Robert F. Kennedy Jr. erroneously contends President Joe Biden is more of a threat to U.S. democracy than former President Donald Trump, a notion political experts find to be “preposterous” and “absurd”
Former President Donald J. Trump has declined to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election, portraying the supporters who breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as martyrs, establishing a basis to dispute the 2024 election outcome in case of his loss, and asserting that he would assume the role of a dictator on his initial day back in power if he emerges victorious.
Nevertheless, independent presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asserts that President Biden represents a more significant danger to American democracy — a perspective shared by Trump himself, a viewpoint dismissed as “absurd” and “preposterous” by political scientists.
Kennedy, whose political career is built on advancing vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories regarding the government, perceives the Biden administration’s endeavors to limit the dissemination of misinformation as a crucial issue of our era. According to him, censorship, as he labels it, surpasses all other considerations pertaining to the political framework.
Kennedy recently said in an interview on CNN, “President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy, 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, to censor his opponent.”
Days later Kennedy said Biden was “a genuine threat to our democracy” on the right-wing propaganda outlet known as Fox News.
He proceeded to reference a case presently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding allegations that federal authorities had partaken in a “broad pressure campaign” to suppress harmful disinformation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.
In a specific instance at the core of that disagreement, a White House official emailed a Twitter employee subsequent to a post by Kennedy insinuating, without substantiation, that baseball icon Hank Aaron had passed away due to the COVID-19 vaccine.
This issue has become known as the “Twitter Files.” The Twitter Files comprise numerous internal documents, encompassing various Slack conversations among Twitter staff regarding their content moderation choice.
Trump and others have alleged Biden or the U.S. government has attempted to censor the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy theory narrative on Twitter as well. Yet, Former Twitter executives deny that Biden ever pressured them to remove the story.
In 2021, Biden expressed that platforms such as Facebook were “killing” individuals due to purported misinformation regarding COVID-19 and vaccines. The press secretary of the White House at that time, Jen Psaki, explicitly stated that the administration was in direct communication with social media corporations to ensure vigilant monitoring of content.
A right-wing judge ruled that this is not allowed and said that “the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario.”
Nonetheless, no evidence has been presented that the government's actions were anything but suggestions. The government was simply pointing out content that violated Twitter’s own rules and was a danger to democracy, as well as the public’s health.
This is not censorship — it is a helpful suggestion to a company that was having issues upholding its own rules.
Kennedy contributes to the current threat to U.S. democracy given he is mudding the waters by equating Trump’s dangerous behavior with the Biden administration's benign actions.