RFK, Jr. Speaks to Press after Biden Drops Out of Race

Stefanie, you ready? (00:09) Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming. I want to begin by commending President Biden for a career in public service, for a long, long career in representing and serving our country and for his handling of the many difficulties and challenges, personal challenges and tragedies that he suffered during his life with so much admirable conduct, and the empathy that he derived from those experiences, and that he was always proficient at showing to the rest of us. (00:53) I want to add that a little over a year ago, when I entered this race, I predicted that President Biden suffered from a degenerative condition that was not going to improve and that it would make it impossible for him to govern effectively. The reaction of the DNC to that obvious condition was to hide it from the American public and to use their power over the Democratic Party nomination process to make sure that nobody could compete with President Biden in a way that would expose his deficiencies. (01:42) And as a result, we are where we are today, which is in a period of crisis, and we have two crises, and they both arrive from the same condition. And that condition is the emergence of the domination of corporate power over American democracy, that accelerated beginning in 2010 with the Citizens United case that unleashed a tsunami of corporate money into the American political process. And both parties are now captured by that corporate money and they've lost any kind of authentic connection to the American people or to the populous goals of the republic and of democracy. (02:31) On the Republican side, President Biden promised the last time around that he was going to drain the swamp, but instead he came in and he appointed a pharmaceutical lobbyist and CEO to run HHS. A Verizon lobbyist to run the FCC. A Goldman Sachs CEO to run the Treasury Department. An oil lobbyist to run the interior department. A coal lobbyist to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and so on. (03:13) And only today, President Trump has announced that in his new administration, should he win this election, that Jamie Dimon will be his choice as commerce secretary, and that Larry Fink, the director of BlackRock will run the Treasury Department. This is the swamp. These are swamp creatures. And his pick as vice president is a salute to the CIA and to the intelligence community and to the military industrial complex. Their gravy train is going to continue. (03:52) And President Trump has a connection to the American people, a populous connection, but in many ways, it's the same fraudulent connection that we saw with the DNC over the past year, concealing the real purpose of their objectives, which was to give us a president that represents corporate interests rather than the interests of the American public. We've seen two presidents who aren't really addressing any of the issues that are critical to our country. (04:32) If you look at President Biden and President Trump, you can look at them and say, these are very different people. Their dispositions are different, their personalities are different. Their expressed ideologies are very, very different. Their approach to politics could not be more distinct. But if you actually look at the policies over which they differ, over the landscapes in which they're staging this election, it's a very narrow Overton window of guns, of culture war issues, of abortion, of trans rights, et cetera. And the big existential issues that are actually facing our country are never addressed. The biggest of these, perhaps, is the national debt, which is now $34 trillion. The service on that debt alone is now greater than our military budget. Within five years, 50 cents out of every dollar that we collect in taxes will go to servicing that debt. Within 10 years, 100%. This is not sustainable. (05:42) President Biden, President Trump offer no solutions. President Biden on his webpage has no policy issues addressing this or any other policy. He has a picture of himself and saying that we're going to finish the job, but he doesn't tell what job he's going to finish. If it's the job of running up the deficit until it's completely unsustainable, that's something that the American people should know about. President Biden can't talk about it, and President Trump can't talk about it, because they're the ones chiefly responsible for running up that debt. (06:19) President Trump came into office saying he was going to run the presidency as a business. He was going to balance the federal budget. And instead, he ran up an $8 trillion debt, more than all the presidents combined since George Washington. And President Biden is now on track to beat that number. So, neither of them are even going to talk about this most existential issue. (06:44) Another existential issue is our addiction to foreign wars. Both men have said that they're against war, and both