Kennedy Jr Quits US Presidential Race, Joins Donald Trump ~ OsazuwaAkonedo #Republican #Arizona #Carolina #Delaware #Democrats #Donald #Freeport #Glendale #Harris #Kamala #Kennedy #Maine #Nevada #NewJersey #news #Nicole #Ohio #Pennsylvania #Philadelphia #RFK https://osazuwaakonedo.online/kennedy-jr-quits-us-presidential-race-joins-donald-trump/24/08/2024/ #Politics Published: August 24th, 2024 Reshared: August 24, 2024 12:50 pm Alone independent Presidential candidate in the forthcoming United States of
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00:00A lone independent presidential candidate in the forthcoming United States of America,
00:05USA presidential elections, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK has withdrawn from the presidential race to
00:12join the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump for the White House contest. RFK made this known
00:18as a news conference on Friday. Shortly after suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing
00:24former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, RFK joined Trump on stage at a rally
00:30on Friday in Glendale, Arizona. During the press conference, Kennedy explained what drove him to
00:36enter the race, leave the Democratic Party, and throw my support to President Trump.
00:42Before taking the stage, his campaign filed a court document in Pennsylvania that said Kennedy
00:47would endorse Trump. Kennedy Jr. is the son and nephew to late Senator Robert F. Kennedy and
00:53President John F. Kennedy, who were both assassinated in the 1960s. RFK said the
00:59Democrats waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and himself,
01:03and accused the Democrat Party and its media handlers of preparing and window-dressing a
01:08presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, whom he said had not granted interview or make unscripted
01:13presentations or present herself for a debate to address the American people ahead the elections
01:18scheduled to hold in November 2024. In separate Facebook posts on Friday with video's publication,
01:26Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, When a U.S. president colludes with alt-right coerces,
01:31media companies to censor political speech, it's an attack on our most sacred right of free
01:36expression. The DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.
01:43The rumors were true. The rumors weren't true. To find out what's really true about
01:48my next steps in service to the mission that launched my campaign, in my own words,
01:52please watch this video of my press conference today. During the press conference, RFK said,
01:58I've made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump.
02:04This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes me and my children
02:09and my friends. Kennedy, in an event in Phoenix, Arizona, said that the Democratic Party waged
02:15continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself and ran a sham primary. In an
02:21honest system, I believe I would have won the election. I no longer believe that I have a
02:26realistic past of electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and
02:32media control. Local media reported that Kennedy's campaign is asking swing stats to remove his name
02:38from the ballot because he does not want to be a spoiler. He said he will remain on the ballot
02:43in stats that he considers red or blue. If you live in a blue stat, you can vote for me without
02:49harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris, Kennedy said. In red stats,
02:55the same will apply. The former Democrat spoke a couple of hours before Trump was scheduled to
03:00hold a campaign event in nearby Glendale, Arizona. The Trump campaign on Thursday had advertised that
03:06the former president would be joined by a special guest, which further sparked speculation of a
03:11Kennedy endorsement of the Republican 2024 presidential nominee. The withdrawal from the
03:17race and the presidential run by the long-term environmental activist and high-profile vaccine
03:22skeptic, who many considered is the scion of the nation's most storied political dynasty.
