Over a year ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not yet a candidate running for president as a Democrat. He hadn’t made the decision to leave the party he grew up in to run as an Independent— a decision prompted by the party’s efforts to keep him off ballots across the country and their collaboration with media outlets to defame his character. And no one could have imagined that he would suspend his campaign and endorse a Republican for president, former President Donald Trump, as he did just this past Friday.
Back in the summer of 2023, Kennedy was the founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit focused on children’s health. He was invited to speak before the House Weaponization Committee as part of hearings on the collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech to censor opinions they didn’t want shared. However, before Kennedy could testify, the ranking Democrat member and other Democrats on the committee attempted to discredit him with unfounded accusations.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) recently re-shared a clip from the July 20, 2023, hearing, where he ceded some of his speaking time so RFK Jr. could explain a term he used, “malinformation.”
Kennedy began by addressing the Democrats’ “defamations” of his character, including claims that he told Black people not to take vaccines and that he adhered to Replacement Theory.
WATCH:
If you can’t see the post, Massie wrote:
“Last year I had the chance to ask @RobertKennedyJr about the term #malinformation in our @Weaponization committee. Democrats tried to keep him from testifying that day because he tells it like it is. Here’s the clip.”
As Massie noted in the original X post, “Ironically, Democrats began today’s @Weaponization hearing on censorship by voting to censor Robert Kennedy Jr’s testimony.” You can read the transcript of Kennedy’s prepared testimony here.
Addressing the ranking member, Kennedy stated:
“If the views that you and others have attributed to me were actually true, I can see why I shouldn’t be able to testify here today. Those are not true. These are defamations and malignancies that are used to censor me and prevent people from listening to the actual things that I’m saying. And I think, ranking member, that we should have a real conversation rather than ad hominem attacks.”
He then explained the term “malinformation”:
“The term ‘malinformation’ was coined to describe information that Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites understood was true, but that the White House and other federal agencies wanted censored anyway for political reasons because it challenged official orthodoxies.”
Kennedy provided an example, recounting how a group he was in on several social media platforms was censored at the government’s request. His Instagram account, which had 900,000 followers, was also “taken down.”
Kennedy’s performance in this hearing was masterful. The Democrats’ repeated interruptions only highlighted the need for these hearings. They clearly did not want him to speak. But what did they achieve with this tactic? As seen in the clip, RFK Jr. had to spend over four minutes correcting the record—time that could have been used to share crucial information to help the American people understand what their government is doing.
But for those on the other side of the aisle, that wasn’t the priority. Their goal was to tarnish his reputation with the public and bog him down with time-wasting distractions so that his message never reached the intended audience.
Some polls taken during the Democrat National Convention (DNC) have already been released. The Democrats might discover in November that they made a grave mistake by provoking this particular hornet’s nest.