men are feeding the war machine. The Ukraine war is a war that should have never been fought. It should have been settled. President Putin has offered twice to settle that war on terms that were enormously beneficial to the Ukrainian people and to the American people and to our security in Europe. And yet, President Putin initialed an agreement. President Zelenskyy initialed that same agreement in April of 2022. And President Biden sent Boris Johnson over to force Zelenskyy to tear up that agreement. And since then, it's probable that over 500,000 Ukrainian kids have died unnecessarily in a war that is enriching BlackRock, because they own all of the military contractors that are supplying that war. And BlackRock not only has the contract to destroy Ukraine, but it also now has the contract which President Biden gave him to rebuild Ukraine. (08:02) Neither of these presidents is going to deal with the chronic disease epidemic. When my uncle was president, 6% of Americans had chronic disease. Today, 60% do. Diabetes alone, when I was a kid, the typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes in his career, 40 or 50-year career. Today, one out of every three children who walk through his office door is diabetic or pre-diabetic. And nobody's talking about why this is happening. The cost of dealing with mitochondrial disorders in our children, dysfunction, which is diabetes, is now greater than our military budget. (08:40) The biggest cost to our nation is the cost of treating chronic disease, $4.3 trillion annually. It's five times the price of our military budget. And nobody's talking about why did autism go from 1 in 10,000 in my generation, and 70-year-old men today, right now, and yet, my children's generation is 1 in every 34 kids. 1 in every 22 boys. Shouldn't we be looking into this? Shouldn't we be doing the science to figure out what's causing it? We know that it's an environmental exposure or an accumulation of environmental exposures. Genes don't cause epidemics. There has to be an environmental toxin. (09:26) And the corrupt merger of state and corporate power has been overseen by both political parties. It's something neither of them ... The capture of our agencies by the industries that they're supposed to regulate. Our regulatory agencies have been turned into the sock puppets of the industries they're supposed to protect us against. And all of these are issues that are critical to the American people. (09:52) And finally, the most existential issue of all the toxic division that is destroying our country. And the attempted assassination of President Trump this week is a symptom of that toxicity. We're now more polarized in this country than at any time since the American Civil War, and nobody can see an ending to this. If President Biden gets elected, it's going to become more toxic. If President Trump gets elected, it's going to be become more polarized. And neither of these men, both of them say, both of them recognize this is existential, but both of them, neither of them can do anything about it. Why? Because they feed on it, they feed it, they fuel it, and they are the products of that division. (10:44) So, we need a leader who can stop feeding into the vitriol, stop feeding into the anger, stop feeding into the marginalization, the polarization, and who can find those values that bring Americans together rather than focusing on these toxic issues that are intended to keep us all apart. (11:11) And it's the BlackRock, the State Street, the J.P. Morgan who are profiting from that division, the very people that President Trump has promised to appoint to run our government who are profiting on it because it's like the jangling of keys. They're saying, "Look over here. Look at abortion. Look at freedom of choice. Look at trans rights. Look at gun rights." And while we're all staring at each other's throats and those issues on the jangly keys, they're robbing the bank over here. They're shifting the wealth upward to this new oligarchy of billionaires. (11:51) And both President Trump and President Biden engineered the lockdowns. In 500 days, they created 500 new billionaires and they shifted $4.3 trillion northward from the American middle class to this new aristocracy that we have, and it's destroying our country. We need a change. If people want more of the same, they can vote Democrat and they can vote Republican. The only way we're going to get a change in this country is if people come together behind the one candidate who is independent, who has vowed to have a unity government to bring Republicans and Democrats and others all together in a way that finds common ground in our country. A candidate who's the only candidate who's pro-choice, who's pro-environment, who's pro-civil rights, and who beats Donald Trump by 14%. There is no other candidate who can beat Donald Trump. Look at all the polls that have been done over the last year. I beat Donald Trump and nobody else can. Thank you very much.