03:28It would be recalled that the independent presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
03:34announced an independent White House run as a campaign event on October 9, 2023, in Philadelphia,
03:40Pennsylvania. Kennedy launched campaigns to be elected for the Democratic presidential
03:46nomination in April of last year, but last October, the 70-year-old candidate switched
03:52to an independent run for the White House. Reports indicated that while Kennedy had long
03:57identified as a Democrat and repeatedly invoked his late father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and
04:03his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, who were both assassinated in the 1960s in recent years
04:10due to relationships with leaders on the right. Kennedy repeatedly invoked his father and uncle
04:15Friday in Phoenix, according to Fox News. Before now, President Biden's campaign and the Democratic
04:22National Committee for months had repeatedly swamped Kennedy as a potential spoiler whose
04:27supporters could hand Trump a presidential election victory in November. According to Kennedy,
04:33Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me. Kennedy described the modern
04:39Democratic Party as a party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big
04:46money. The DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each
04:52time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot,
04:58the DNC dragged us into court, step after step, attempting to erase their work and disappear with
05:03the will of the voters which signed those petitions. It deployed DNC-aligned judges to
05:09throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail. According to his
05:14running mate, Nicole Shanahan, the campaign is facing no fewer than nine lawsuits from the
05:19Democratic Party. The campaign faces uphill legal climes with suits in Nevada, North Carolina,
05:26Delaware, and New Jersey. Trump, Shanahan said, faces six legal battles brought on by Democrats
05:32at the same time. What the Democrats consider common cause to win elections is the kind of
05:38normalcy that leads to famine, sickness, and civil war. The country is ready for an
05:44administration that represents unity, Shanahan said in a social media post. Kamala Harris had
05:51said that Trump won't hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat. The vice
05:57stated this on Thursday at the DNC in Chicago. Following criticisms of Biden's bullseye commentary
06:04after the assassination attempt on former President Trump, which the president admitted he should not
06:10have said, he claimed, I'm not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I'm not the
06:16guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. Biden was referring to a comment in
06:21which Trump joked to Fox News, Shanahan said that he would be a dictator for one day,
06:26to close the border and drill, baby, drill, to rebuild America's energy leadership.
06:32Biden enacted dozens of executive orders during his first days in office on both the border and
06:37energy. The relationship between Kennedy and Trump started warming earlier this year and
06:42the two spoke last month after the assassination attempt against Trump and met in person the
06:47following day. If he endorsed me, I would be honored by it. I would be very honored by it.
06:54He really has his heart in the right place, Trump said on Thursday in an interview on
06:58Fox and Friends. And the former president's running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio,
07:04said Wednesday in an interview on Fox and Friends that he hopes Kennedy endorses the president,
07:10gets on the team, because this is about saving the country, according to Fox News.
07:16We learned that after last public event put on by his campaign cam on July 9th in Freeport,
07:21Maine. But even before that, Fox News reported that his poll numbers, which once stood in the
07:27teens, had faded. The most recent Fox News National Poll, conducted August 9th to 12th,
07:34indicated Kennedy at 6% support. His fundraising was also in a free fall, with campaign finance
07:40reports indicating he had just $3.9 million cash on hand as of the start of July, with nearly $3.5
07:47million. In debt, Fox News reported. DNC senior advisor Mary Beth Cahill, while reacting
07:55following Kennedy's speech, said the more voters learned about RFK Jr., the less they liked him.
08:02Donald Trump isn't earning an endorsement that's going to help build support,
08:06he's inheriting the baggage of a failed fringe candidate. Good riddance.
08:11Harris World's campaign also on Friday released a statement, following Kennedy's speech and
08:16dropping from the presidential race, saying, For any American out there who is tired of
08:21Donald Trump and looking for a new way forward, ours is a campaign for you.
08:26In order to deliver for working people and those who feel left behind, we need a leader who will
08:31fight for you, not just for themselves, and bring us together, not tear us apart.
08:36Vice President Harris wants to earn your support,
08:39said Harris World's 2024 campaign chair, General Manny Dillon.
08:4416 months ago, in April of 2023, I launched my campaign for President of the United States.
08:52I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged
08:59my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote. I attended my first
09:06Democratic convention at the age of six in 1960. And back then, the Democrats were the champions
09:14of the Constitution, of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism,
09:22against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism, and unjust wars.
09:28We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government
09:35transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the bulwark against big money
09:42interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy.
09:49As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically
09:55from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption,
10:04big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money. When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary
10:14to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an
10:22independent. The mainstream of American politics and journalism derided my decision.
