July 10th, 2023

This interview took place in July of 2023 when Mr. Kennedy was still running as a Democrat. If you want to listen to the entire interview, you can do so here.

Frank Morano (00:00):

This is the other side of midnight. I’m Frank Moreno. It’s no secret if you’ve paid attention to American history or presidential politics over the last few decades, that every so often there are certain candidates that ignite the imagination, that capture the attention, and give voice to a large swath of the population who feels their voice, quite frankly, has been ignored. Sometimes they win, like in the case of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, sometimes they lose, like in the case of Ross Perot, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders. But observing these candidates, in my view, is a study not just in political science, but American history and really cultural anthropology. I’m very pleased to be joined by one such candidate this morning. He has certainly captured a lot of attention and scores of people have been inspired by him and donated to him. In fact, recently, his campaign took in more than 3 million in donations in just three days. But he’s also someone who’s incredibly controversial at times. He’s been described as a conspiracy theorist, an anti-vaxxer, a grifter, and you should hear how the people who don’t like him describe him. Nevertheless, I am very pleased, uh, to be joined by Democratic candidate for President Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Mr. Kennedy, I know how in demand you are and how tough your schedule is. On behalf of our audience, I wanna sincerely thank you for making time for us.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (01:28):

Well, Frank, thanks for having me on the show.

Frank Morano (01:31):

Uh, let me begin with a question that I think a lot of people are gonna be curious about, and, and that’s why I came across an old copy of New York Magazine from 1995, and it’s a wonderful picture of you, and it describes you. The headline is the Kennedy Who Matters, and it says right next to your picture with the deal he just brokered to save the city’s water supply, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Suddenly becomes a New York political player with a future. Now, at that time, you were considered the future of the Democratic Party in New York, maybe even nationally. It seemed like you were destined to be an attorney general, a governor, senator, maybe even president, but you didn’t run for office in those years. And now large swaths of the Democratic establishment have written you off as a fringe candidate pushed by right wingers. You are running now. So my question is, why didn’t you run then, and why are you running now?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (02:29):

Well, I, I didn’t run then, Frank, cuz I had family issues. I had family difficulties that I did not think I could afford losing my full attention. Um, and I, I’m running now very, very unexpectedly. I never thought that I would run for a, certainly for the presidency, particularly at my age. But I see my country being swept away from me and my political party walking away from its traditional values. And I want my kids to grow up in the same with the same pride in their country that I grew up. I, you know, I grew up believing with a lot of evidence to support it, that this country was the best country in human history. That, uh, that we were an exemplary nation. That we, uh, that we were a moral authority around the globe. Uh, I, and I grew up with that, confirmed in traveling the globe as a, as a child.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (03:28):

You know, I, I went for example, to communist Poland in 1965 and went into it and with a, with a communist gun that blacked out the fact that banned from all newspapers and reporting the fact that we were, that my father and his children and his wife were visiting Krakow. We went to, to the Cathedral and, and two hours later came out, there were two and a half million people in the square from word of mouth, cheering, crying people who just loved America and looked to our country as a moral authority and wanted our leadership and, and understood the difference between leadership and bullying. And today, you know, we’re hated around the world. I mean, there’s so many Frank, so many kids, people my age from Africa, Latin American, Asia that I’ve met over my life, whose name is Kennedy, because people were so enthralled with the US President at that time, and they, you know, and I want, you know, I want America to reclaim that mantle of moral authority around the world. The economic power we had, we owned, when I was a kid, we had the biggest middle class in human history. It was the greatest economic generator in our history. We owned half the wealth on the face of the earth, and we just squandered all of that. And, you know, the middle class is now under assault and beleaguered and limping in this country. And we’re, you know, we are building a country of billionaires on top and widespread poverty below. And that is, that is an unstable configuration that can’t support democracy for very long.

