America This Week, April 5, 2024: “The Nine Billion RFK Answers Ignored”
2024-04-05 00:30:30
Welcome to America This Week, with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, the national news wrap-up so true, we recommend you stow all sharp objects before reading. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.racket.news/s/america-this-week?utm_medium=podcast">www.racket.news</a>
All right, welcome to America This Week, I'm Matt Taibbi.
And I'm Walter Kern.
Walter, how's it going?
It's going well. I'm in Montana. I'm preparing to travel to New York, where I will be for the Great Solar Eclipse on New York City. My wife's not particularly happy, she thinks that if civilization disintegrates, it'll be a hard walk back to Montana for me.
But I've always.
Or from the afterlife?
Or from the afterlife. Well, in that, you know, I don't want to tell her that that's a possibility, because then she won't let me go at all. Because I've been reassuring her that should I have to walk back to New York City, I'm prepared. In fact, I've been preparing all my life for a trek like that, you know.
Who was the guy, Plemmy Wingo, who walked backwards from San Diego to Istanbul, basically? Wow. Yeah, he made it to a steamer in New York, and then got to Europe, and then walked backwards all the way there. He was one of my heroes growing up.
Do you have to keep walking while you're on the steamer? I mean, do you have to stay in motion for that?
No.
No, I mean, I don't know what he did exactly, and that part of the legend escapes me. But he did walk quite a fair distance backwards, and I just like the... It's the Animal House thing. This calls for a stupid, pointless gesture, but to really commit to it, you know, I really appreciate that. Yeah.
Well, this wasn't, I would say, the most dynamic Newsweek, although there is an issue that has been bouncing around quite a lot. Unfortunately, some of this, it got on me, partly due to my own fault, because I posted something on Substack. But the main outlet for it was an interview that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gave on CNN to Aaron Burnett, and I thought it would be instructive, we thought it would be instructive to go through that interview, sort of stage by stage, because there's so much in it that kind of describes modern American politics.
But just to give you a, give everybody a sense of what the controversy is, essentially, RFK.
said that he considered Joe Biden a worse threat than Donald Trump. And, as you can see, this led to consternation everywhere. Everybody's doing front-page stories about it. And there was a great gnashing of teeth. And how could you possibly say that?
That sort of thing, the view, if we feel like getting into it, the view really flipped out about that, although they've been flipping out about RFK for a while.
Walter, how did you first hear about this story?
I'm not sure, probably like I hear about every story, someone sent it to me.
But I've been following his candidacy for a while, and that he was on CNN, and it all surprised me that they gave him this much time, it's quite a long interview.
Yeah, that's an interesting issue, isn't it? I mean, we should almost ask, we should maybe discuss why that's the case at some point.
Maybe they simply wanted to give him enough time to launch a soundbite that they could use against him. Who knows? But they did have a fairly generous interview, though it was adversarial in the extreme, I thought.
Yeah, to say the least. So let's start at the beginning here. And the opening question from Erin Burnett, and lest anyone forget, Erin Burnett came to television by way of Goldman Sachs.
I didn't know that. What did she do for Goldman Sachs? Does anybody know?
God, I don't even remember. I don't think it was comms, though. I think she was actually in finance, if I remember correctly.
But in any case, you know, the composition of people on television is increasingly limited to people who've either droned somebody to death or, you know, ripped them off in a mortgage scam.
So Erin Burnett is going to give this interview to RFK Jr. And here's where it starts.
Mr. Kennedy, I appreciate your time. So you're, Jeff Zeleny going through the role that Jill Stein played. when you just look, the vote tallies in the state of Wisconsin. Only need 2000 votes to get on the ballot in the state of Wisconsin.
So what do you say to Democrats who point to Jill Stein and say, that's going to be you?
Well, right now, I'm sorry, can we just pause there for a second? To start an interview with. what do you say to people who say you're just Jill Stein?
What do you think about that? as an opening question, Walter?
Well, no one said it, but her. First of all, I love how they abstract their particular questions to the, you know, polity at large. You know, if you go down to the cafe, people are saying, hey, isn't this Kennedy, just like Jill Stein? Not. But she seems nervous.
starting the interview. She kind of wouldn't look him in the eye at first. And then she said it only takes 2000 votes to get on the ballot. there. She didn't mean votes, she meant signatures.
So she's clearly preparing for a gotcha session. And she tried to throw him off instantly with this comparison that everybody slash, nobody is making.
