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Robert Kennedy Jr. sat down for an hourlong conversation in Manhattan with senior reporter Tara Rosenblum where no question was off limits.

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kennedyBDpp_2023-05-21-12-51-20

Power & Politics: A conversation with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

He is an heir to the most famous political dynasty in American history. I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States now carrying on a family tradition. The reason I'm making a run for the White House right now is that's a lot of the same reason my father had 55 years after the assassination of his father, Robert F. Kennedy Jr bites to fulfill the dreams that were cut short on to Chicago and let's win. Come here today to announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. But does he have a path to beat President Biden? Do you have a robust 50 state plan going forward today? Kennedy sits down with news 12 for his most revealing conversation since joining the race. I think it was probably the hardest that it was the most momentous decision on. She talking about everything from vaccines. You would not have mandatory vaccines, you would not have mandatory vaccines. I think parents need to have a choice to wars overseas. I would saddle it with the Russians and even the politics of family. Why do you think that they have gone so public with their criticism. Join us now for a special edition of Power and Politics. Robert F. Kennedy Junior cleared out his schedule for an hour long conversation with us where no question was off limits. Mr Kennedy. Pleasure to meet you. Pleasure to meet you. We'll get started here. More than one in 10 Biden Democrats are supporting you right now. What do you attribute that to? Is it policy? Is it a lack of enthusiasm for Biden perhaps your last name? I'm sure it's a combination of all those things. I think. Uh um American, you know, if you do polls both with Democrats and Republicans, uh around 75% to 80% of Americans think we're moving in a bad direction in 1970. Uh um 62% of the of the salary of income was going to the middle class today. It's 42%. And that really tells you everything because even people who are doing ok and are still living with, with debt and financial insecurity. And you know, when President Biden says that the economy is great that, that it's humming along. There is a lot of people who say it's not, it's not working for me. You know, I'm being left out. And so I think there is an appetite for a different approach to governance. So why are you the right candidate to take on all of those pressing issues? Why should America vote for you? I think the central issue is this uh corporate, this sort of corrupt merger of state and corporate power that has uh eroded and subverted the regulatory agencies across the board. Uh whether it's the, you know, we saw the pandemic response, which instead of being a public health response, it was kind of a militarized and monetized response to the pandemic that left us with the highest body count from COVID of any country in the world. So we have the, we have uh 44.2% of the population. We had the 16% of the COVID deaths. So what the way we were handling the COVID response was literally the worst of any country in the world. And if you look at why that happened, you can trace it to the control of our regulatory agencies by the pharmaceutical companies. As you have said yourself, you become the poster child vac sentiments that are out there. What would you have done differently if you were the president when the pandemic began? I would have, first of all, I would have never locked down our country. All of the pandemic protocol, pandemic preparedness and response protocols I W H O by CDC, by um the European Medical Agency, by the National Health System. Uh The Services in the UK, all of them said you never locked down a society. You, you quarantine the sick, you protect the vulnerable, but you keep the society going because when you lock them down when you lock people down on a mass setting like that, you actually cause more mayhem and deaths and injuries than you have heard. What would you have done specifically here in the tri state to get this city back on its feet again? I would not have locked down the population and that doesn't mean that you can do you, you know, we were told originally that we should do it. Uh We, we were gonna do a two week lockdown to get the hospitals, you know, prepared to slow down the spread of the virus. And I think that was a great idea and I supported it. Uh but to extend that for a year was a huge mistake. And you know, that many of those mistakes were made in New York, uh locking elderly people in nursing homes and then sending sick people into those nursing homes. That that's what was killing people. I would have done something completely different. So if you are elected president, would you relax the educational requirements for the most rudimentary vaccines like measles, polio, smallpox, what I would do is to immediately do controlled uh uh trials. First of all, nobody takes smallpox vaccines um anymore. And you know, any smallpox no longer exists except in our bio weapons labs. And I would get rid of those cultures. You know, the problem with all of the vaccines is they've never been adequately safety tested. Vaccines are um are exempt from pre-licensing safety testing. It's a historical artifact of the fact that uh the CDC and the public health services were quasi military agencies. So you want to be able to see a picture of what happened if, if the people, you may protect people from the target disease, but then they may be dying of brain tumors or they may have neurological injuries or, or, or epilepsy five years from now and you want to see that picture and make sure that you're not causing more problems than you're averting. I would not have mandatory vaccines. You would not have mandatory vaccines. No, I would, I think parents need to have a choice. There's no getting away from the legacy that your last name brings to your candidacy. You are the fourth Kennedy to run for the White House. In what ways is your campaign similar to those campaigns that came before you? And in what ways are you a little different in some ways? You know, it's