I was reading the news, the bottom half of your tweet talked about the nomination process in Chicago next month. Can you talk about that moving forward on your thoughts on being a neutral policy on who the Democrats finally nominate?

Well, I care about our country more than I do about my election or anything else. And I think we need political parties that are actually attached to the American people that are serving the interest of our republic. And if the Democrats do what I suspect they're going to do, which is to anoint Kamala Harris, a vice president who is monumentally unpopular within her own party, but they're doing it because it's the easiest way to hold onto the money. She's the [inaudible 00:13:51]. (13:49) And I think if they don't open up the process that it really is going to discredit this political party [inaudible 00:13:58] the back of that [inaudible 00:14:11] to create the illusion of a democracy. But in fact, it's a cabal that is choosing the same way the Soviet Union did. Russia has elections, but Vladimir Putin wins with 88% of the vote because he controls who can be his opponents and he controls the media. And the same is true now of our political parties in this country.

Would you open up to the possibility of taking part if there was an open convention, you called for that, is that something you would consider taking part in?

I would certainly listen to the party elders if they came to me. I would discuss something with them. I'm the only presidential candidate who can beat Donald Trump, and if I were them, I would do that. And I would certainly listen to their proposals.

Will you actively seek out that nomination? You're saying if they come to you but [inaudible 00:15:06].

I am very content running where I am and I believe I can win this election. I believe at this point, it's a two-man ... Two-person race, let me put it that way, and that I'm in the best position to win.

And if the polling then shows that you're not in the best position, whoever the Democrats go with, whether it's Vice President Harris or someone else, because what you cite often are your internal polls, so if your internal polls show that you will actually lose, would you step down and step aside if someone else-

Well, that's an interesting proposal, and I would consider taking that proposal if the other candidates did the same.

You mentioned Kamala Harris is who you said that the Democratic Party appeared poised to put into that position. You were critical there, obviously, of President Biden's policy. What, if anything, is different? How do you compare yourself to Kamala Harris if she does become the Democratic nominee for president?

Well, I think Kamala Harris is the party of war. She is a warhawk. The Democrat party was always the peace party. Kamala Harris is a warhawk on Ukraine. She's a warhawk on China. I think that we should be figuring out ways to coexist with the rest of the world as best we can. Of course, we need to protect our national security. I think she's not going to do anything about the national deficit. (16:31) I've never heard her speak about the chronic disease epidemic. I think she's a product of the corporate control of our democracy. In terms of civil rights, she has one of the worst civil rights record of any public official. She's one of the primary authors of the school to prison pipeline. Despite a Supreme Court order, she released 5,000 prisoners of nonviolent drug crimes who were illegally in California jails, she kept them in there saying that we needed them for firefighting and for other public work services. And that's just a modern version of indentured servitude, a modern version of slavery. (17:24) She was one of the two leading public officials in California, which now has the worst education system, 49th in education outcomes in the country. 50% of the homeless people in our country are in California, and she was behind those policies. I don't think in terms of the traditional Democratic principles, I don't think she has a credible record.

In all the turmoil in the past week, you ever, had it gone through your mind, you regret leaving the Democratic Party because with this turmoil that might have left you as a front-runner as you speak today?

Well, I wouldn't be the front-runner because by the time I left the Democratic Party, it was really clear that, and this is the only reason I left, that the rules have been rigged to prevent me from winning. So, I would be in the same position as Dean Phillips is today, or Marianne Williamson, which is sidelined. And the only way that I avoided getting sidelined was to leave the party, which neither of them were able to do.

I go to a lot of your events, and I've heard your stump speech and a lot of today was your stump speech, but you're still focusing a lot on President Biden. He is out of the race. In fact, at one point you even said, highly critical of President Biden said, "If President Biden were to win, if Donald Trump were to win." But he's announced for hours now that he's out. Were you just confused or have you moved on from it? It stood out.

I was making a point about there being very, very little difference between the two parties and the current iteration of President Biden's policies is Kamala Harris, who has never voiced any differentiation, any distinction between herself and President Biden. (19:16) I just made some criticisms of her own policies, but I don't know what her national policy ... There literally is no policy on their website, so we don't know what she stands for. My assumption is, according to her, that she stands for all the things that President Biden stood for. There is no difference.

