Despite the best efforts of the Democratic National Committee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-shot presidential primary bid continues to resonate among a significant segment of voters across party lines.
Although the likelihood that he will defeat President Joe Biden and earn the Democratic nominee ahead of next year’s election is low, it seems clear that the party wants to silence his message.
That fact was on full display this week when Kennedy was called to testify before Congress on the topic of federal government censorship.
At one point, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced a motion to essentially remove Kennedy from the proceeding due to his alleged violation of congressional rules against defamatory and degrading testimony.
In the end, the Republican-led House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government voted down the measure.
Kennedy expressed an assessment of the situation that was echoed by many in the GOP, insisting: “This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.”
One of his Republican presidential primary counterparts spoke out to defend him during a Fox News Channel interview on Thursday.
The path to TRUTH runs through free speech and open debate. Two years ago, Big Tech censored people who argued that we shouldn’t close schools for Covid. Now they’re censoring me as a presidential candidate for arguing that fossil fuels are required for prosperity. They didn’t… pic.twitter.com/8Ljj0KKKO9
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) July 21, 2023
Describing Kennedy as a maverick with a “willingness to speak truths” that his own party would prefer not to hear, Vivek Ramaswamy called out the Democratic Party in no uncertain terms.
“They prefer compliant puppets of the managerial class like Joe Biden, like John Fetterman, as you noted, to somebody that’s actually going to challenge their orthodoxy,” he said.
Following the contentious hearing on Capitol Hill the previous day, Ramaswamy said he gave Kennedy a phone call during which he urged the Democrat to continue publicly addressing the issues he believes are important for Americans to hear.
“That’s what I’m doing in the Republican primary as well,” he added. “And I think our country is going to be at its best when both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the best versions of themselves.”
Kennedy’s most outspoken critics typically castigate his supposedly anti-vaccine agenda, but he addressed his skepticism during this week’s hearing — in part by citing statistics that contradict the claims of those who heavily promoted the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We have 4.2% of the global population and 16% of global COVID deaths,” he said, noting that the death rate was significantly lower in many poor countries with a far lower vaccination rate.
