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Were it not for his illustrious name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be just another crackpot in the growing number of bottom-feeding right-wing fringe politicians seeking high office.
But the Robert F. Kennedy brand is political gold.
RFK Jr. is now polling in the double digits against Biden. The latest CNN poll, taken less than three weeks ago, has him at 20 percent.
He just won a surprise endorsement from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey. On Monday he spent two hours on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk (along with fellow crackpots former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and vaccine skeptic Kelly Slater), where he pushed baseless claims such as the coronavirus being a bioweapon.
Instagram announced Sunday it had lifted its ban on him, two years after it shut down Kennedy’s account for breaking its rules related to COVID-19, because “he is now an active candidate for president of the United States.”
RFK Jr.’s rise poses no direct threat to Biden’s nomination, although it may be an indication of Biden’s vulnerabilities among Democrats who continue to worry about his age.
My bigger worry is that all the attention coming his way may convince RFK Jr. to launch a third-party candidacy that could hurt Biden in the general election. Never underestimate the distorted reality of an engorged political ego.
It’s necessary to expose RFK Jr. for who and what he is.
***
Make no mistake. Junior has nothing whatever to do with his father – who stood up for economic and social justice (and for whom I worked in the late 1960s).
The younger RFK is a right-wing nut case.
He plans to travel to the Mexican border this week to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.”
He wants the federal government to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians.
He doesn’t support a ban on assault weapons and blames the rise of mass shootings in America on pharmaceutical drugs.
He attacks Biden as a warmonger. He charged on Musk’s broadcast earlier this week that Biden “has always been in favor of very bellicose, pugnacious and aggressive foreign policy, and he believes that violence is a legitimate political tool for achieving America’s objectives abroad.”
He claims that a 2019 tabletop exercise about a mock pandemic, archived on YouTube, revealed a secret plan involving U.S. spymasters to enrich drug companies and suppress free speech.
For years, he’s promoted the baseless claim linking vaccines to autism. He’s been a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, suggesting the vaccine has killed more people than it has saved.
In his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, he alleged, without plausible evidence, that Fauci sabotaged treatments for AIDS, violated federal laws, and conspired with Bill Gates and social media companies to suppress information about COVID-19 cures in order to leave vaccines as the only options to fight the pandemic.
RFK Jr.’s misinformation about vaccines continues to endanger public health. The United States is now in the midst of the largest measles outbreak in 25 years, but not nearly enough young people have been vaccinated against the disease.
(Ironically, in 1962, RFK Jr.’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, signed the Vaccination Assistance Act to, in the words of a CDC report, achieve as quickly as possible the protection of the population, especially of all preschool children ... through intensive immunization activity.”)
***
RFK Jr.’s candidacy also saddens me. He could have done something meaningful with his life and his name. Earlier on, he showed promise as a staunch environmentalist before veering into gonzo conspiracy theories. He has correctly identified widening inequality and corporate power as threats to American democracy.
I remember him at the age of 13, running around the pool at RFK’s family compound at Hickory Hill amid whooping and hollering of the vast Kennedy clan, full of energy and laughter.
Mostly, though, I remember his dad, and all the promise RFK represented for America. And, of course, the heartbreaking assassination on June 6, 1968, the evening RFK won the California primary.
That Robert F. Kennedy’s namesake would attract 20 percent of Democratic voters 55 years later is testament to the continuing power of that memory.
It’s also a tragic reminder of how far America has veered from it.
You have probably heard the news. US Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri, wrote a book. It’s called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. You have probably also seen an array of reactions to it, some that take the book seriously, some that don’t. I suppose I’m taking it seriously, given that I’m talking about it. But I want to point out something fundamental that should, I think, inform reactions to arguments in favor of manhood but usually doesn’t.
Manhood does not require an argument in favor of it. Neither does anything else that constitutes a human being’s individual identity. I am a man because I am a man. I was born this way. Maybe you were born this way. Maybe you were assigned an identity at odds with being born this way. Maybe you decided to change how you appear to others. Maybe that requires an argument. But not the way we were born. There is no argument needed. We are what we are.
Hawley’s book, however, is chock full of arguments. I won’t recount them. You can find them here and here and here and here. My point is that he’s making an argument in favor of something that does not require an argument in favor of it. Every reaction, before we get to any other question, should first ask: why?
READ MORE: 'Such a caricature': Joe Scarborough rips Josh Hawley for 'childish trolling' of conservative writer
Actually, why twice. First, there’s no need for an argument. Second, the manhood Hawley is arguing for is the most widely recognized variation of manhood – widely recognized in that there’s 10,000 years of human history behind the idea that men should be at the top of every unit of organized human effort. Men have been on top for so long that most people don’t see it as a choice. They see it as the way things are, as if it were the natural order.
