Four of RFK Jr.’s siblings have denounced his candidacy as antithetical to their father’s values, vision and judgment but RFK Jr. keeps hawking his family name.
Fox hosted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to bash President Biden comment on Robert Hur’s testimony to Congress yesterday and to promote his candidacy that could very well tip the election to Donald Trump.
After host Neil Cavuto asked Kennedy to explain his “different vision” for the state of the union, (spoiler alert: it’s about “unsustainable debt,” “chronic disease epidemic,” we’re “the sickest country in the history of the world,” etc. and a mention of “when my uncle was president.")
At about 8:30, Cavuto interrupted to say Kennedy had “raised a lot of legitimate points” but honed in on the mention of his uncle. “What do you think your dad would say of you and your Uncle Jack would say of you running away from the party that for which they were iconic symbols?" Cavuto asked.
"My father specifically said on many occasions, including, you know, directly to me, 'I don't vote for the party, I vote for the individual,'” Kennedy replied. “They understood the dangers that George Washington warned about of partisan politics, that partisan self-interest would subsume and replace and displace patriotism and patriotic impulses."
Cavuto pressed the issue. "But do you think your dad ever knew that you would be leaving the Democratic party? I mean you're an iconic family," he said.
"I don't think my father would care about that. Party loyalty was irrelevant to him," Kennedy replied. He went on to claim, "If you went down the issues that my father believed in, he felt strongly about, I would check every one of those boxes. The same with President Kennedy." He also said the Democratic party "has slipped away from its traditional values."
In October, four of RFK Jr.’s siblings publicly condemned their brother’s candidacy, saying, “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. … We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
RFK Jr. apologized to his family after a super PAC supporting him ran a Super Bowl ad that appropriated what The New York Times called “one of the most famous political ads in American history,” the 1960 ad “that helped put his uncle John F. Kennedy in the White House.” The Times also noted that the ad “deepens a growing estrangement between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and much of his family.”
For a guy who claims to be so independent, he sure likes to trade on his family name an awful lot.
There were no questions about his anti-science, anti-vaccination disinformation, which he is now now trying to play down.
You can watch it below, from the March 12, 2024 Your World.
(Ellen contributed some of the material in this post.)