Frank Morano (05:20):

And I I think a lot of people are hearing this wherever they fall on the political spectrum and saying, yeah, I agree with everything. Uh, I agree with everything that he just said. But one issue that you’ve been so associated with over the course of the last two decades, and especially over the course of the last three years, is the vaccine issue. And we’ve talked about it before, and almost every interviewer that you’ve done tries to kind of prove their medal by going toe to toe with you on vaccines. I’m not gonna do that because I don’t have your level of experience or knowledge, but I do wonder if someone disagrees with you on the vaccine issue, not just related to covid, but other vaccines that you’ve been vocal about, raising concerns about. If someone disagrees with you on vaccines, is there still room in the Kennedy camp for them to support you? For instance? I’m Vaxxed and, uh, boosted, uh, I’m a believer that the Covid vaccine was a, a, a big help in ending the pandemic. Could I be someone that still conceivably supports you, given the emphasis that you’ve placed on the vaccine issue?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (06:27):

Yeah, I mean, I think most of the, the attitudes toward me that, you know, the hostility toward me and the vaccine issue comes from misinformation that, you know, the, the legacy media particularly misleads the public about what my position is on vaccines. I think most Americans, 99% of Americans, if they understood my position, would say, of course, that’s how I feel too. And what the, the, my position on vaccines, Frank, is they should be safety tested. The way that other medications are safety tested, they should have placebo controlled trials prior to licensure. Vaccines are the only medicine or medical device that is exempt from pre-licensing safety testing. So of the 72 vaccines currently mandated for our children, not one of them has been tested in, in pre-licensing studies against the placebo. So we do not know the, the risk profiles of those products. And all I’m saying you, I have, you know, my wife is, is I got three covid vaccines, my half my kids got covid vaccines. I, my position is live and let live. If somebody wants to take a vaccine, they ought to be able to do it. If somebody doesn’t want it, they ought to be able to do it. But all of us ought to have the proper information to make an intelligent choice.

Frank Morano (07:49):

You’re genuinely pro-choice on, on the vaccine issue. Exactly. It makes sense. Uh, president Biden tried to, I think, kind of slip under the radar Friday before Independence Day weekend and sort of issue this executive order announcing that the federal government was done complying with the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act. And that essentially there’d be no more documents released related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. And 99% of the material that could be released has already been released. Anything that’s not been released, we’re not going to release because of security concerns and things of that nature. You were pretty critical of President Biden for his handling of this. How come?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (08:38):

Well, you know, they say 99%, but that’s 99% of, uh, uh, of 4 million documents. And that’s a big number <laugh>. So, you know, 1% of 4 million is a big number, and that’s the 1% that they don’t want released. So we know that they have at least 4,000 documents that they don’t want people to see. This is a 60 year old crime. It’s the most important crime in American history. Many historians and scholars see it as a co deta against American democracy from which our country has never recovered. And it’s the, the beginning of recovery is actually truth and reconciliation. Let’s find out what really happened. Why is the CIA blocking president after president from complying with the law, both the Kennedy records, as Kennedy Assassination Records Act requires that a hundred percent of the, uh, of those documents be released? Not 99%, a hundred percent.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (09:46):

So, you know, why is the CIA trying to conceal after 60 years when everybody involved in the assassination is now dead? Why do they feel they still need to conceal from the American public? What happened? It doesn’t make any sense. And you know, the last tranche of documents we, we got from them during the Trump administration was the first time that they openly admitted that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset. You know, if the, if the Warren Commission had known that, if the public had known that at that time, do you think that the Warren Commission would’ve, would have insisted that that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gun man who acted without help or support the CIA was lying to them, lied to the Warren Commission about their involvement with Oswald. They’re continuing to lie to the American public. And, you know, the public has a right to know this is a, an affront to our democracy.

