Robert F. Kennedy Jr. maintains that President Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy, who is running as an independent presidential candidate, made his remarks during a Monday interview on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history – the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent,” he said.
Kennedy’s Instagram account had been suspended in 2021 for reportedly sharing debunked claims about COVID-19 in violation of the platform’s policies on the pandemic. The suspension was lifted in June 20223 when Instagram’s parent company Meta cited his active candidacy for president.
He attributed his suspension to pressure from the Biden administration.
Kennedy said he believes Biden and Trump are both ill-suited to be reelected in November. However, he said he does not believe rhetoric suggesting either candidate would “destroy democracy,” according to CNN.
But he noted that if he had to label one a greater threat to democracy, he’d pick Biden because he believes the president has been “weaponizing the federal agencies” against his opponents.
Kennedy, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol, said that action was a threat to democracy by Trump.
“I think that is a threat to democracy, [Trump] overthrowing — trying to overthrow the election – clearly is a threat to democracy,” he said. “But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy? And what I would say is … I’m not going to answer that question. But I can argue that President Biden is because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important.
“I’m not going to defend President Trump on that, and it was appalling. And there’s many things that President Trump has done that are appalling,” he added.
In response to his comments, Democratic National Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement that there is “no comparison” between Biden and Trump.
“There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on day one. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid to rest tonight any doubts that he’s a spoiler candidate by pushing his MAGA talking points in prime time,” she said.
In the interview, Kennedy added: “People who say that the election is stolen … we shouldn’t make pariahs of those people. We shouldn’t demonize them. We shouldn’t vilify them. What we should be doing is saying, let’s all get together, Republicans and Democrats, and fix the election system.”
