RFK Jr. Interview: Trump and Biden 'both ravaged American democracy and the republic'

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RFK Jr. rips Trump, Biden at FreedomFest

RFK Jr. talks immigration, civil liberties, foreign policy as he pledges a return to transparent government and a battle against DC bureaucracy.

Fox News Digital recently sat down with independent presidential candidate RFK Jr. at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, for a wide-ranging interview in which he discussed his campaign viability, the COVID pandemic, immigration policy, and castigated both the Trump and Biden administrations on civil liberties and weaponization of the Justice Department.

While polls show Kennedy lagging far behind Trump and Biden, he believes that momentum is with his campaign.

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"Well, this week we had two national polls come out, the HarrisX poll that had me at 19%, and the Pew poll that had me at 15%, and so we're watching my numbers grow all the time. I'm now beating President Biden and President Trump among independents, I’m beating them among all Americans under 35. I have better approval ratings and favorability ratings than both of them. I’m doing well with black voters and Hispanic voters, and the one group that I don't do well with is Baby Boomers, because they're watching the mainstream networks CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and they're reading the New York Times and the Washington Post."

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a Cesar Chavez Day event at Union Station on March 30, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Kennedy came to the forefront as a staunch critic of both the Trump and Biden administrations' approach to the pandemic, and believes the Republican and Democratic establishments are both responsible for an assault on civil liberties.

"The Constitution is a piece of paper, and the only thing that makes it work is if people believe in it, and one of the things that we need to do is to start teaching civics lessons again in American schools. We abandoned that, and I think that's one of the reasons that our civil rights were taken away from us so easily."

"Both of them ravaged American democracy and the republic. You know, we saw it during COVID, they shut down, it was an assault on the Constitution by both men, and, you know, we saw all of our property rights suspended, the Fifth Amendment, 3.3 million businesses shut down. We saw free speech censored, and violations of the First Amendment, all the churches closed in this country with no scientific citation, no due process, violation of the First Amendment, the rights of assembly and petition obliterated by social distancing rules…it was both the Biden and the Trump administrations, so I don't I don't think either of those presidents could be trusted to safeguard our Constitution."

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Kennedy believes strongly in securing the southern border, and supports a return to some Trump-era policies, arguing that the Biden policies have been ineffective.

"I'm absolutely going to secure the border. I've spent a lot of time on the border talking with law enforcement, with Border Patrol, and one of the optimistic things for me is everybody says this can be stopped…we need to complete the 27 missing gaps in the wall…we need to do personnel changes and we need to bring in asylum court judges, and more Border Patrol and we need to do some regulatory changes… including changing the catch and release policy to catch and return policy, which it was during the Trump administration."

RFK Jr. rips Trump conviction, warns it will 'backfire on the Democrats': 'Bad for our democracy' (Fox News)

While a strong supporter of legal migration, he believes that current policies have abandoned border policy to dangerous criminal elements:

"I want wide gates for people who come in legally so that there's a fast track to citizenship, so that we can get the workers we need in this country right now, but I also will make sure nobody's coming in illegally. Right now the Sinaloan drug cartel is running US immigration policy and nobody thinks that's a good idea."

Kennedy pledges to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table for a speedy resolution to the conflict:

"I'll end the Ukraine War immediately, and I will negotiate a peace with Putin. Putin has tried repeatedly to negotiate peace agreements with us. He negotiated a very, very favorable agreement in April of 2022; he signed it, the Zelenskyy government signed it, and the Biden administration made Zelenskyy tear it up."

He would not elaborate on what territory he might require Ukraine to cede, but argues that the Biden administration has prolonged the conflict:

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"I'm not going to tell you what my end point of negotiation…because that's not what you do, but I will say that we're in a much worse negotiating position than we were in April of 2022 when the Biden administration destroyed the peace process."

According to a 2022 study by the Commonwealth Fund, while the United States spends far more than its peers on healthcare, it generally experiences worse outcomes. Kennedy pledges to take on the healthcare bureaucracies and the pharmaceutical industry.

"My solution is to end the chronic disease epidemic and that's what's driving our healthcare crisis. We spend $4.3 trillion on healthcare, almost all of that that goes now to chronic disease, and we have the worst health outcomes of any country in the top 79 countries in the world…I know how to do this, I know how to change the mission of NIH so that it's no longer an incubator for new pharmaceutical products in league with the pharmaceutical industry."

Media figures trashed Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for saying that President Biden is "much worse" for democracy than former President Donald Trump.  (Fox News)

Kennedy faults both administrations for politically-motived lawfare via the judicial system.

"The weaponization of the Justice Department is the fault of both Democrats and Republicans. You remember in 2016, 2020, President Trump promising that he was going to create a special prosecutor and lock Hillary Clinton up. That sort of gave permission, both sides of the political process began weaponizing government…We are going to make sure the American people know that justice is blind, that justice is neutral, and that mandate has been abandoned by both these administrations."

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Kennedy has long been actively involved in Latin America, spending considerable time in South America. He credits his father and uncle's policies for appealing to the poor of the region, and believes interventionism is an ineffective strategy to promote American values and deter Communism.

"The people of Latin America have the right to choose their own leaders, and I think a lot of the anti-American attitude in Latin America comes from a history of us interfering in the region. I think we need to be partners with the region the way that my uncle and father did…when they started the Alliance for Progress, they started the USAID to put America on the side of the poor in those countries, to remove the temptation to embrace Communist values…and all of the interventions that we've done in Latin America have turned against us…We need to be partners with those governments and those societies rather than bullies."