Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he sees President Joe Biden as more of a threat to democracy than presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.
In an interview on CNN, Kennedy argued that Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech,” appearing to refer to a case before the Supreme Court that could affect the level of contact between government officials and social media companies regarding content removal.
Last month, a majority of Supreme Court justices appeared to be wary of arguments that the Biden administration was unlawfully telling social media platforms to take down problematic conduct.
“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 … to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said.
“I can say that because I just won a case in the federal court of appeals and now before that Supreme Court that shows that he started censoring,” Kennedy also said.
The Kennedy campaign did not directly respond to a question about the legal case he appeared to refer to.
Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, has used social media to spread misinformation related to vaccines and Covid. The Children’s Health Defense group, an anti-vaccine group led by Kennedy, was kicked off Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, in 2022 for spreading misinformation about vaccines and Covid.
The Democratic National Committee blasted Kennedy in a statement after the interview.
“With a straight face Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,” DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said. “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 added.
Cahill was a chief of staff for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, Kennedy’s uncle.
The Biden campaign deferred to the DNC when it was reached for comment.
Biden has made preserving democracy a cornerstone of his re-election campaign, juxtaposing his actions to protect democratic institutions with Trump’s actions.
“Folks, but for all the threats posed to the country, the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy, and that’s not hyperbole,” Biden said about Trump at a campaign event last week.
As Biden allies fear that Kennedy could siphon votes away from the president and help Trump return to the White House, several members of Kennedy’s family have been vocal in their support for Biden and their criticism of RFK Jr.
Kennedy, like Trump, has a history of arguing that elections were “stolen.”
During Monday’s CNN interview, he reiterated a false claim that the 2000 and 2004 elections were “stolen.”
Similarly, Trump has regularly made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have echoed his falsehoods as rationale for their behavior.