10:30Conventional wisdom said that it would be impossible even to get on the ballot
10:34as an independent because each state poses an insurmountable tangle of arbitrary rules
10:41for collecting signatures. I would need over a million signatures, something no presidential
10:47candidate in history had ever achieved. And then I'd need a team of attorneys and millions of
10:54dollars to handle all the legal challenges from the DNC. The naysayers told us that we were climbing
11:03a glass version of Mount Impossible. So the first thing I want to tell you is that we proved them
11:10wrong. We did it because beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive
11:18independent political movement. More than 100,000 volunteers sprang into action, hopeful that they
11:24could reverse our nation's decline. Many worked 10-hour days, sometimes in blizzards and blazing
11:31heat. They sacrificed family time, personal commitments, and sleep month after month,
11:38energized by a shared vision of a nation healed of its divisions. They set up tables at churches
11:46and farmers markets. They canvassed door to door. In Utah and in New Hampshire, volunteers collected
11:54signatures in snowstorms, convincing each supporter to stop in the frigid cold, to take off their
12:01gloves, and to sign legibly. During a heat wave in Nevada, I met a tall athletic volunteer who
12:09cheerfully told me that he had lost 25 pounds collecting signatures in 117-degree heat.
12:17To finance this effort, young Americans donated their lunch money, and senior citizens gave up
12:25part of their Social Security checks. Our 50-state organization collected those millions of signatures
12:31and more. No presidential campaign in American political history has ever done that.
12:38And so I want to thank all of those dedicated volunteers and congratulate the campaign staff
12:46who coordinated this enormous logistical feat. Your accomplishments were regarded as impossible.
12:55You carried me up that glass mountain. You pulled off a miracle. You achieved what all the pundits
13:01said could never be done. You have my deepest gratitude, and I'm never going to forget that,
13:08not just for what you did for my campaign, but for the sacrifices you made because you love our
13:16country. You showed everyone that democracy is still possible here. It continues to survive in
13:24the press and in the idealistic human energies that still thrive beneath a canvas of neglect
13:32and of official and institutional corruption.
13:36Today, I'm here to tell you that I will not allow your efforts to go to waste.
13:42I'm here to tell you that I will leverage your tremendous accomplishments
13:46to serve the ideals that we share – the ideals of peace, of prosperity, of freedom,
13:54of health – all the ideals that motivated my campaign. I'm here today to describe the path
14:00forward that you have opened with your commitment and with your hard labors.
14:07Now, in an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election in a system that my father
14:17and my uncles thrived in, a system with open debates, with fair primaries, with regularly
14:26scheduled debates, with fair primaries, and with a truly independent media untainted by government
14:32propaganda and censorship. In a system of nonpartisan courts and election boards,
14:39everything would be different. After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of
14:45the other candidates both in favorability and also in head-to-head matchups. But I'm sorry to say
14:53that while democracy may still be alive at the grassroots, it has become little more than a
14:59slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly
15:05at all for me, for the Democratic Party. In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party
15:13set itself to dismantling it. Lacking confidence in its candidate, that its candidate could win
15:21in a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President
15:29Trump and myself. Each time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures
15:37needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court, state after state, attempting to erase
15:44their work and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed those petitions. It deployed DNC-
15:52aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.
16:00It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.
16:08Then when a predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President
16:15Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election. They
16:24installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020
16:31without winning a single delegate. My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided
16:38themselves on their capacity to go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas.
16:45They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like Vice President
16:52Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days.
17:01This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose when they don't know whom they are choosing?
17:09And how can this look to the rest of the world? My father and my uncle were always conscious of
17:15America's image abroad because of our nation's role as the template for democracy,
17:22a role model for democratic processes, and the leader of the free world.
17:27Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs
17:34engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon
17:40nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly
17:51produced Chicago circus. There in Chicago, a string of Democratic speakers
17:59mentioned Donald Trump 147 times just on the first day. Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate
18:08In contrast, at the RNC convention, President Biden was mentioned only twice in four days.
18:15I do interviews every day. Many of you have interviewed me. Anybody who asks gets to
18:22interview me. Some days I do as many as 10. President Trump, who actually was nominated
18:29and won an election, also does interviews daily. How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate
18:36that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answers.
18:44They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy.
18:50They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.
18:57What most alarms me isn't how the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs
19:03its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization
19:11of the federal agencies. When a U.S. president colludes with or outright coerces media companies
19:19to censor political speech, it's an attack on our most sacred right of free expression, and that's
19:25the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest. President Biden
19:34mocked Vladimir Putin's 88 percent landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin
19:42and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from
19:48appearing on the ballot. But here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the
19:54ballot, and our television networks exposed themselves as Democratic Party organs. Over the
20:02course of more than a year in a campaign where my poll numbers reached at times in the high 20s,
20:09the DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintain a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me.
