent that’s going to make us better.”

Yet the Washington Post suggested that Haley is getting donations from investors because of her foreign policy record. It quoted Keith Rabois — a general partner at Thiel’s venture firm Founders Fund who backs Haley — saying, “DeSantis hasn’t demonstrated sophisticated expertise in foreign policy and the economy.”

The article cited investor support for Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy but declined to explain his pro-investor immigration and trade policies.

On the Democrat side, President Joe Biden and his deputies have lavished Silicon Valley investors with favors and giveaways since well before the 2020 election.

In October, Breitbart News reported more Biden giveaways to high-tech investors:

President Joe Biden told his deputies Monday to import more foreign graduates for the Fortune 500 white-collar careers needed by indebted U.S. graduates and their families.

The directive is described in a White House fact sheet outlining the directive, “Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence.”

Biden is “setting up another wave of indentured servitude workers,” responded Kevin Lynn, the founder of U.S. TechWorkers.

The visa programs include the infamous H-1B program, which grants roughly 200,000 three-year work permits each year to low-skill and mid-skill foreign graduates.

The programs “are used to bring in ordinary [mid-skilled foreign] workers to not only displace Americans but allow [CEOs and investors] to control these people during their entire tenure in the country,” Lynn said.  The CEOs and university presidents can control their indentured workers by dangling the hope of green cards and the threat of exile back home, he said.

There should be little surprise when reporters at establishment sites fail to follow the money in migration, said Krikorian. “It’s not so much because [Washington Post owner and high-tech investor] Jeff Bezos is telling them what to do — it’s because they’re in a newsroom where peer pressure would militate against that,” he said.

“In fact, they’re pre-selected [by hiring managers] to not even think about that question,” he added.

Many reporters for the New York Times post many excellent articles about the economic abuse and poverty of migrants, such as child labor and rising rents, but the top editors are pro-migration, so the newspaper does not connect the dots and describe the pocketbook damage of migration to ordinary Americans.

Ordinary Americans — especially black Americans — enjoyed a long and steady rise in prosperity after Congress curbed migration in 1925, but lobbyists persuaded Congress to reopen migration in 1965, double it in 1990, and largely open the border in 2021. The result has been a colossal transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans over to CEOs, investors, and Wall Street.

The government’s migration stimulus for Wall Street policy greatly reduces U.S. innovation, imposes chaotic diversity on American society, and extracts human resources from many poor countries.


15 MILLION ILLEGALS HAVE BEEN USHERED OVER THE BORDER TO JOIN THE 50 MILLION ALREADY HERE.

PUSH 2 FOR ENGLISH AND WATCH THEM VOTE DEM FOR MORE!


 Migrant enclaves already are at the top of the U.S. lists for bad places to  - 10 of the 50 worst places in America to live according to this list are in California, and all of them are famous for their illegal populations.             MONICA SHOWALTER


And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education (BOTTOM).

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