Frank Morano (10:48):

There are so many different theories about the assassination of both your father and your uncle, many of which involve the ccia, many of which involve the mob, some of which involve elements of the C I A working with the mob. Who do you believe is most likely responsible for your father’s assassination and your uncles?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (11:11):

Well, let’s take one at a time. My uncle’s assassination. First of all, at that time, the, there was really no daylight between the mafia and the cia. The CIA had recruited Sam Giancana, uh, Santo Ante, and Carlos Marcelo, who were the three big bosses of Chicago, uh, north Florida and, uh, in Tampa and, uh, and New Orleans, Dallas. Those were the mobsters who owned casinos in Atlanta. And the CIA had had brought them in to use their assassinations, assassins to kill Castro. And, uh, and was training them. They were training Cubans along sharp shooters along with them. And there is so much evidence now, including multiple confessions from the people who were involved in my uncle’s assassination, people like David Atley Phillips, who was the director of Propaganda, um, uh, David Morales, who was, uh, you know, the, probably the most, uh, accomplished hitman in, in, uh, in the CIA’s history E Howard Hunt, who also made a deathbed, uh, confession of many, many, many, many others, and thousands of documents that that form a bulwark that of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (12:39):

The CIA was involved not only in the murder, but in the, um, in the 60 year cover up. And when the house, when the house assassination and the Senate assassination committees investigated reinvestigated the crime with many, many more documents than the Warren Commission had access to when testimony the Warren Commission never saw, they found in 1975, they found that there was a conspiracy. And almost virtually everybody on the committee believes that the CIA was involved. In fact, Senator Schweitzer was the original chair of the Senate Committee, said this specifically, quote, the c i the CIA was involved in the murder of the President of the United States. So, you know, this is not a sort of marginalized or fringe conspiracy theory that has no evidence. This is the, uh, this, this opposition that, you know, after the best investigators in the country have looked at this.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (13:43):

And by the way, there are hundreds of books by, by esteemed scholars that have gone through this. If people you know in your audience who are, who are curious, who wanna read, probably the best book on it I would recommend is The Unspeakable by James Douglas, because he distills the, you know, the years of information, the million documents that have been released, plus all the testimony that we have and, and really into a riveting account of, of everything we know that happened. And the CIA’s involvement is, is very clear in my father’s assassination, which I believe was done by Sirhan Sirhan my entire life until Paul Schrade, who was one of the people who was shot that night, a very close friend of my father forced me to sit down and read Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report. And it’s clear that Sirhan did, although Sirhan shot at my father twice.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (14:43):

And then, and we know what happened to both those bullets. One hit Paul raid, one hit the door jamb behind him, which was later removed by the lap pv, and he was then grabbed by five men and over his steam table, including Ray Johnson. I’ve talked to all of these men and they could not get the gun away from him. They said he had superhuman strength. He emptied the chamber of six other bullets, all of which hit people. So we know what happened to every bullet in his gun. My father was shot not in front. See, I Sirhan was in front the whole time. My father was shot from behind by four bullets. There were all contact shots, meaning they were touching his skin or his clothing at the time, and left the carbon tattoos. We know the, the person who was holding that gun was almost certainly Eugene Tha Saer, who was a CIA asset who worked for the Lockheed Corporation and was acting that night as a security guard.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (15:45):

And he was the one who steered my father into the ambush with, with her hand. Wow. So, but that is circumstan. The CIA involvement in my father’s assassination is circumstantial evidence. It does not have the overwhelming amount of documentation that, you know, if I’m a trial lawyer, and I, I I can guarantee you that I could persuade a jury just but without any more depositions or investigations just based upon the evidence that we now have that my uncle John Kennedy was killed by the cia. The, the, uh, the evidence that the CIA killed my father is, is, uh, uh, is more circumstantial.