Yeah, and by the way, this is something that also happened to Coleman Hughes last week on The View, where he was in an ambush interview that he knew was an ambush interview. But there was a scene where Sonny Hostin says to him, what do you say to your critics, who would say that you're co-opted, you know, a charlatan and a pawn? You know, it's essentially she's calling him, what do you say to your critics, who are essentially calling you an Uncle Tom, like I am right now?
And when you, when you ask a question like that, is that even really a question? I don't even know, because there's no actual person who said that.
And then it has a question mark or a sort of rising, you know, rising tone on the last word or two. But this is how it works. now, put somebody at a disadvantage and throw them into a hole and watch them try to crawl out of it. That used to come. that used to come at the halfway mark of an interview, maybe toward the end.
But now it's the very beginning.
Right. So let's just listen to a little bit of his initial response here.
You know, I don't know what I'm going to do, who I pull more from in November. Right now, I'm pulling pretty much equally, probably a little more from President Trump. Like, you know, as you pointed out, I want to pull from both of them.
But, you know, do you want to kind of a glib answer, a thoughtful answer?
I'd always prefer thoughtful.
OK, I mean, what I would say is you have both sides using scare tactics. Republicans say that if Joe Biden gets in, it's going to be the end of the republic.
Democrats say if Donald Trump gets in, it's going to be the end of democracy. And I don't think either of them are actually going to destroy democracy.
So he kind of goes on from there. But what do you think? I mean, that's a very sensible answer, right? It's a non alarmist answer. I don't think I think we'll survive.
We have durable institutions, he goes on to say. But this only seems to make her angrier. And we end up in a place.
Well, I loved how she said she'd prefer a thought, always prefer a thoughtful answer when her question wasn't thoughtful. But he didn't. he didn't. he didn't even address the Jill Stein thing. He didn't go for it.
He didn't take the bait.
And good for him.
Yeah, and I guess that all has to do with the legend that Jill Stein lost Hillary Clinton.
Wisconsin rather than her not ever campaigning in the state.
Right. And let's forget about the fact that, subsequently, Jill Stein and the Green Party were hideously mistreated, denounced as agents of Russia just for running. You know, the Green Party historically has run into all kinds of problems, just trying to get into the ballot. But no, you know, the question is, are you Jill Stein? Are you going to be a spoiler?
And you can see this on the Chiron, you know, and take away Joe Biden's ability to win the election. So she goes on. And after he does, he delivers his thoughtful answer, which goes on for quite a while. This is, this is the question that comes up.
You in 2000, Ralph Nader obviously was running and you did an interview with NBC News just a few months before the election. You said this.
There's a political reality here, which is that his candidacy could draw enough votes in certain key states from Al Gore to give the entire election to George W. Bush.
And then you wrote an op ed in The New York Times. You wrote, Ralph Nader is my friend and hero. Mr. Nader's candidacy could siphon votes from Al Gore. Mr.
Nader dismisses his spoiler role by arguing there is little distinction between the major party candidates and that Mr. Gore is compromised on too many issues. While I admire his high minded ideals, his suggestion that there is no difference between Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush is irresponsible.
A moment ago, you said you you essentially see Trump and Biden as the same, different, different issues. But do you really believe that when people talk about the threat to democracy that Trump poses, do you really think that that is OK?
So just, just just to set the scene here. That is the question that is going to lead up to the one, the one quote that will become fodder for news articles this week, this idea that he was, that he once said something about Ralph Nader, that seems to contradict with his current position. And his response to this question that's coming is what is going to make the news.
Is it equal to Biden?
I mean, listen, I can make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy. And the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, censors opponent. I you know, I can say that because I just won a case in the Federal Court of Appeals and now before the Supreme Court. It shows that he started censoring not just me. Thirty seven hours after he took the office, he was censoring me.
No president in the country has ever done that. The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a president of the United States who used the power of his office to force the social media companies, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS, to CISA, to NIH to censor his political critics. President Biden, the first first president in history, used the secret, his power over the Secret Service to deny Secret Service protection to one of his political opponents for political reasons. He's weaponizing the federal agencies. Those are OK.
So that's the quote that makes the news. I could make the argument that Biden is a worst threat to democracy, mainly because he's a censor. Now, what are your thoughts about that answer, first of all?
Well, in political terms, Biden censored him personally. So turnabout is fair play. And maybe that was a mistake to do that for Biden. But yeah, it's a good argument. I mean, Trump doesn't have that power, hasn't exercised that power in any meaningful way.
Uh, if you are concerned about constitutional issues and you're a lawyer like RFK, I think making that argument is perfectly legitimate.
