Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s approach to national politics is uncomplicated. Whatever the conventional wisdom \u2014 however sound it might be and no matter the scale of the evidence supporting it \u2014 he\u2019s against it. If his last name were Smith, he\u2019d have a fairly popular podcast and a line of nutritional supplements. But he was born into a different industry.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, his scattershot presidential bid was ruffled (to the extent that it can be) by an assertion that people in jail for having participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol had been \u201cstripped of their Constitutional liberties.\u201d The campaign quickly asserted that this presentation, one that echoes the views of his ostensible opponent Donald Trump, was an error introduced by \u201ca new marketing contractor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy subsequently decided to clarify his position on the Capitol riot. In a statement released on Friday afternoon, he affirmed that \u2026 he broadly agreed with the position of his ostensible opponent Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cJanuary 6 is one of the most polarizing topics on the political landscape,\u201d the statement begins, which is, by itself, an exceptional distillation of Kennedy\u2019s approach to political issues broadly. The Capitol riot is polarizing because it is extremely useful for Trump and his allies to obscure and misdirect his supporters about what happened, which was that he lied about the election results and encouraged people to come to Washington on that day to protest and then directed them at the Capitol. It is polarizing in the way that vaccination is polarizing: There is a reality and there is a surreality, and the two are necessarily in conflict because the latter exists largely as a source of conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is quite clear that many of the January 6 protestors broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot,\u201d Kennedy\u2019s statement reads. \u201cBecause it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is not why people see it as an insurrection. People see it as an insurrection because it was an explicit effort to block the transition of power away from the guy who lost the election. It was a largely ad hoc and ultimately unsuccessful effort to do so, but it is not just a term applied because [waves hands] Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not examined the evidence in detail,\u201d the statement continues, \u201cbut reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest \u2018peacefully.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This is an absolute all-timer of a cop-out. The guy is running for president but claims that on the issue that he himself describes as one of the most polarizing in politics, he gives us puppy eyes and insists that he simply doesn\u2019t know much about it. But what he does know is that other people tell him that the mainstream consensus is wrong, and that\u2019s all he needs to hear.<\/p>\n
What he\u2019s hearing is incorrect.<\/p>\n
There were firearms in the crowd that day, if that\u2019s the standard Kennedy requires for a \u201ctrue insurrection\u201d \u2014 and Trump reportedly asked the Secret Service to skip using metal detectors for his speech at a rally on the Ellipse that morning because the crowd was \u201cnot here to hurt me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nor was the crowd trying to \u201cseize the reins of government,\u201d as Kennedy says he heard; it was instead trying to keep the reins in Trump\u2019s hands, and did, however temporarily.<\/p>\n
As for Trump \u201curging\u201d the crowd to be peaceful, that\u2019s a bit undercut by his firing them up during his speech that morning, his demand they attend the \u201cwild\u201d protest in the first place \u2014 and his utter indifference to speaking out against the violence until hours after it began.<\/p>\n
But, then, I have examined the evidence in detail.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike many reasonable Americans, I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigor of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment,\u201d Kennedy continues. \u201cThat would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponization of government agencies \u2014 the DoJ, the IRS, the SEC, the FBI, etc. \u2014 against political opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n
A reminder that, earlier this week, Kennedy insisted that the sitting president might be as big a threat to democracy as Trump because Biden censored political opponents including Kennedy \u2026 which is not true. But governmental power is the epitome of something that rebels might rebel against, so Kennedy takes for granted that it is a deserving foil.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for,\u201d the statement continues, \u201cand still be disturbed by the weaponization of government against him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Citation needed, as Wikipedia would say. You see, though, how immersed in the Trumpian position Kennedy is: He takes for granted that Trump is suffering not from a severe bout of accountability but, instead, from unfair targeting.<\/p>\n
Kennedy doesn\u2019t oppose all that Trump stands for, not by any measure. He, like Trump, rejects conventional wisdom (no matter how wise) and authority (however authorized). It\u2019s just the motive that\u2019s different. Trump does it opportunistically to accrue confidence in himself by eroding his base\u2019s confidence in everything else. Kennedy does it because it is what he does and it is what has earned him his following.<\/p>\n
The statement concludes by attempting again to equate Biden and Trump, to position Kennedy in the middle between the two candidates. The problem is that the middle point between reality and surreality is still surreality.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s approach to national politics is uncomplicated. Whatever the conventional wisdom \u2014 however sound it might be and no matter the scale of the evidence supporting it \u2014 he\u2019s against it. If his last name were Smith, he\u2019d have a fairly popular podcast and a line of nutritional supplements. But he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}