So, before we get to any other question, we have to ask why someone like US Senator Josh Hawley took the time to write a book that makes an argument in favor of something that 1) does not require an argument in favor of it and 2) that’s widely recognized after centuries of practice as the natural order of things. Why is he arguing in favor of something that’s unquestioned by many?
The easy answer is that he wants to be president someday. To be sure, but if we leave it there, we’re not taking the subject as seriously as we should. We’re leaving it to an ambitious man willing to say anything to get what he wants.
Why is he arguing in favor of something that’s unquestioned by many? Because the manhood that Hawley is arguing in favor of cannot exist on its own. It cannot exist independent of the organized human effort over which it has come to prevail. It cannot exist without these arguments, these constant arguments, in favor of it, because the manhood that Hawley is arguing for requires convincing other people that it is not only good but natural.
READ MORE: Morning Joe panel piles on 'terrible senator' Josh Hawley after actor Jon Hamm mocks him in ad
Why does it require convincing other people that it is not only good but natural? Because most people don’t like being stepped on. The manhood that Hawley is arguing in favor of depends for its existence on stepping on other people’s necks. Most people do not offer up their necks for the purpose of being stepped on. They must be convinced to offer up their necks.
So Hawley did not write a book about manhood, per se. He wrote a book about power. Manhood doesn’t require an argument in favor of it. Dominance does.
I’m going to leave you with a second question that I think we should also ask. After asking why he’s making an argument in favor of something that does not require an argument in favor of it, we should ask why we keep listening to an argument that depends on convincing other people that it's not only good but natural to offer up their necks for the purpose of being stepped on.
Why do we keep honoring these arguments with our attention?
We don’t have to.
We choose to.
READ MORE: 'An epic disaster': Reporter lays out brutal review of Josh Hawley’s new book
“Not a one of these guys here is corrupt or dishonest or doing anything illegal,” Printz said of the panel of elected officials on stage, which included county commissioners, current Sheriff Stephen Holton and Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg.
Printz said the meeting was a “big ol’ bitch session,” saying he thought there had been “a little bit of disrespect going on,” though suggesting maybe some presenters could “educate” the elected officials.
“These people are my neighbors for Christ sakes,” he said. “I grew up in this county; I’m a fourth generation Bitterrooter. How many of you can say that? Not many of you. Most of these guys been around here a long damn time, and I’ve known every one of them.”
Printz was largely in the minority of opinions Monday night at the Ravalli County Fairgrounds, with more than 250 seats filled and standing room in the back of the event space.
The Ravalli County Fairgrounds are pictured with a sign outside that reads, “Secure Our Elections, hand counting is the technology of the future” on June 5, 2023. (Photo by Nicole Girten/Daily Montanan)
A car parked outside had a bumper sticker reading “Jesus 2024, Our Only Hope,” and volunteers handed out stickers in the style handed out to voters on Election Day reading “ES&S voted,” with an upside down American flag in reference to voting machines used in Montana. The crowd eventually trickled out as the nearly five-hour presentation and Q&A session continued into the evening.
Presenter Greg Woodward, who said he received a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, gave a presentation based on the work of election denier Douglas Frank, an associate of Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow Guy.”
Frank, a high-school math teacher from Ohio, has toured the country with a similar presentation using a method he claims proves election fraud that has been debunked as reaching “meaningless” conclusions, according to a Stanford University political science professor in reporting from CNN. Election denialism took off in the U.S. after former President Donald Trump said the results of the 2020 election were fraudulent without evidence.
The FBI served Frank a search warrant following its seizure of Lindell’s cell phone last fall, as reported by the Washington Post. The Montana Free Press reported both Lindell and Frank received an audience with Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen in 2021.
Woodward said he could prove malfeasance by election machines through a “key” developed using data from Missoula County, employing the same method Frank developed, claiming voter roles were manipulated and therefore the total number of ballots was manipulated. He claimed the issue was found in just about every county in Montana.
Plettenberg said her office does a piecemeal ballot count, meaning they hand count every physical ballot that goes through the office (not every vote for every race on the ballot), and that if they received an extra ballot she would know about it.
Woodward asked if that meant she counted every single piece of paper that goes through every precinct.
“Absolutely,” she said. “And you’re welcome to come watch our process.”
Plettenberg said she’s been running elections in Ravalli County for 25 years and has been using ES&S machines throughout her tenure. She said the man who does maintenance on the machines is from Butte, and she’s been working with him for nearly two decades.
Reps. David Bedey and Michele Binkley of Hamilton and Rep. Wayne Rusk of Corvallis were among a handful of Republican legislators in attendance. Bedey told the press following the presentation that he was not persuaded there were significant problems with elections in Montana.