So, right. And we'll give some more time to his answer as we go forward, because he actually goes into pretty significant detail about why he thinks what he does. But in the coverage of this, it's just all people saying Donald Trump tried to overthrow democracy. What is he talking about? He's an idiot.
And we don't get any of the actual, the answer that he actually gave. But you can see that once he gives this answer, Burnett is now she's happy there. There's a noticeable increase in excitement and sort of narrative energy in the interview once she hears this, because now there's something to focus on. And here she goes.
You have a government that can silence its opponent. It has license for any atrocity.
So, just to be clear, you're saying you could make an argument that President Biden is a worse threat to democracy than Donald Trump?
But who else has ever tried to? Who else has ever tried to censor? What president in history has ever tried to censor political opponents? What president has weaponized the federal agency? You know, when my father came into the Justice Department, the first week he was there, he got all of the branch and division attorneys together.
He said, whatever we do, we are not going to use the power of the Justice Department for political reasons.
He has said that. Of course.
And that is reprehensible.
And he is the only president who's tried to overthrow the results of an election.
Well, you know what? Let me let me say something about that. I'm not going to defend President Trump on that. That was appalling. And there's many things that President Trump has done that are appalling.
But in 2001, we had an election stolen in this country. during the Bush court election. In 2004,, I wrote an award winning article for Rolling Stone that showed how that election was stolen from John Kerry. So I don't think and most Americans agree with me about 2001 that it was stolen election from our, from the Democratic candidate. So I don't think people who say that the election is stolen, not that we shouldn't treat, we shouldn't.
So. OK, there's a lot of food for thought here. I don't agree with him about a lot of that stuff. I didn't love the article that he wrote Rolling Stone at the time.
Was that about the voting machines in Ohio?
Yeah, I forget the exact argument. Essentially, it was that it was. it was a an election return story about, you know, Kerry had actually won some swing states and they put that in Rolling Stone as sort of a guest feature. I remember not thinking that it was terribly convincing, but I'm always afraid of election fraud stories. I think they're hard to prove just generally.
And so maybe that was just me. But he makes an interesting point.
Well, one point that he didn't make and not that I'm here to, you know, supplement his debating performance is that. He wasn't able to run in the primaries as a Democrat. He was forced into this third party situation by a DNC machine that pretty much made it impossible for him to run in the traditional fashion against Biden. So that we have a third party. RFK is in some ways the result of decisions made by the DNC.
You know, he could have lost fair and square to Biden in the Democratic primaries, and then he might have decided to challenge him anyway. But this is the fruit of that early decision to keep him out of that race.
Also, Erin Burnett did not even spend five seconds considering his answer before she said, but Trump, but January 6th. You know, I'm not sure that she was willing to stipulate that he was that Biden was using federal resources to curtail First Amendment rights, or if she just, you know, thought it beneath discussion, but she didn't go into it whatsoever.
Right. Yeah. And they don't, you know, I mean, that's just. the nature of these things is that you'll have this whole interview. And the interview actually gets quite interesting.
But the only thing they focus on is that one moment. So, you know, just to be clear, you're saying that you think that Joe Biden is more of a threat than Donald Trump. And he's like, absolutely. You know that. that's.
that's your soundbite. That's what's going to be viral. That's what gets played everywhere. Because to a certain kind of person, there is just nothing more preposterous, as I've learned this week, than the idea that the Democrats could ever be considered more of a threat than Republicans. Now, Biden makes a couple of interesting, sorry, not Biden, Kennedy makes a couple of interesting points here, one of which being that we've had all sorts of election denial stories from prominent people dating back to, you know, the year 2000,.
you know, remember Vincent Bugliosi, the, you know, the great true crime author and former district attorney of L.
A.
, he wrote a whole book about the Bush v. Gore case. You know, that was kind of a celebrated, popular book at the time, arguing that the Supreme Court had stolen the election. Then there was Greg Pallast, in both 2004 and 2008,, made the rounds, he was put on TV everywhere, talking about how, you know, elections, I'm sorry, in 2000 and 2004,, if I remember correctly, arguing that, you know, elections have been stolen from Democrats. In 2016,.
obviously, it took up an enormous amount of energy, this idea that, you know, the vote had been illegitimate, had been affected by Russian interference. There were members of Congress who decided not, to, you know, attend the inauguration or the swearing-in ceremony or turn their backs. There were people who were calling for different.
