Yet last Friday, Kennedy stood onstage beside Trump, shortly after suspending his campaign in swing states, and told the crowd that he was endorsing the former president, in spite of all these many differences. In describing his initial conversation with Trump, Kennedy said, “We talked about – not about the things that separate us because we don’t agree on everything, but about the values and issues that bind us together.” Apparently, this included “having safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic.” However, even more importantly, in his short speech, Kennedy laid out a stark reminder of what this election is really about: corruption.
This isn’t reading anything into it, either. Kennedy’s entire speech focused on corruption, singling out the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the foreign policy establishment. He asked the audience point blank, “Don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? […] That’s what President Trump told me that he wanted. He also told me that he wanted to end the grip of the neocons on U.S. foreign policy. He said he didn’t want any more $200 billion dollar wars in Ukraine, that we could use that money back here in the United States.[…] Don’t you want a president that’s gonna make America healthy again?”
Yes. Yes, we do. And whatever anyone thinks of Kennedy’s proposed remedies for any of these problems, we think his being allowed to raise them at all is a sign that at least one half of the political spectrum still remembers what liberalism is supposed to be. That it just happens to be the side of the political spectrum which has historically denounced liberalism is simply one more symptom of the bizarreness of our times.
Which brings us to the most important section of RFK’s speech:
“He [Trump] told me that he wanted to end the censorship. Because the whole basis of American democracy is the free flow of information. And we know that a government that can silence its opponents has license for any kind of atrocity. And can you think of any time that you can look back in history and say that the people who were censoring were the good guys? They’re always the bad guys. Because it’s always the first step down that slippery slope to totalitarianism. And don’t you want a president who’s gonna protect America’s freedoms and who is going to protect us against totalitarianism?”
This simple section is the heartbeat of the RFK-Trump alliance. It is the argument before which all other policy disagreements must give way, because the entire idea of policy disagreements presupposes the right to disagree with one’s rulers at all. And both RFK Jr and Trump know all too well that right now, nothing is more under threat than that right. Trump’s education on the subject needs no rehearsal – they may literally put him in prison next month – while RFK has learned all about it from the vicious lawfare Democrats have engaged in to keep him off the ballot.
Which is important, because after four days of watching the Democratic National Convention devolve into the world’s worst school dance/pep rally (with the substance to match), Americans needed reminding what the actual question in this election is. That is to say, will a sclerotic, failing, and increasingly authoritarian elite political class so devoid of new ideas that their candidate’s website still features no actual policies, be able to hang onto power simply by gluing a slightly fresher female face onto their program? And more importantly, if they do, will it ever be possible to dislodge them from power? Given that their own vice president believes there are exceptions to the first amendment for so-called “hate speech” and “disinformation” (there are not), we should all find that question the most pressing.
And frankly, given that the Democrats’ big messaging innovation – calling their opponents “weird” – is a tacit call for conformity, the answer to that question looks less and less likely to be positive. Weirdness is where most innovations in American history have come from. Weirdness is the stuff of prophets at least as often as it is the stuff of cranks. Weirdness is, above all else, a refusal to be bullied by the rich, hip, and self-righteous (and has there ever been a better description of the Democratic coalition than that) when their wealth, following, and “moral clarity” run afoul of the truth. That is precisely why they seek to censor dissenting, “weird” voices: because they know the truth is not on their side, yet they turn aside from it because their devotion to their cause – to their narrative – is something they believe they can impose on reality, whether it likes it or not. Next to reality itself, the free will of voters is simply a speed bump to these people.
By endorsing Trump, RFK has ripped away the pretense that this election is about anything but that. His voters – the “Rogan Democrats” as one paper called them, after podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Kennedy – should take notice. And to them, we would put the same question that RFK did: Even if you disagree with Donald Trump, don’t you want a president who will protect America’s freedoms and protect her people against totalitarianism? You say you stand for free speech, heterodox thought, and the right to dissent from popular narratives. Alright, here’s your chance to prove that your contrarianism has teeth. Prove that you won’t just slink away to your podcasts and let the Democrats crown their Spring Fling Queen without argument. Prove that you won’t just complain about dissent being off-limits, but will actually fight to liberate your fellow citizens. Prove that, at a time when shallowness dominates the minds of our shallow political class, you can see past the surface and to the heart of this race: that we are now engaged in deciding whether we, as a people, can still speak and breathe freely. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr saw that; we believe you do, too. Join us.
Because you want to know what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Donald Trump really have in common? We’ll tell you: these two former Democrats are no longer Democrats because they still believe in democracy. If you do, too, then we believe there is only one way you can cast your vote.
