Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said Monday that he believes President Biden presents a greater threat to democracy than former President Trump.
Kennedy said during an appearance on CNN’s ‘OutFront’ that Biden is a ‘much worse’ threat to democracy than Trump because the current president has been ‘weaponizing’ federal agencies to censor his political opponents.
‘I can make the argument that President Biden is much worse,’ Kennedy said. ‘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 or censor his opponent.’
‘The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns but a President of the United States who will use the power of his office to force the social media companies Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, CIA, the IRS, the NIH, to censor his political critics,’ he added.
Kennedy Jr. initially challenged Biden for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination before launching a White House bid as an independent in October to take on Biden and Trump in the 2024 election.
The comments come after Biden has made repeated claims that Trump is a threat to democracy over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, for which the former president has been charged at the federal level. Trump, who has falsely alleged over the past three and a half years that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to voter fraud, said in December that Biden is the ‘real threat.’
CNN host Erin Burnett pressed Kennedy on how Trump’s alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results was not a threat to democracy. Kennedy admitted that the allegations against Trump do represent a threat to democracy, but that Biden’s efforts to stifle speech are still worse.
‘I think that is a threat to democracy if we’re trying to overthrow the election, clearly a threat,’ he said. ‘But the question was ‘Who was a worse threat to democracy?’ And what I would say is I, you know, I’m not going to answer that question and argue that President Biden is because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important.’
When asked to clarify if he could make an argument that Biden is worse for U.S. democracy than Trump, Kennedy responded, ‘Absolutely.’