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Robert F. Kennedy Jr Explains How Democrats burned him · Brett Keane and Eve Show

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16 months ago, in April of 2023, I launched my campaign for
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President United States. I began this journey as a
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Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party
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which I pledge my own allegiance to long before I was old enough
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to vote. I attended my first Democratic
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convention at the age of 6 in 1960, and back then the
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Democrats were the Champions of the constitution of civil
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rights. The Democrats stood against
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authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism,
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imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of Labor, of
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the working class. The Democrats were the party of
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government transparency and the champion of the environment.
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Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and
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corporate power. True to its name, it was the
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party of democracy. As you know, I left that party
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in October because it had departed so dramatically on the
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core values that I grew up with. It'll become the party of war,
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censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big AG, and
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big Money. When an abandoned democracy.
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By canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of
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the sitting president, I left the party to run as an
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independent. The mainstream of American
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politics and journalism derided my decision.
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Conventional wisdom said that it would be impossible even to get
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on the ballot as an independent because each state poses an
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insurmountable tangle of arbitrary rules for collecting
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signatures. I would need over a million
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signatures, something no presidential candidate in
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history had ever achieved, and then I'd need a team of
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attorneys and millions of dollars to handle all the legal
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challenges from the DNC. Nader, the naysayers, told us
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that we were climbing a glass version of mountain.
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Impossible. So the first thing I want to
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tell you is that we proved them wrong.
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We did it because beneath the radar of mainstream media
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organs, we inspired a massive independent political movement.
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More than 100,000 volunteers sprang into action, hopeful that
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they could reverse our nation's decline.
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Many work 10 hour days, sometimes in blizzards and
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blazing heat. A sacrifice.
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Family time, personal commitments and sleep.
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Month after month, energized by a shared vision of a nation
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healed of its divisions, they set up tables at churches and
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farmers markets. They canvassed door to door in
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Utah and in New Hampshire, volunteers collected signatures
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in snowstorms, convincing each supporter to stop in the frigid
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cold, to take off their gloves, and to sign legibly.
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During a heat wave. In Nevada, I met a tall,
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athletic volunteer who cheerfully told me that he had
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lost 25 lbs collecting signatures and 117° heat.
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To finance this effort, young Americans donated their lunch
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money and senior citizens gave up their part of their Social
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Security checks. Our fifty state organization
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collected those millions of signatures and more.
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No presidential campaign and his political American political
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history has ever done that. And so I want to thank all of
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those dedicated volunteers and congratulate the campaign staff
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who coordinated this enormous logistical feat.
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Your accomplishments were regarded as impossible.
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You carried me up that glass mountain.
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You pulled off a miracle. You achieve what all the punt
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that said could never be done. You have my deepest gratitude
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and I'm never going to forget that.
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Not just for what you did for my campaign, but for the sacrifices
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you made because you love our country.
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You showed everyone that democracy is still possible
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here. It continues to survive in the
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press and in the idealistic human energies that still thrive
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beneath the canvas of neglect and of official and
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institutional corruption. Today, I'm here to tell you that
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I will not allow your efforts to go to waste.
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I'm here to tell you that I will leverage your tremendous
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accomplishments to serve the ideals that we share, the ideals
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of peace, of prosperity, of freedom, of health, all the
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ideals that motivated my campaign.
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I'm here's a describe the path forward that you've opened with
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your commitment and with your hard laborers.
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Now, in an honest system, I believe that I would have won
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the election In a system that my father and my uncles thrived in.
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A system with open debates, with fair primaries, with regularly
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scheduled debate with their primaries, and with a truly
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independent media untainted by government propaganda and
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censorship, and a system of non partisan courts and election
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boards, everything would be different.
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After all, the polls consistently showed me beating
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each of the other candidates, both in favorability and also in
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head to head matchups. But I'm sorry to say that while
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democracy may still be alive at the grass roots, it has become a
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little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for
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our media, and for our government.
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And most sadly at all for me, the Democratic Party.
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In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party said itself
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to dismantling it. Lacking confidence in its
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candidate that that its candidate could win in a fair
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election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal
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warfare against both President Trump and myself.
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Each time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes
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of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us
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into court, state after state, attempting to erase their work
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and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed those
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petitions. It deployed DNC aligned judges
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to throw B and other candidates off the ballot and to throw
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President Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was
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rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.
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Then, when a predictably bundled debate performance precipitated
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the Palace coup against President Biden, the same
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shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an
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election. They installed a candidate who
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was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020
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without winning a single delegate.
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My uncle and my father both relish debate.
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They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe to toe with
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any opponent in the battle over ideas they would be astonished
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to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like
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Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview
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or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days.
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This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose, and
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they don't know whom they are choosing?
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And how can this look to the rest of the world?