Frank Morano (16:29):

So needless to say, if you’re president, you would reopen this investigation, maybe the investigation into both assassinations.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (16:37):

Well, you know, I would, I need to look at it, but I would ha I think it’s, it’s important to have a truth and reconciliation committee for this and maybe some other incidents, American history that are people have questions about. Sure. And to have a really open discussion have, you know, provide amnesty to people who are involved, to incentivize people to talk openly about the same way that they’ve done in Latin America and many other countries when there were national tragedies in Argentina, et cetera, et cetera, where the country needed to resolve them, needed to process them in a, because they, they continuing the lies is poisonous to our country. It’s like our whole country’s swallowed poison and we need to discourage it. And the way to do that is by being, uh, um, you know, being honest. Finally,

Frank Morano (17:31):

I, I want to pick your brain on one or two other issues, uh, before we run out of time. Very interesting decision last week from a Louisiana Federal judge, a uh, Trump appointed judge, broadly limiting the communications that the executive branch and the Biden administration can have with social media companies. A lot of people are saying this could cause grave harm by prev preventing the government from engaging in all sorts of lawful and responsible conduct that might prevent misinformation. Give me your view as somebody that’s been the victim of a lot of social media censorship yourself, give me your view on this federal judge’s decision to stop the Biden administration from talking to the social media companies.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (18:19):

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s a judge. No’s decision is 155 page decision, and I think it’s a, a bulletproof decision. Um, you know, I mentioned repeatedly in the decision, I was the first person that the Biden administration began censoring on, on January 23rd, 2021. So three days after President Biden came into the office, the, uh, his, uh, white House reached out to Twitter and Facebook and ordered them to censor me. And, you know, three weeks later, after a lot of struggle with the media and threatened them, if they didn’t censor me, they were going to lose their section two third, which is an existential threat to these companies. And, um, and three weeks later, Instagram took down my account, 900,000 followers, et cetera. And then, and to this day, they continue to censor me. Google is censoring me today, Wikipedia, which was part of the groups, the White House, uh, uh, I’m the only one on Wikipedia that doesn’t have an edit button.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (19:26):

So, and, and they, um, the descriptions of me in Wikipedia violate Wikipedia’s own guidelines. They’re, you know, ad ho of attacks and name calling against me, what they’re not allowed to do. So the, the white, you have a White House for the first time in American history, going to publishers and ordering them to silence people who were critics. And they weren’t just doing it on covid issues, they were doing it on the Ukraine War. They were doing it on hunter bytes and his laptop. They were ordering censorship of, uh, of all kinds of issues of policy choices that the White House was making that they didn’t want criticized, including sarcastic remarks about the president himself. So this is exactly why we had a revolution in this country, and we passed the First Amendment so the government could not censor its opponents because we know a government that can censor its opponents and its critics has license for any kind of atrocity.

Frank Morano (20:27):

Uh, I, since you alluded to the Ukraine situation, I, I have to ask you about President Biden’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine in spite of some, uh, human rights concerns over the use of CLO cluster bombs. I know it’s a very personal issue for you because your son Connor, made the decision to go fight in Ukraine after the, uh, Russian invasion. How do you feel about the decision to send c cluster bombs specifically, and then how do you feel about our posture in Ukraine overall at this point?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (20:59):

Well, you know, the, the, uh, the dec decision to, to send cluster bombs are horrendous. It’s, you know, it completely eviscerates our moral authority. There’s a hundred nations around the world that have signed a treaty ban in cluster bonds and a war crime. So, you know, our decision to send these weapons, which are notorious for not only killing civilian civilians for years and years after the conflict is over, but also for, uh, for blow back on our own side, you know, during the Iraq war, I think 19 of our, um, of our troops were killed by our own cluster bombs. So they’re a terrible weapon, and we shouldn’t have anything to do with it. We also should be striving to settle the, uh, Ukraine war, not to prolong it, but US policy is not to settle this conflict. It is to prolong it. You know, president Biden and Lloyd Austin is sector of defense.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (21:55):

Is that our purpose over there is regime change in Russia to, to a, to erode and destabilize Russia. Lloyd Austin said that the purpose of our presence in the Ukraine is to exhaust the Russian army and its capacity to fight anywhere else in the world. And so what we’re you doing is we’re using US weapons and money, and Ukrainian boys who are, you know, 350,000 have been killed to prolong a war. We’ve refused to meet with the Russians. We’ve refused to negotiate the, the two times that they’ve offered to settle the war. And they’ve shown their good faith, by the way. Um, we’ve blown them up. So the Russians offered to sign the Minsk Accords, which would’ve ended the war before it started, and we pushed Zelensky Zelensky ran in 1919 or 2019 and