Bob, does today's news affect your campaign moving forward?

Well, I think everything affects my campaign. I can't tell you how, and I try not to make predictions because I try not to do spin, but I think, as any of you can see that we're living in a very, very dynamic situation now. It's unprecedented in American history. In fact, the closest thing to this when I look back on American history is the 1968 primaries where my father participated and was killed. (20:13) And ironically, the Democratic Convention this year is being held once again in Chicago. And in 1968, the Democratic Party tried to fix that convention with Mayor Daley basically anointing Hubert Humphrey, who was the DNC's choice, and there was chaos that erupted and it destroyed the Democratic Party for a decade. So, I think we have a lot to learn from that history, as I think Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself when it rhymes, and it's really rhyming right now.

Mr. Kennedy, you said you are the candidate to beat Donald Trump. You mentioned that multiple times. Yet, I think for the debate in June, you failed to qualify for that. What is it that you see that makes you confident that you can not only beat Donald Trump, but also whoever the candidate would be in the Democratic Party?

Well, I would point out to you that I qualified for the debate better than any other candidate. Clearly, we all see today that President Biden is not going to be on any ballot. I was on the ballot, and I have enough signatures to be on the ballot today in 29 states. I exceeded the polling thresholds that CNN established. I had six polls from their main polling groups where I was over 15%, and they arbitrarily excluded them. So, I believe that I will continue to qualify for the next debate, and hopefully they'll put me on the stage this time.

Let's go.

If you don't make the debate the next time, will you take that as a sign to step aside?

We're going to break off over this [inaudible 00:21:56].

[inaudible 00:21:56] wrap it up.

No, that would be the opposite of the sign. That would be the networks colluding-

My mic is on. We can go over to the corner [inaudible 00:22:02].

Let's see what he does, if he wraps up here.

... with the parties to keep me off the stage, which they did the last time. So, I'm not going to cave into that just because your networks are fencing me out, which they are. You will not see me on ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN, doing a live interview. They won't let me on. They're colluding with the Democratic Party to keep me out of the limelight. (22:37) If you remember when Ross Perot ran, he was on CNN every night. That's why he got so popular. I have greater popularity than Ross Perot, without ever getting on the network. Only one time have I been allowed on the network in a live interview, and that's with Erin Burnett, and they never did it again. And we asked them, Stefanie Spear right here, my press secretary, who's on the phone every day with the bookers from every one of those, and they just say, "No, we're not going to let him on." (23:10) So, there's a monolithic wall. The television networks that are owned by the public, those airwaves, they're licensed to use them, but those airwaves are owned by the American public. We used to have an equal time rule. We used to have a fairness option that would make those networks put me on, but today we don't. Those laws have been gutted and they're able to make common cause with the Democratic Party to make sure the American public does not see a live interview with me.

Thanks, Bob.

If I can ask one final question. Touching back to the events of last week, I've noticed you have Secret Service protection now on a personal level for you and your family. Your thoughts on that, having that now as you move forward?

I'm very grateful for it. Listen, it's intrusive for me. So, it is like be careful what you pray for, but I'm very grateful for it because when my father was shot, there were six bystanders shot that night, including Paul Schrade, who took a bullet to his head, one of my father's best friends, and my uncle, President Kennedy was shot. Governor Connally was also shot. When Ronald Reagan was shot, Mr. Brady was also shot. In almost all of these attempts at assassination, and when President Trump was shot last week, there was also a bystander who we all pray for, who was killed, and two others grievously wounded. So, it's very important to me to have the Secret Service here, not so much for my own protection, but to protect people ... To dissuade people who might want to attack me and who might hurt or even kill a bystander.

Any final comment, Mr. Kennedy?

No, I'm good. Thank you all very much for coming out here on a Sunday.

Shall we?

Let's just move over to the corner.

Want to just go in the corner?