RFK Jr.: Biden Is More of a Threat to Democracy Than Guy Who Tried to Overthrow Election

Donald Trump tried to overturn a free and fair election in 2020, instigated a violent insurrection in 2021, and is running on an explicitly authoritarian agenda in 2024. However, to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former president is no more a threat to democracy than Joe Biden.

Trump, Kennedy admitted, tried to “overthrow the election” four years ago—an “appalling” act he said he could not defend. But, he argued, that’s nothing compared to Instagram suspending his account in 2021 for spreading conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccines, which he falsely claimed resulted from pressure from the Biden administration. “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.” Kennedy Jr. told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.

Kennedy’s profoundly ridiculous charge speaks to the fundamental unseriousness of his candidacy, as the Democratic National Committee pointed out. “There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on day one,” DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said. “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.” (In his interview with Burnett, Kennedy also contended against “making pariahs” of election deniers. “We shouldn’t demonize them,” he said.)

But the absurdity of his gadfly campaign makes it no less dangerous: Kennedy—whose candidacy has been “great for MAGA,” in the words of Trump himself—has been loitering around the 10 percent mark in some polls. That’s not enough to win any states, let alone the presidency. However, if his share comes at the expense of Biden, as expected, it could be more than enough to help Trump win back the White House. “I think this election is going to come down to a handful of votes in a handful of states,” his sister, Rory Kennedy, told George Stephanopoulos on Monday. “And I am concerned that voting for Bobby is going to take votes away from Biden and lead to a Trump election, and I’m very concerned what that will do to our country and to the world over the ensuing four years.”

Kennedy, whose campaign said it had gained enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in a fifth state Monday, brushed aside those concerns in his interview with Burnett. “I have a big family,” he said. “I don’t know anybody in America who’s got a family who agrees with him on everything.” But the concerns his family members have expressed about his candidacy are precisely the same he raised a quarter of a century ago, as Burnett pointed out when he publicly warned Ralph Nader that his run could spoil the election for Al Gore and deliver a victory for George W. Bush. Kennedy was right back then. But now, he’s plowing ahead with a spoiler run that could hand the presidency to an aspiring autocrat who has already demonstrated his destructive power in his first term.

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