Frank Morano (22:53):

Got 2019, right,

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (22:54):

2019 and, and got 70% of the vote promising to sign the Minka courts, and then we wouldn’t let him do it. And then in 2022, just before, you know, in April, so two months after the war had started, the Russians and the signed an agreement very much like the Minka courts and, and the Russians were throwing, they were leaving, and we sent Boris Johnson over there to blow up that deal. So we do not want these, we, you know, Mitch, Mitch McConnell said what our purpose is. He said, we need weapons, uh, renewal. We, we’ve got a lot of these old weapons that need to be changed out and that we are, that all the 113 billion that we’re sending to Ukraine, and most of that money comes right back to us weapons manufacturers, and creates jobs in this country and creates prosperity for American companies. And we don’t have to lose any Americans in the process. This is a proxy war between us and Russia for geopolitical machinations. And we’ve sold to the American people the hoax that this was, you know, this comic book description of this crazy Russian leader who invades Ukraine for with no provocation, and that we’re going in to rescue Ukraine. And what we’re doing is just the opposite. We are killing Ukrainians for a geo political machinations, and it’s, uh, it’s wrong. And we ought to be negotiating a piece

Frank Morano (24:24):

B Before Vladimir Putin was sort of the International Hitler 2.0, James Bond vi Dejour, it was Bashar al-Assad, uh, president Biden, uh, indicated he hasn’t forgot about Bashar al-Assad, uh, when he met with some Syrian activists recently at the White House and told them, Assad must go, are, are you concerned that Syria might be our next sort of regime change war?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (24:52):

Yeah. And, you know, look what we did. And before that we, the same thing Asad was saying. And these are, this is the agenda of the neocons who, you know, started the Iraq War, who surrounded President Bush and in 2002 and launch war against Iraq, a country that did nothing toward the United States. Nothing wrong. We blamed them for the World Trade Center attack with which he had nothing to do with. And we said he had weapons, but with ma mass destruction, which was a lie, but it was a war that they said in their own documents, we need to get, we need to make water on Iraq, Iran, Syria, eight countries. And so we did that. We spent 8 trillion on that, you know, and the Syrian war, and the Yemen and Libya, and what did we get for it? Iraq is now worse off than what we found it.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (25:45):

We killed more Iraq keys than Sodom was saying. Iraq is now this coherent battle between Shia and Sunni militias. Um, we created isis, we drove 2 million refugees up into Europe where they destabilized Europe for the next several generations. Look what happening in, in France today. The, the riots in France are the direct result of our intervention in Syria in the last time around Brexit is a direct result of our intervention in Syria. And so it is insane for President Biden to say, we’re gonna go back into Syria. This is, is not good for the United, these war have not improved our security. They have bankrupted us. They have, they have destroyed the middle class in our country, and Americans are less safe around the globe than they’ve ever been. And, uh, I, you know, I don’t know what’s happening with President Biden that, you know, he would think that this, he would not be able to see and learn from the lessons from the past.

Frank Morano (26:48):

I I’m gonna let you go in a moment, and I appreciate you having been so generous with your time. Uh, two questions. I I have to ask you, one of the people on the left are gonna kill me if I don’t ask one of the people on the, the right are gonna kill me if I don’t ask. You alluded to, uh, America’s poor record in these regime change wars, the war in Iraq. I think the same thing could be argued for, uh, the war in Libya and a number of other conflicts over the course of the last 25, 30 years. Hillary Clinton was one of the, one of the leading cheerleaders of the Libya intervention. She voted in favor of the resolution for the war in Iraq. You were, uh, very supportive of Hillary in 2016. Uh, you indicated that you thought that the rise of Trump was scary because it reflected an atavistic urge in the US population for a violent leader. And you said you were solidly for Hillary and that she’d be a very, very good president in 2009. You said Obama couldn’t have gotten a better choice for Secretary of State through the prism of hindsight. Do you feel the same way about those two decisions supporting Hillary for Secretary of State in 2009 and supporting her for president in 2016?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (27:59):

No.