In some sense, the entire Russiagate investigation, what went on for years, was a challenge to the results of the election, in the sense that it wasn't the votes and the voting that were questioned, but foreign interference in the run-up to the election. So, I find it startling that in an era of extremely close elections, which we've had now for a while,
that there should be such amnesia over these disputes. But so be it, there is, it's not real amnesia, it's an attempt to, you know, keep us focused on. but one thing. For me, the problem is that the 2020 election is in the past, and these attempts to algorithmically and even personally censor people are in the future and growing. So, you know, when they're talking about threats to democracy, a threat is something that appears in the future.
And January 6th, whatever else it is, is in the past. And so, she asked a question to which there was only one right answer, as far as she was concerned.
But that's all media. is that now. It's just, would you agree? X. And, you know, and if you don't, then there's just a series of follow-up questions asking you why you don't.
And that's all it is, I mean, and it's dull.
But the hostility towards Kennedy is incredibly interesting.
You know, the argument that he makes, there are other aspects to it that I think need to be addressed here. I mean, when you say that one is a bigger threat than the other, I mean, you look back at January 6th, Donald Trump was the commander in chief at the time. In a real, you know, coup situation, you'd be calling up the army, and, you know, having.
your access to an armed command to take over the city, lock down the airports, take over the communication systems. He did not have that capability because nobody would have obeyed those orders, despite all the rumors that the National Guard was on his side and would have supported some kind of attempt to seize government. You know, that wasn't what was going on there, right? The issue with the censorship problem is that this is a totally achievable, in fact, already, I would say there, they have this capability already to control the flow of information and it's institutional, organized, funded, far into the future.
And international.
International, exactly.
The reason that it is the preeminent threat to me, or at least one could argue that it might be, is that it is a set of policies and an orientation which is sweeping Europe, Canada, our allies, and seems to be gaining steam after having already gained considerable steam here. So, you know, election denialism, or whatever they want to call this fixation on January 6th, besides being retrospective, because, and also remember, the Democrats had a plan for if Trump won too, which one can look at and see as far more sophisticated than anything Donald Trump launched in his own defense, you know. But in any case, Kennedy's talking about a wave that's sweeping Western democracies that is being articulated in this country and others, and which has advanced probably even further than it has here in, you know, all sorts of places. Brazil just got rid of locals, you know, a platform for podcasting and so on. Canada has really instituted speech controls that are in advance of ours, and so has Scotland recently.
So he's talking about something that is not minor and which appears to be rather coordinated. And so that she gives it no time whatsoever is unfortunate.
But what's so fascinating about this to me is it's a window into how people like Aaron Burnett, and you can substitute, you know, media person X or politician X, they're all basically the same. You can give them any information, any rhetoric, any, anything, and they will, like dogs, they'll only hear the words they know. And so, you know, he'll talk about censorship, this or that. And the only thing she hears is, you know, Biden's worse than Trump. Now he's going to go on and talk about the problems with voting machines.
And there's something very interesting here in that he's, while he's talking, whether he knows it or not, he's explaining the nature of his support, which, by the way, should be her job to draw out why people are voting for this guy, right?
What's the appeal? He's explaining this and listen to what she hears, as opposed to what he says. This is just amazing.
We shouldn't demonize them. We shouldn't vilify them. What we should be doing is saying, let's all get together, Republicans and Democrats, and fix the election system so that it cannot be fixed, so that we're the exemplary democracy of the world. We ought to, you know, let me tell you this, Las Vegas is built on machines that can count and never make mistakes. Can we make an election machine?
And can we have an electoral process? When you go through all the data, it can't be fixed.
I understand that we want elections to be as perfect as they possibly can be, and one should not use the fact that the election was not stolen and was not cheated to not try to perfect it. I understand that distinction. But when you do as you're doing and you open the door to, well, we want every machine, you're opening the door to people who can say, well, then, that's exactly what I'm saying. The machines miscounted. The machines did this, but they didn't.
Every single analysis has shown that that did not happen, right? As you know. Do you worry that you're opening the door for people to believe this? Look at the Republican primary voters and that they believe.
I'm not.
Okay, he's going to go on and make some more arguments on this score, but it's already interesting, right? Like, he's saying, we should have more sensible voting procedures that people have fewer suspicions about, and what she hears is you're giving license to conspiracy theorists who claim that the election was stolen.
Well, exactly. She is suggesting that to wish to improve our elections, to make them more reliable, possibly more acceptable to both sides, I would think, is, as she says, to open the door to conspiracy theory. So what would she suggest? That we secretly, without questioning the last election, try to improve in the future.
Because to do it publicly is to create doubt. It's not really a position that she has. What she has is a catechism, and she's reciting it. She's reciting it in a way that's embedded in her questions and responses.
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