RFK Jr. plans to use ‘miracle of technology’ to insert himself into CNN presidential debate
NEW YORK — Two days before President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump clash in a CNN debate Thursday, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he'll be using the "miracle of technology" to insert himself in the discussion as he repeats his claim that the campaigns for the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees colluded with CNN to keep him off the debate stage.
"I don't mean to sound like I'm cranky because I'm not, but this is something that Americans should be concerned about," Kennedy told conservative commentator Eric Metaxas in his Manhattan-based conversation series called "Socrates in the City" on Tuesday evening.
On May 28, Kennedy's campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission claiming that CNN set criteria intentionally to exclude him from the national debate.
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The criteria used to determine which candidates are to be included in the debate include meeting the requirements outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution; filing a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission; having their name on enough state ballots to reach 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency before the eligibility deadline; accepting the rules of the debate format; and receiving at least 15% support in four separate national polls that meet CNN's editorial standards.
"Media reporting on how the debate came together shows that the Biden Committee and the Trump Committee negotiated and colluded with CNN and with one another to exclude other candidates, specifically Candidate Kennedy, from the debate," the campaign argued.
Citing reporting by The Washington Post, Kennedy's campaign noted that Biden's advisers made it clear they wouldn't agree to a debate with Kennedy, while a CNN producer told aides for former President Donald Trump that Kennedy would not be on the debate stage.
Kennedy is an accomplished attorney and environmentalist who is the son of former U.S. Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of U.S. former President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy.
On Tuesday, Kennedy said that even though he has been excluded from the debate stage, he plans to stir things up with a livestream event that he hopes will insert himself into the conversation by answering the same questions that Trump and Biden are asked. Kennedy's livestream will air on X and TheRealDebate.com.
He vowed to push on with his fight to be heard, saying both Biden and Trump need to be challenged about what happened to the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're going to do a kind of a livestream that includes me in the debate," he said, noting to Metaxas that he will use the "miracle of technology" to get it done. "It will have the podium. It will kind of look like I'm on a stage."
In his remarks, Kennedy said the most consequential political issue of the last two presidential administrations had to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"They lock down our country for 500 days, which both President Trump and President Biden went along with. That decision shifted $4.3 trillion of the American middle class to this new, oligarchy of billionaires," Kennedy said. "They created a billionaire a day in 500 days, 500 billionaires. And they shut down 3.3 million businesses. They shut down all the churches."
Kennedy contends that freedom of speech took a hit during the global pandemic, which began in March 2020. The federal government's COVID-19 health emergency declaration wasn't lifted until January 2023. During that time, many state and local governments enacted stay-at-home policies that led to the closure of many entities and included bans on large gatherings, including church services.
"They shut down freedom of speech. … Companies started actively censoring for the first time in history, pressuring social media and media companies not to publish critiques of their policies, … [and] the biggest cheerleader was CNN," Kennedy insisted. "Jake Tapper was out there shaming people who violated mask mandates or who weren't staying in their homes. … I feel like somebody should be on that stage asking all three of them about their role in it."
The role of the media in society also changed dramatically under COVID-19, Kennedy said, claiming it "completely collapsed."
"Louis Brandeis said the role of the media in a democracy is to maintain a fierce posture of skepticism toward government authorities and toward official pronouncements. And that was what the media did in this country for the first 285 years as part of our existence. But in the last decade, in particularly culminating in COVID, you saw the need to completely take the opposite, a posture," Kennedy argued. "The media became a mouthpiece for government policies and shamed people. ... It silenced them, it marginalized them. It gaslit them."
When asked if he would accept a job from Trump if the former president is elected in November, Kennedy told Metaxas that he would consider a proposal but doesn't think he would accept the offer.
"I don't think so. I would listen to a proposal, but I don't think so," Kennedy said before explaining why he did not trust the former president. "One of the reasons that I don't think I'd go to work for him is because he offered a job in the last administration, and he took a billion dollars from Pfizer."
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