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My father, my uncle. We're always conscious of
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America's image abroad because of our nation's role as the
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template for democracy, a role model for democratic processes,
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and the leader of the free world.
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Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC
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and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice
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President Harris based upon, oh, nothing.
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No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors
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and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus.
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There in Chicago is a string of Democratic speakers mentioned
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Donald Trump 147 times just on the first day.
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Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate?
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In contrast, at the RNC convention, President Biden was
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mentioned only twice in four days.
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I do interviews every day. Many of you have interviewed me.
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Anybody who asks gets to interview me.
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Some days I do as many as ten. President Trump, who actually
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was nominated and won an election, also does interviews
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daily. How did the Democratic Party
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choose a candidate that has never done an interview or
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debate during the entire election cycle?
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We know the answers. They did it by weaponizing the
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government agencies. They did it by abandoning
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democracy. They did it by suing the
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opposition and by disenfranchising American
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voters. What most alarms me isn't how
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the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its
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candidates. What alarms me is the resort to
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censorship and media control, and the weaponization of the
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federal agencies when AUS president colludes with or
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outright coerces media companies to censor political speech.
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It's an attack on our most sacred right, a free expression.
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And that's the very right upon which all of our other
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constitutional rights rest. President Biden mocked Vladimir
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Putin's 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing
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that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and
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that Putin prevented a serious opponents from appearing on the
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ballot. But here in America, the DNC
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also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot, and our
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television networks expose themselves as Democratic Party
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organs. Over the course of more than a
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year. In a campaign where my poll
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numbers reached at times in the high 20s, the DNC live
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mainstream media networks maintain a near perfect embargo
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on interviews with me. During his ten month
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presidential campaign in 1992, Ross Perot gave 34 interviews on
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mainstream networks. In contrast, during the 16
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months since I declared, ABCNBCCBSMSNBCMCNN combined gave
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only two live interviews from me.
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Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces
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with inaccurate, often vile persuasives and defamatory
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smears. Some of those same networks and
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colluded with the DNC to keep me off the debate stage.
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Representatives of those networks are in this room right
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now. And I'll just take a moment to
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ask you to consider the many ways that your institutions have
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abdicated this really sacred responsibility, the duty of a
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Free Press to safeguard democracy and to challenge
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always the party in power. Instead of maintaining that
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posture of fierce skepticism toward authority, your
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institutions have made your made themselves government
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mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.
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You didn't alone cause the devolution of American
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democracy, but you could have prevented it.
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The Democratic Party's censorship of social media was
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even more of a naked exercise of executive power.
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This week, a federal judge, Terry Doty.
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I've held my injunction against President Biden calling the
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White House's censorship project quote, the most egregious
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violation of the 1st Amendment in the history of the United
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States of America. These previous 155 page decision
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details how just 37 hours after he took the oath of office
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swearing to uphold the Constitution, President Biden
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and his White House opened up a portal and then invited the CIA,
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the FBI, CISA, which is a censorship agency.
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It's it's the center of the censorship industrial complex,
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DHS, the IRS and other agencies, the censor mate and other
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political dissidents on social media.
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Even today, users who try to post my campaign videos to
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Facebook or YouTube and messages at this content violates
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community standards. Two days after Judge Dodi
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rendered his decision this week, Facebook was still attaching
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warning labels to an online petition calling on ABC to
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include me in the upcoming debate.
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They said that violates community standards, their
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community standards. The mainstream media was once
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the guardian of the 1st Amendment and democratic
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principles, and it's joined this systemic attack on democracy.
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It also the media justifies their censorship on the grounds
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of combating misinformation. But governments and, and
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oppressors don't censor lies. They don't fear lies.
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They fear the truth. And that's what they censor.
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And I, and I don't want any of this to sound like a personal
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complaint because it's not I for me, it's it, it's all part of a
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journey and it's a journey that I signed up with.
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But I need to make these observations because I think
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they're critical for us doing the thing that we need to do as
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citizens in a democracy to assess where we are in this
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country and what our democracy still looks like and the
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assumptions about US leadership around the globe.
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And are we living, Are we really still a role model for democracy
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in this country? Or have we made it, you know, a
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kind of a a joke? Here's the good news on
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mainstream outlets denied me a critical platform.
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It didn't shut down my ideas, which have especially flourished
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among young voters and independent voters thanks to the
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alternative media. Many months ago, I promised the
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American people that I would withdraw from the race if I
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became a spoiler. A spoiler?
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Someone will alter the outcome of the election but has no
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chance of winning. In my heart, I no longer believe
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that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of
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this relentless, systematic censorship and media control.
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So I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to
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keep working their long hours, or ask my donors to keep giving
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when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the
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White House. Furthermore, our polling
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consistently showed by staying on the ballot in the
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battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to
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the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential
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issues, censorship, war and chronic disease.
