After Donald Trump said that he loved how Robert F Kennedy Jr was running for president, the independent candidate called Joe Biden “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, citing the Biden White House’s involvement in a US supreme court case focused on social media.
A noted anti-vaxxer who has peddled conspiracy theories, Kennedy currently faces an uphill task to get on enough state ballots, though on Monday his campaign said his name would appear on the ballot in the crucial state of North Carolina.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties have increasingly seen Kennedy as a threat in the November election over fears that he could siphon off enough votes to swing the election. It remains unclear whose support base Kennedy might tap into. Historically a Democrat with a strong environmental record, Kennedy has drifted rightwards on various issues and his anti-vaccine views could attract Trump supporters.
Kennedy’s remarks in an interview on CNN on Monday centered on the pending supreme court case Murthy v Missouri, which tests the limits of how much the government can pressure social media companies to remove content.
The case comes out of efforts by the Biden administration to push social media platforms to take down false posts about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that Biden won and which Trump has consistently lied was stolen from him.
In oral arguments before the court last month, justices appeared skeptical of arguments in favor of limiting contacts between government officials and social media companies, a practice known as “jawboning” that some argue is tantamount to censorship.
Kennedy told CNN that Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech”.
“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 told the outlet.
He did not address the more than 80 criminal charges pending against Trump for trying to forcibly overturn the outcome of his defeat to Biden, improperly retaining classified government materials after the Republican left the White House and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.
Kennedy also did not address the multimillion-dollar civil penalties Trump is facing for business practices deemed fraudulent or a rape claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.
Kennedy is averaging close to 10% in polling from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ. That makes him the highest polling third-party candidate in a presidential race since the businessman Ross Perot in 1992, according to the Hill, citing a RealClearPolitics national average analysis.
The Democratic national committee on Monday excoriated Kennedy for his remarks about the Democratic incumbent.
“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,” Mary Beth Cahill, a Democratic national committee senior adviser, said in a statement.
Cahill accused Kennedy of merely seeking to be a “spoiler candidate” and – referring to Trump’s Make America great again slogan – said he pushed “his Maga talking points in prime time”.
Cahill said there was “no comparison” between Biden and Trump, whose supporters mounted the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol in early 2021. She also alluded to how Trump has promised to be dictator on “day one” if returned to the presidency.
Notably, as NBC pointed out, Cahill previously served as chief of staff for Kennedy’s uncle, the late US senator Ted Kennedy.
Her remarks criticizing Kennedy came after other members of his family had visited the White House to celebrate St Patrick’s Day without him.
His interview on CNN came a few days after Trump – in a rare show of political equilibrium – joined Democrats in attacking Kennedy’s nascent candidacy, casting him as a liberal in disguise who was more “radical left” than Biden.
But Trump also made it a point to say he supported Kennedy’s campaign because he was likely to divert more votes from Biden than from him.
“It’s great for Maga,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I love that he is running!”