on, it's very similar to my father's campaign. My father was running against a president of his own party. He was running against the war. He was opposed by the entire democratic superstructure by the labor unions. But my father was really running uh an insurgent campaign where he had to build his own movement and he was able to mobilize people from the left and the right. You know, the last day of his life, my father, one uh both the most urban state in our country. California and the most rural state in our country, South Dakota. And, you know, when he was killed that night, we brought him back to New York and then, you know, we brought him and waked him here and then we brought his body down from Penn Station in, uh, you know, from Penn Station on the west side here to Union Station in Washington DC. And it was, it's supposed to be a 2.5 hour train ride at that time, but it took seven hours because there were two million people on the track and they were every color of the rainbow. It was a cross section of America. And so my father had been able to, to, you know, to capture that group of people and to unite them. You know, that is the task. And um I think a similar task that I face on this campaign, he ran on that platform of social and racial justice reform. What would you say are the cornerstones of your campaign? And what would be the legacy of what you're trying to do here? Yeah, I think, you know, many of the same things I think we, you know, what I'm trying to do is to, you know, there's this terrible polarization that is now tearing our country apart. What would your father think of your campaign? I believe that my campaign reflects my father's values and, you know, I hope that he would be proud of it given the divisiveness and the overall tone of modern day politics in this country. Do you ever, now that you've put yourself in the public arena like this? Do you ever get anxiety for your own public safety? I, it's not something I spend any time worrying about. I, you know, I, um, I'm thoughtful about it. I try not to put myself in a position where it would be, you know, where I would make myself more vulnerable and I take precautions to do that, that, you know, are inconvenient for me. I think I look at it the same way my dad did, which is he knew there was a risk of running and, uh I thought those things that were more important and one of those would be Children would grow up in America that they are not proud of that or they don't enjoy the constitutional rights that I enjoyed. Still to come. Would you sit down with Putin? How would a Kennedy administration handle Russia and China? Plus the hot button topics of the day from immigration to abortion rights. So, here we are having this conversation 55 years after your father's death. Why is now the right time to make a run for the White House? I mean, the reason I'm making the run for the White House right now is that a lot of the same reason my father had, which is, there's a war going on that is draining our country. We've spent $113 billion. And the reason that we're in the Ukraine is because it reflects the best instincts and the best impulse of the American people. My own son went over and fought the Ukraine because of that for his compassion for the, for the Ukrainian people at a time of an illegal and ruthless invasion by Vladimir Putin. Um and his admiration for the valor and the courage of, of the, of the Ukrainian people. And that's why the war was supported. But it was a bait and switch. President Biden has acknowledged now. And our real purpose in the Ukraine is deposing Vladimir Putin, which is the long ambition of the neocons who now surround him. So if you were president, how would you bring this war to settle it with the Russians? You know, the Russians offered to settle at the beginning with men Cords, which would have left Abbas as part of the Ukraine, even though Abbas had voted to join Russia, the Russians said we don't want it. It would have left as part of the Ukraine and it would have given them some autonomy so that they could protect the, you know, the ethnic Russians from uh violence by their government. And I would have left them uh uh using their own language and it would have kept NATO out of the Ukraine, which we, we had promised at the outset when, you know, in 1991 that we wouldn't move NATO one inch to the east. Instead, we moved at 1000 miles to the east and 14 countries are now, you know, part of it. Would you sit down with Putin if you were president, would you want to meet with him? Face to face? I will meet with anybody any time. I think it's always good to talk to other people, including your adversary. But you know, my uncle um had this very close relationship with Khrushchev and Rusev was considered a great demon like a Hitler, like figure by many Americans. My uncle had private correspondence with him that were where they both knew they were surrounded by war, hawks and intelligent apparatus and military who wanted to bring their nations to war and that both of them had fought in the World War Two. They both knew the horrors of war and they were determined to keep their countries out of war. My uncle said that the primary job of a President United States is to keep America out of war. He said he wanted on his graves. He kept the peace. And since you brought up your uncle, I know you believe that there is overwhelming evidence out there that the CIA was involved in his assassination in 1963 which is something they've repeatedly denied. What do you consider to be the most compelling piece of evidence? And have you seen documents yet that the public has not had access. Let me say this, there are tens of thousands of documents which is kind of assumed in the orthodoxy of the Warren Commission. Um The mainstream perhaps does not share those with the American people, but most Americans also believe that the CIA was involved in my uncle's death. But not only that after the war, 10 years after the war or 10, 15 years after the Warren Commission, the United States Congress House assassination committee and the Senate, the church committee looked at the assassination, Richard Schweitzer who ran that committee said the CIA was almost certainly involved in the murder of the president. What we all know now is that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset. President