Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running for president of the United States, in an April 5 filing. Kennedy’s father, Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), was assassinated when running for the presidency in 1968. His uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963.
Running as a Democrat, according to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing, he is the first major political figure to challenge President Joe Biden and just the second declared Democrat candidate.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Kennedy said, “America is enduring an apocalyptic tribal polarization more toxic and dangerous than any time since the Civil War.”
“And while Democrats battle Republicans, elites are strip-mining our middle class, poisoning our children, and commoditizing our landscapes.
“I will focus my campaign, not on the issues that divide us but the values we have in common.”
In March, Kennedy had teased a possible run against Biden, who has lost support even among Democrats for a second term.
“If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race,” Kennedy wrote in a Twitter post dated March 10. “If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms. Together we can restore America’s democracy.”
Kennedy is courting moderate Democrats, calling out governing “elites” he says are ruining society.
“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent his life fighting for American democracy and the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution,” his campaign page states. “He has battled against corporate greed and government corruption to protect our children, our health, our livelihoods, our environment, and above all, our freedom.
“With integrity, courage, and self-sacrifice, he has led Americans in an ennobling fight to restore our country as the exemplary nation, and to end the toxic polarization that divides us and enriches the elites.”
Kennedy has been a vocal opponent of Big Pharma and the many controversies surrounding Covid-19 policies and the vaccines which were rushed through safety testing.
He has also warned about the growing power of the nation’s spy agencies and their power to surveille Americans saying the CIA has become “a government within our government” and a “tumor” on the American system, and he proposed to fix the agency by implementing a separate oversight body over it.
He’s also a proponent of election reform, saying that modern elections are controlled by elites and wealthy donors. “It’s more of an oligarchy or a plutocracy that only is responding to the needs of the rich and to the needs of corporations, who are paying the lobbying election costs of the politicians, who then become their indentured servants on Capitol Hill,” Kennedy said.
If the money isn’t taken out of elections, Kennedy said, America is a “corporation.”
“Listen, to run for New York state Senate today, our U.S. Senate in New York, costs $50 million,” he said. “That means that if you’re running, you have to be calling hundreds of people every day and asking them for $10,000, $25,000 contributions. When you get into the office and they call you back, you have to take their phone calls. That means you don’t have any time left for the little guy who’s getting trampled by the government.”
Kennedy, part of America’s most famous political family, says that allowed him to be “fully engaged” with the current affairs of America.
“My childhood was exciting. From when I was little, I felt fully engaged with what was happening in this country,” Kennedy said. “We knew that what we were seeing on a day-to-day basis was part of the history of our country. My parents talked to us about history and literature and values every day.”
“We were all raised with this notion that our lives would be consumed by some great controversy, and that we would be very privileged if we got to take some meaningful part in it,” he told The Epoch Times.
Kennedy’s sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. His brother, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, served as a U.S. representative for Massachusetts’s 8th congressional district from 1987 to 1999. Another of Kennedy’s siblings, Chris Kennedy, ran for governor of Illinois in 2018 but was defeated in the race.
President Joe Biden is expected to announce his run for a second term soon as a Democrat.
–Wire services