“The vote counting machines are not a problem,” Bedey said.
Bedey said Woodward couldn’t explain his theory as it would apply to Montana because he didn’t understand that counties count the physical paper ballots. He said he’s seen the chain-of-custody process and how the office counts a box of ballots every time they’re opened.
“How can you explain the generation of fictitious ballots unless someone’s actually generating fictitious paper ballots? Can you imagine what this conspiracy would look like?” Bedey said. “You can’t have this fictitious number of ballots because the number of ballots counted by the machine would be different than the paper count of ballots you have.”
Plettenberg said she asked for Woodward’s presentation ahead of time but did not receive it. When asked about a potential follow-up meeting to talk proposed solutions during the presentation (getting rid of the machines, no mail-in ballots, a full hand-count conducted in one day, among others), Plettenberg said she wanted to review Woodward’s findings, but didn’t see some proposals as feasible or a guarantee of accurate results.
She cited a 25% error rate with hand-counted ballots and said that when a mistake is made, the process has to start all over again — something that could happen multiple times.
One woman who wanted a specific number of volunteers Plettenberg would need for a full hand count was not fazed by the idea of having volunteers starting over multiple times or Plettenberg’s concerns over statistics around human error and keeping the election secure. After pressing multiple times, Plettenberg ballparked that she would likely need twice as much staff.
“You guys heard her, she needs double of 188. So please sign up. Let’s give her the army that she needs to do a hand count,” she said.
Jane Rectenwald speaks before the crowd in Ravalli County with a presentation slide that features clipart of the Bible as “Truth,” law books and a ballot adding up to the American flag as “Liberty.” (Photo by Nicole Girten/Daily Montanan)
Other conspiracies which surfaced throughout the night included “Zuckerbucks,” mentioned during election denier Jane Rectenwald’s presentation, which centers on a $350 million donation from Mark Zuckerberg to the nonprofit Center for Technology and Civic Life during the 2020 election. Rectenwald was part of a group that alleged irregularities in Missoula County elections in 2020; the local GOP paid to investigate the claims and found no evidence of fraud, according to reporting from the Missoulian and Montana Free Press.
Election skeptics believe the money influenced the outcome of the election and the state outlawed private donations in the last legislative session citing this theory.
Some of those funds came to Montana, including Ravalli County. Plettenberg said, as she did when the bill banning such donations was heard in the Legislature, that she could account for every penny spent and was happy to discuss it.
Both Representatives Bedey and Rusk were mentioned at the end of Woodward’s presentation as sponsors of House Bill 402, which would have put in place a system to verify citizenship status before someone can register to vote. Text highlighted in bright yellow said the bill would have allowed someone whose citizenship status has not been verified to vote, which was amended out in the final text of the bill, according to the legislature’s website.
The bill failed to pass the House or Senate following a conference committee on the bill at the end of the session. The bill was opposed by extremist group the John Birch Society in Ravalli County, as well as the ACLU of Montana for different reasons, Bedey said, adding that it would have been a tough bill to implement.
“It’s disingenuous to suggest that this bill was in place to allow non-citizens to vote,” Bedey said.
The last speaker of the evening before questions was a Venezuelan-born woman named Vesna (the meeting agenda identified her only as Vesna) who is now a U.S. citizen and warned Montana and the U.S. were on the same path of corruption as her home country. She said the U.S. was on an 80-year war cycle, citing World War II, the U.S. Civil War, and the Revolution, not mentioning the more recent War in Afghanistan or Vietnam War or wars fought by the U.S. prior to the Civil War, like the Mexican-American War or the War of 1812.
“We are at war,” she said. “This is a world coup. Venezuela was a test. They test the machines in Venezuela, so they go and do it in every other country.”
She said the war wouldn’t be fought with bullets, but would stem from civil unrest and, eventually, financial demise.
“It is really important to develop a strong relationship with reality,” she said.
“If you live in la la land, with fake money, fake food, fake air, fake sex, fake this, fake that, you’re gonna suffer a lot more,” she said. “I want to have real elections, with real people, with real ballots, with real hand counting.”
A man named Greg Brookes asked current County Sheriff Holton if he saw any laws being broken based on the “irrefutable evidence” presented during the evening.
“We’re basing this on what, two hours of testimony and not necessarily investigation,” Holton said, also saying he did not see evidence Ravalli County election officials knowingly or purposely violated any Montana election law.
“We do not want a sheriff to walk into any crime, in any case, saying ‘I think something happened and I will collect evidence to support that,’” Holton said.
Brookes chimed in again, asking if he believed a law was broken, to which Holton responded, “That’s dangerous territory.”
“You do not want your sheriff to walk into any crime and collect evidence with what he already believes and disregard everything else,” Holton said.
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and Twitter.
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