RFK Jr. Takes Aim at Trump, Biden Over Pandemic Policies in Libertarian Convention Address
Mr. Kennedy took the stage a day earlier than former President Trump will converse at a conference the place Libertarians will nominate their very own presidential candidate.
WASHINGTON—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chastised former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden for not respecting the Structure in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout his speech Could 24 on the Libertarian Nationwide Conference.
“There’s at all times a purpose why, proper now, the rights are an inconvenience that we are able to’t afford. It was the Crimson Scare within the Twenties. It was Joe McCarthy within the Fifties. It was civil rights protests and the Vietnam Warfare protests within the Nineteen Sixties. It was the conflict on medication within the Seventies. It was the conflict on terror after 2001. And most just lately, it was the COVID pandemic,” Mr. Kennedy stated.
“Perhaps a mind worm ate that a part of my reminiscence, however I don’t recall any a part of america Structure the place there’s an exemption for pandemics,” he added.
President Trump was reluctant to impose lockdowns early within the COVID pandemic, however he relented, and “lots of our most elementary rights disappeared virtually in a single day,” Mr. Kennedy famous.
Mr. Kennedy continued by criticizing the previous president for “permitting his well being regulators to mandate social distancing, which undermined our First Modification proper to freedom of meeting.”
“With no due course of, no public hearings, and no discover,” America was locked down in the course of the pandemic by President Trump, Mr. Kennedy added.
A complete of three.3 million small companies had been closed whereas Wal-Marts and liquor shops remained open, he remarked.
“President Trump stated he was going to run America like a enterprise, and he got here in and gave the keys of all of our companies to a 50-year bureaucrat (Dr. Anthony Fauci) who’d by no means been elected to something and had no accountability.
Since coming into the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat in April 2023 after which opting to run as an impartial final October, Mr. Kennedy has been outspoken about President Trump’s position in transferring ahead with Operation Warp Velocity, a program that rushed the COVID-19 vaccine to market.
When President Biden took workplace, “the assault on the Structure intensified,” Mr. Kennedy continued, citing a number of censorship circumstances.
Throughout his deal with, Mr. Kennedy additionally hailed journalist Julian Assange as a hero and reiterated that he would pardon him and Edward Snowden on his first day in workplace.
“We shouldn’t be placing [Julian Assange] in jail; we should always have a monument to him right here in Washington D.C.,” Mr. Kennedy stated.
President Trump is scheduled to handle Libertarian Nationwide Conference attendees on Could 25.
The previous president has escalated verbal assaults on Mr. Kennedy in latest weeks as a number of nationwide polls have proven the impartial candidate has help from conservatives and independents. Nationwide Republicans have expressed concern that may minimize into President Trump’s help on Election Day.
Exterior the Washington Hilton, the place the conference is going down, a cell billboard funded by the Democrat-aligned PAC Transfer On flashed messages cautioning attendees that Mr. Kennedy and his operating mate, Nicole Shanahan, are funded by a pro-MAGA donor and their presence within the race props up President Trump.
Libertarian Celebration—‘At a Fork within the Street’
In a press convention earlier than he took the stage a number of hours after Mr. Kennedy, entrepreneur, and former Republican presidential major candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stated there can be “a Libertarian nationalist alliance that rescues this nation and revives what our founding fathers envisioned.”
Mr. Ramaswamy remarked that former President Donald Trump has “robust Libertarian instincts” and whereas Mr. Kennedy “is in no sense a Libertarian.”
Halfway by means of Mr. Ramaswamy’s press convention, a conference attendee shouted at him for being on the occasion and never endorsing one of many celebration’s presidential candidates. Mr. Ramaswamy stated the person was entitled to his free speech earlier than resuming his feedback.
“I feel the Libertarian Celebration can be at a fork within the highway this yr. I feel the query the Libertarian Celebration has to ask is what’s its purpose? Is the purpose to realize at most 3 p.c of the overall vote, or is the purpose to truly form coverage on this nation in a significant approach and work along with what I hope is the subsequent administration, the Trump administration, within the second time period, to actualize the imaginative and prescient of this Libertarian motion?”