“The tragic death of #HankAaron is part of a wave of suspicious deaths among the elderly shortly after receiving the #coronavirus #vaccine,” Kennedy said. I have written in a social media post. “He received the Moderna vaccine on January 5th to encourage other Black Americans to get the vaccine.”
There was no “wave of suspicious deaths” among the elderly in the United States. Instead, a deadly virus (proving particularly deadly to the elderly) was rampaging around the world. And some, like 86-year-old Aaron, died of old age. However, this argument, although clearly dubious, was consistent with Kennedy’s political goals. So he held out his surname, pretending to be the authority that it had sustained him all his life.
The tweet comes after Kennedy, a leading independent presidential candidate, said on CNN on Monday night that President Biden is a “more serious threat to democracy than Donald Trump, who tried to overturn the results of a democratic election.” This is the reason for declaring that there is a possibility of posing a threat.
Kennedy was being interviewed by CNN host Erin Burnett. Mr. Burnett asked Mr. Kennedy if he really felt there were no important differences between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.
“You could argue that President Biden is a much more serious threat to our democracy,” Kennedy responded. “The reason is that President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history to use federal agencies to censor political speech, and the first president in history to censor his opponent.
“The greatest threat to democracy is not the person who questions the results of an election, but the president of the United States who uses his power to force the creation of social media companies, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,” he said a little later. added. He creates a portal and gives access to it to the FBI, CIA, IRS, CISA, and NIH to censor his political critics. ”
Burnett pressed Trump on this point, pointing to Trump’s reaction to his 2020 loss and its clear impact on democracy.
“President Biden… [a worse threat]Because, Erin, the First Amendment is most important,” Kennedy responded. “But Adams, Hamilton, and Madison put a guarantee of freedom of expression in the First Amendment because all our other constitutional rights depend on it. said.”
Everything Kennedy said in the above quote is false or misleading.
Let’s start with the last point, the Founding Fathers and the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment is not the first because it is the most important. The first reason is that the first two constitutional amendments (clarifying the size of Congress and how members should be compensated) were not ratified. This relatively abstract point is a good example of how Kennedy works. He comes up with neat rhetoric, but is indifferent to its accuracy.
Kennedy’s claim that Biden “used the power of the presidency” to “force social media companies to censor his political critics” is also false. In response to widespread misinformation during the 2016 election, the government worked with social media companies in 2020 and 2021 to combat false claims about the election and the pandemic, including during the Trump administration. But they were never “forced” to act.
Kennedy inadvertently proved that point.
“Thirty-seven hours after taking the oath of office, he told Burnett:[Biden] They were censoring me. ”
He wasn’t. Mr. Kennedy was referring to Mr. Aaron’s tweet, which a White House official reported to staff at Twitter Inc. (now Company X) in an email. “We are wondering if we can proceed to have it removed as soon as possible,” the email said.
However, the post was not deleted. He was later banned from Instagram for spreading vaccine misinformation, but remained on Twitter, prompting third-party criticism of the platform for failing to act on the false claims.
As House Republicans began trying to turn these efforts to combat misinformation into a political centerpiece, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also said there was something wrong with the White House’s response to President Kennedy’s tweets. He emphasized that there is.
“Misinformation is when the facts are not correct. You’re saying something that’s not true,” Jordan said at a hearing in July. “If you look at Mr. Kennedy’s tweets, there was nothing factually inaccurate about it. Hank Aaron, a real person, a great American, died after getting the vaccine. Pointing out — just pointing out the facts. Only.”
This was while Kennedy was running as a Democrat, so it was useful for Jordan and his party to heighten his dissatisfaction. But Jordan’s presentation is nonsense and ignores the “wave of suspicious deaths” part of Kennedy’s argument.
Of course, as soon as Kennedy declared himself an independent, Republicans changed their wording of his case. Fox News host Sean Hannity, for example, went from flattering to criticizing Kennedy as he went from threatening Biden to threatening both major party candidates. A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows Kennedy leading Biden and Trump. If Mr. Kennedy is on the ballot, it could have different effects in each state.
But the damage Mr. Kennedy could do to Mr. Biden is not just about the election. Recall his argument about why Biden is probably a more serious threat to democracy than Trump – Biden censored his opposition, but not censorship, whereas Trump… He said he was just trying to subvert him. (Never mind the other threats Trump poses, such as his legal argument that the president should be afforded legal immunity.) Kennedy’s argument about Biden is that (the primacy of the First Amendment It’s rooted in misinformation (about sexuality) and applies that to misinformation (about White House regulations). speech) regarding misinformation (his post about Aaron).
Barnett’s question about Biden and Trump comes after Kennedy told Ralph Nader in 2000 that there were important differences between the major party candidates that year and that Nader’s third-party candidacy was threatening. It was assumed that you had been warned. Kennedy’s rhetoric about Biden and Trump is rooted entirely in exaggerated or false claims, similarly blurring distinctions between the candidates and perhaps having a similar effect.