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Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to
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negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle chronic
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disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our constitutional
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freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of our government,
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or to defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military
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adventurism. But now one of the two
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candidates has adopted these issues as his own.
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There's a point where he has asked to enlist me and his
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administration. I'm speaking, of course, of
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Donald Trump. Less than two hours after
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President Trump narrowly escaped assassination, Galley Means
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called me on my cell phone. I was in at Las Vegas.
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Galley is arguably the leading advocate for food safety, for
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soil regeneration, and for ending the chronic disease
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epidemic that is destroying America's health and ruining our
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economy. Galley has exposed the insidious
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corruption at the FDA and the NIH, the HHS and the USDA that
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has caused the epidemic. Ali had been working on and off
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for my campaign advising me on those subjects since the
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beginning, and those subjects have been my primary focus for
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the last 20 years. I was delighted when Cali told
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me that day that he had also been advising President Trump.
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He told me President Trump was anxious to talk to me about
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chronic disease and other subjects and to explore avenues
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of cooperation. He asked if I would take a call
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from the president. President Trump telephoned me a
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few minutes later, and I met with him the following day.
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A few weeks later, I met again with President Trump and his
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family members and closest advisors in Florida.
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In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to
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discover that we are aligned on many key issues.
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In those meetings. He suggested that we join forces
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as a unity party. We talked about Abraham
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Lincoln's team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us
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to disagree publicly and privately, and fiercely if need
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be, on issues over which we differ, while working together
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on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance.
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I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first
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administration and and there are still issues and approaches upon
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which we continue to have very serious differences.
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But we are aligned with each other on other key issues like
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ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics,
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securing the border, protecting freedom of speech.
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Unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies,
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getting the US intelligence agencies out of the business of
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propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans, and
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interfering with our elections. Following my first discussion
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with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar
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discussions with Vice President Harris.
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Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with
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me. Suspending my candidacy is a
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hard, random decision for me, but I'm convinced that it's the
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best hope. Or ending the Ukraine war and
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ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our
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nation's vitality from the inside.
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And for finally protecting free speech.
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I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save
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millions of American children. Above all things, for 19 years,
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I prayed every morning that God would put me in a position to
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end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was
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one of the primary reasons for my running for president, along
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with ending censorship in the Ukraine war.
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It's the reason I've made the heart wrenching decision to
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suspend my campaign and to support President Trump.
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This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties
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it causes my wife and my children and my friends.
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But I have the certainty that this is what I've meant to do.
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And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.
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If I'm given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and
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reform our food production, I promise that within two years we
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will watch chronic disease burden lift dramatically.
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We will make Americans healthy again.
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Within four years, America will be a healthy country.
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We will be stronger, more resilient, more optimistic, and
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happier. I won't fail in doing this.
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Ultimately, the future, however it happens, is in God's hands
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and in the hands of the American voters and those of President
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Trump. If President Trump is elected
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and honors his Word, the vast burden of chronic disease that
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now demoralizes and bankrupts the country will disappear.
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This is a spiritual journey for me.
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I reach my decision through deep prayer, through a hard nosed
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logic, and I ask myself what choices must I make to maximize
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my chances to save America's children and restore National
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Health? I felt that if I refused this
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opportunity, I would not be able to look myself in the mirror
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knowing that I could have saved lives of countless children and
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refers this country's chronic disease epidemic.
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I'm 70 years old. I may have a decade to be
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effective. I can't imagine that President
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Harris, President Harris would allow me or anyone to solve
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these these dire problems. After eight years of President
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Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out
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of my reach forever. President Trump has told me that
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he wants this to be his legacy. I'm choosing to believe that
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this time he will follow through.
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His son, his biggest donors, his closest friends, and all support
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this objective. My joining the Trump campaign
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will be a difficult sacrifice or my wife and children have a
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worthwhile if there's even a small chance of of saving these
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kids. Ultimately, the only thing that
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will save our country and our children is if we choose to love
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our kids more than we hate each other.
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That's why I launched my campaign to unify America.
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My dad and my uncle made such an enduring mark on the character
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of our nation, not so much because of any particular
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policies that they promoted, but because they were able to
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inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense
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of ourselves as a national community.
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Held together by ideals, they were able to put their love into
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the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans and to unify
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a national populist movement of Americans.
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Blacks and whites, Hispanics, urban and rural Americans
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inspired affection and love and high hopes and a culture of
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kindness that continue to radiate among Americans in from
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their memory. That's the spirit on which I ran
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my campaign and that I intend to bring into the campaign of
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President Trump. Instead of vitriol and
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polarization, I will appeal to the values that unite us, the
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goals that we could achieve if only we weren't at each other's
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throats. Most unifying theme for all
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Americans is that we all love our children.
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If we all unite around that issue now, we can finally give
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them the protection, the health, and the future that they
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deserve. Thank you all very much.