RFK Jr Rips the Curtains Open As He Suspends His Presidential Race

RFK Spoke With Passion About the America He Loves and the Democratic Party He Says Has Dismantled Democracy

I was greatly impacted by Robert F. Kenney, Jr’s speech to the American people on Friday, August 24th, and I want to share a summary of his thoughts today, instead of waiting until Tuesday when I normally publish essays.

Kennedy spoke calmly and thoughtfully but with obvious passion for America and the Democratic Party that he feels has left him behind. It is an important moment in American political and cultural life when a lifelong Democrat with deep individual and family ties to the historic party rips open the curtains to show what is really going on within it today.

The mainstream media is unlikely to provide any kind of nuanced view of this important speech. Kennedy was critical of these media, and critical of today’s Democratic Party, a party which these media today almost unwaveringly supports.

You can find an embedded video of his speech, and a link to a complete transcript at the end of this page.

It is worth listening to this, or reading his speech.

Here is my summary of what Kennedy said:

Kennedy reminded us that he launched his presidential campaign in April 2023 as a Democrat but later ran as an independent due to disillusionment with the Democratic Party.

“As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big Ag, and big money.”

He said that his campaign gathered over a million signatures to get on the ballot, thanks to a massive independent political movement and the dedication of volunteers. Kennedy was obviously deeply grateful and inspired by the many Americans who saw his vision and wanted to help him achieve a more unified America.

Kennedy said the Democratic National Committee had manipulated the electoral process, engaged in lawfare, and preventing fair elections. He criticized the media for failing to uphold democratic principles and for censoring political speech.

In the name of saving democracy, a Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it. Lacking confidence that its candidate could win a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of the signatures needed to get on the ballot the DNC dragged us into court, state after state, attempting to erase their work, and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed those petitions. It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden. Then, when a predictably awful debate performance it precipitated a palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election. They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate. 

His uncle (John F Kennedy) and his father (Robert F Kennedy) would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party candidate that doesn’t do interviews or debates.

….Vice President Harris has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to judge when they don’t know whom they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world? 

Kennedy said what alarms him is the resort to censorship, media control, and weaponization of the federal agencies.

When a U.S. president colludes with, or outright coerces, media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression. And that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest. 

He said that three great causes drove him to enter this race, and then in the end to suspend his campaign and lend his support to President Trump:

1. free speech,

2. the war in Ukraine, and

3. the war on our children.”

Regarding free speech, Kennedy pointed out that

President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot. But here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot. And our television networks expose themselves as Democratic Party organs.

He also excoriated Party censorship of social media. He said that the White House’s censorship project was called by a federal judge, “The most egregious violation of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”

Kennedy was deeply critical of the Democratic Party’s role in the Ukraine war, and spoke about this at length. He attributed the war to geopolitical ambitions and the military-industrial complex. He expressed concern over the vast loss of life, and the great economic cost to the West, and the potentially disastrous consequences of the war for both Ukraine and the U.S.

RFK is also deeply concerned about children’s health and chronic disease in general. He highlighted the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S., attributing it to ultra-processed foods and toxic chemicals.

Today we spend more on healthcare than any country on Earth, twice what they pay in Europe. And yet we have the worst health outcomes of any nation in the world. We’re about 79th in health outcomes, behind Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mongolia and other countries…

He spoke at length also on this issue and the great epidemic of diseases that is crippling our people….including 3/4 of our people overweight or obese, 1 of every 22 children in California with autism, and explosion in diabetes, even among children.

Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? These are the most precious assets that we have in this country. How can we let this happen to them?

He says the two main culprits behind this epidemic are

1. ultra processed foods and

2. toxic chemicals in our food, our medicine and our environment.

Kennedy emphasized the need for reform in health agencies and food systems to address this crisis.

People worry about DEI or about bigotry of any kind. This dwarfs anything. We are poisoning the poor, we are systematically poisoning minorities across this country. Industry lobbyists have made sure that most of the food stamp lunch program, about 70% of food stamps, and 70 or 77% of school lunches are processed foods. There’s no vegetables. There’s nothing that you would want to eat. We are just poisoning the poor citizens. And that’s why they have the highest chronic disease burden of any demographic in our country and the highest in the world. The same food industry lobbied to make sure that nearly all agricultural subsidies go to commodity crops that are the feed stock of processed food industry. These policies are destroying small farms and they’re destroying our soils.

These are dire issues that deeply cut into American prosperity and thriving. But on a note of hope Kennedy said:

The good news is that we can change all this and we can change it very, very quickly. America can get healthy again. To do that, we need to do three things: 1st) we need need to root out the corruption in our health agencies. 2nd) we need to change the incentives in our health care system. And 3rd) we need to inspire Americans to get healthy again.

Regarding the suspension of his campaign, Kennedy cited systemic censorship and media control as barriers to victory. He expressed support for President Trump, aligning on issues such as ending the Ukraine war, addressing chronic disease, and protecting free speech. He said his name would remain on the ballot except “in about ten battleground states, where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me.” He said that by staying on some the ballot in some states, he would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom he disagrees on the most existential issues.

Winding up his speech, Kennedy emphasized the need for unity and prioritizing children's health over political divisions, expressing hope for a healthier and more unified America. He concluded by stressing the importance of love and unity in achieving national goals.

Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other. That’s why I launched my campaign, to unify America. My dad (Robert F Kennedy) and uncle (President John F Kennedy) made such an enduring mark on the character of our nation, not so much because of any particular policies that they promoted, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by ideals.

They were able to put their love into the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans and to unify a national populist movement of Americans – blacks and whites, Hispanics, urban and rural Americans. They inspired affection, love, and high hopes, and a culture of kindness that continued to radiate among Americans from their memory. 

That’s the spirit on which I ran my campaign and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump. Instead of vitriol and polarization, I will appeal to the values and goals that we could achieve if only we weren’t at each other’s throats. The most unifying theme for all Americans is that we all love our children. If we all unite on that issue now, we can finally give them the protection, the health, and the future that they deserve.

You can find a complete transcript of the speech here.

Your comments on Mr. Kennedy’s speech, or my summary of it are welcome in the comments below.