Biden was very close with your uncle, Ted, several members of your family, work for his administration. You yourself have been friends with the president for more than four decades. Has he reached to you? No, I, I wouldn't expect President Biden to reach out to me. And, yeah, I've, I've been a friend to President Biden and I've always enjoyed him. He's always been very, very kind to me and, uh, you know, I've enjoyed some, you know, really special moments with him, but I just believe that he's taking the country right now in the wrong direction. What do you think? I disagree on the issues. I disagree on the war. I don't think the Democratic Party should be the Party of War. Do you think that President Biden is worried about your candidacy and your rising rank on? I'm not going to look into President Biden's head and, and I don't know, abortion remains a front of mind issue for a whole lot of voters, especially since the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Can you clarify your position on reproductive rights as it's something that we haven't heard you talk about a whole lot on the campaign trail, my position on, you know, I, I don't think there's anybody in this country who's fought as hard as I have for bodily autonomy and for medical freedom and for the right of Americans to make their own choices over their own bodies and that, you know, applies to vaccines and it applies to abortion. Another hot button topic. Immigration. You've criticized President Biden for not closing the border in the Kennedy administration. What would your short term and long term strategy look like in a I will make the border imperviously, the fact that that border has been open has created a humanitarian crisis on the border. And for, for the sake of every, you know, for the sake of the, the integrity of our country, you can't have a country where there's just an open border where people are flowing in. I would, I would widen the uh increase the immigration quotas and bring people into this country, bring more people into this country legally. But uh we we have to stop illegal immigration. We can't have hundreds of thousands or millions of people across the border and, and, and competing with American workers and, and burdening our, our, um, you know, the social service systems in cities all over the country. It's just not a good policy. If you don't win the Democratic primary, will you go on to support the nominee of the party? Or would you consider running as a third party candidate or even joining the other side? My plan is to win the Democratic nomination and if you don't, I don't have a plan b still to come, we were raised, argue and dispute with each other but they still love each other. Kennedy addresses family criticism and I try my best. I mean, I feel sorry for people who have to listen to me his voice, Robert F. Kennedy Jr recently became the fourth member of his famous family to make a White House run. I've come here today to announce my candidacy for the democratic nomination for president of the United States. But in a family where loyalty ranks high is everyone on board? Take me behind the curtain of your decision to run. How did your Children and your wife Cheryl Hines first react when you said, hey, this is something I'm thinking about doing. It was a wide variety of reactions among my seven Children and a couple of them. You know, I have uh I have two of them working on the campaign. I'm who are super enthusiastic and then I had different levels of enthusiasm and trepidation among everybody, including Cheryl. And, um, but, uh, I, I think they, um, you know, the, ultimately they all supported it and I'm really, I'm really happy. I think it was probably the hardest on, on that. It was the most momentous decision on Cheryl because it will affect her career, you know, directly. And, um she, uh, you know, she recognized that and we went through all of those discussions as to what she was, you know, about the risks and the, um, and what she had what she would lose. Uh So, you know, we, but we have a great relationship and we tried to be support of each of each other and I'm really grateful that she's, you know, supported me. She's like the biggest asset that I have on this campaign. Some of your family members have denounced your bid. Why do you think that they have gone so public with their criticism? You know, I, my family is very, very close to Joe Biden. And, uh there's three members of my family that are working in the administration and I, you know, I understand it. They, um, they want to support the president but I, you know, I, um, I don't have any problem with that and I've told them all that I don't have any problem if they support the president. I understand they have strong relationships with him. Um, but, you know, I get along with my family, we listen, my family disagrees on all kinds of issues and we were raised, argue and dispute with each other, but they still love each other. I still love my family. I feel loved by them. And, uh I think, you know, that would be a good model for our country. And what about his voice? You know, I had a really strong voice until I was 42 years old. And in 1996 suddenly I got this, uh, uh, injury. It's a, it's a neurological injury and it's, uh, uh, cause spasmatic dystonia. And, uh, but, you know, it, yeah, I try my best. I mean, I feel sorry for people who have to listen to me. I can, I cannot watch myself on TV, or listen to my voice. Really? No. And I, I do, I do feel badly for people who have to listen to me. But, you know, I went out over to Japan about six months ago, Cheryl and I went to Kyoto and I got a surgery on my vocal cords where they put a Titanium bridge in and it helped a lot. I mean, you may not think it helped a lot listening to me now, but my voice was actually worse because sometimes it would just disappear altogether. And in the morning I would, I wouldn't, uh, uh, you know, when I started talking to money. I wouldn't know if anything was going to come out of my mouth. But now, you know that, that surgery in Kyoto helped a lot. Either way, it's a voice America will hear a lot more of in the months to come. I'm Tara Rosenbloom. Thank you for joining us for this special edition of Power and Politics.

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