Frank Morano (28:02):

As simple as that, that was, that was easy. And then, uh, uh, lastly, let me end with this. And I’m sure this is a criticism you’ve heard before. I, I thought it was terrific, your response in the News Nation Town Hall when you said you’re proud that President Trump liked you. And, uh, that’s the kind of thing I’d love to hear more from Democrats and Republicans alike. But it’s statements like that, that have led some on the left, uh, to claim that you are somehow a right wing shadow candidate being put up to run by people like Steve Bannon or Roger Stone. And Roger Stone was out there again, Thursday and Friday, and I guess I think again on, uh, last Sunday saying that if Trump were smart, he’d pick you as his running mate. Are you being pushed by conservative activists or conservative entities into this presidential campaign?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (28:56):

I may, I’m running because I’m gonna win because I wanna win and I’m gonna run. And I believe that I’m the best candidate to beat Donald Trump because I’m the one who, I’m the only Democrat who can confront him on his record in the pandemic is catastrophic record of caving into his own bureaucrats and locking down the country, which cost us 16 trillion. And which shifted for, from the middle class to super rich. We created a billion dollars a day during the, and I, you know, I’m anxious to confront him with that record. I, uh, and, and now do I talk to people on the, on the right? I’ve always talked to people on every side, or, you know, the 35 years that I was one of the leading environmental, I was the only one who would go on Fox News. I went on Hannity repeatedly, I went on Bill O’Reilly, I went on Neil Cavuto.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (29:52):

And other environmentals would say to me, um, you’re giving that state legitimacy. And I would say, well, I wanna talk to their audiences. If you wanna persuade people on the other side, you gotta talk to ’em. So I’ve never compromised my own principles, the principles that I fight for today, and the same ones that my father, my uncle, the FDR fought. If you check off all the things that I believe in the same things, do I welcome support on the right? Yes, obviously I do. I welcome support on the left. Yes, I want, you know, I want to bring Americans together. I don’t wanna drive them apart. I think we ought to end the polarization our country. And Steve Bannon, talk to me about running. Never. I’ve talked to Steve Bannon three times in my life. One was in 2016 when I met him, when President Trump asked me to run a vaccine safety commission, and then twice on his show, which are public records, and, uh, on none of those occasions did he tell me that I should run for president. So I made up my own mind to run for president. And I have my own agenda for running for president. But, you know, I welcome support from everybody. And I, you know, I think my campaign is a populous campaign, and I, you know, that I, I wanna appeal to people on every sorry side of the political spectrum. And I’m not gonna, you know, I don’t badmouth anybody. I don’t badmouth President Biden. I will attack his policies. I’m not gonna attack him as a man.

Frank Morano (31:24):

Uh, it’s, I’m, I’m not so refreshing. It, it is so refreshing in politics to see, uh, a major political figure doing exactly that. Uh, Mr. Kennedy, a lot of people have raised, uh, parallels to the Kennedy campaign of 1980. A lot of people have raised parallels to the Kennedy campaign of 1968, but I think a lot of our listeners are hoping that, uh, your candidacy ends up more like the Kennedy Campaign of 1960. Thank you for the time this morning. I appreciate you being so generous with your time. I sincerely hope we can talk quite a bit between now and the, uh, duration of the campaign.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (31:57):

Thank you very much, Frank. Thanks for having me

Frank Morano (32:00):

At anytime. Absolutely. Anytime. If you wanna comment on any portion of our conversation, you could give me a call, 1-800-848-NINE 2 2 2. That’s 808 4 8 9 2 2 2. This is the other side of midnight. Straight ahead.