20:18During his 10-month presidential campaign in 1992, Ross Perot gave 34 interviews on mainstream
20:27networks. In contrast, during the 16 months since I declared, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN combined
20:40gave only two live interviews from me. Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of
20:48hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile, pejoratives, and defamatory smears.
20:55Some of those same networks then colluded with the DNC to keep me off the debate stage.
21:02Representatives of those networks are in this room right now, and I'll just take a moment to
21:07ask you to consider the many ways that your institutions have abdicated this really sacred
21:15responsibility, the duty of a free press to safeguard democracy and to challenge always
21:22the party in power. Instead of maintaining that posture of fierce skepticism toward authority,
21:30your institutions have made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers
21:36for the organs of power. You didn't alone cause the devolution of American democracy,
21:43but you could have prevented it. The Democratic Party's censorship of social media
21:50was even more of a naked exercise of executive power. This week, a federal judge, Terry Doty,
21:59upheld my injunction against President Biden, calling the White House's censorship project,
22:05quote, the most egregious violation of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of
22:10America. Doty's previous 155-page decision details how, just 37 hours after he took the oath of
22:20office, swearing to uphold the Constitution, President Biden and his White House opened up
22:27a portal and then invited the CIA, the FBI, CISA, which is a censorship agency, it's the center of
22:37the censorship industrial complex, DHS, the IRS, and other agencies to censor me and other political
22:47dissidents on social media. Even today, users who try to post my campaign videos to Facebook or
22:53YouTube get messages that this content violates community standards. Two days after Judge Doty
23:00rendered his decision this week, Facebook was still attaching warning labels to an online petition
23:08calling on ABC to include me in the upcoming debate. They said that violates community standards,
23:14their community standards. The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and
23:22democratic principles, and it's joined this systemic attack on democracy.
23:29It also, the media justifies their censorship on the grounds of combating misinformation,
23:36but governments and oppressors don't censor lies. They don't fear lies. They fear the truth,
23:47and that's what they censor, and I don't want any of this to sound like a personal complaint
23:54because it's not. For me, it's all part of a journey, and it's a journey that I signed up with,
24:04but I need to make these observations because I think they're critical for us doing the thing that
24:11we need to do as citizens of democracy to assess where we are in this country and what our
24:17democracy still looks like and the assumptions about U.S. leadership around the globe,
24:24and are we living, are we really still a role model for democracy in this country,
24:30or have we made it, you know, a kind of a joke? Here's the good news.
24:38While mainstream outlets denied me a critical platform, they didn't shut down my ideas,
24:44which have especially flourished among young voters and independent voters,
24:49thanks to the alternative media. Many months ago, I promised the American people that I
24:55would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler. A spoiler is someone who will alter
25:00the outcome of the election but has no chance of winning. In my heart, I no longer believe
25:06that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic
25:12censorship and media control, so I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers
25:20to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them
25:25that I have a real path to the White House. Furthermore, our polling consistently showed
25:33that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to
25:39the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential issues – censorship, war, and chronic
25:49disease. Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine
25:56war, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our constitutional freedoms,
26:03to clean corporate influence out of our government, or to defy the neocons and their agenda of endless
26:09military adventurism. But now one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own,
26:17to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration. I'm speaking, of course,
26:24of Donald Trump. Less than two hours after President Trump narrowly escaped assassination,
26:33Gally Means called me on my cell phone. I was then at Las Vegas. Gally is arguably the leading
26:40advocate for food safety, for soil regeneration, and for ending the chronic disease epidemic that
26:47is destroying America's health and ruining our economy. Gally has exposed the insidious corruption
26:54at the FDA, the NIH, the HHS, and the USDA that has caused the epidemic.
27:01Gally had been working on and off for my campaign, advising me on those subjects since the beginning,
27:09and those subjects have been my primary focus for the last 20 years.
27:14I was delighted when Gally told me that day that he had also been advising President Trump.
27:20He told me President Trump was anxious to talk to me about chronic disease and other subjects
27:27and to explore avenues of cooperation. He asked if I would take a call from the president.
27:34President Trump telephoned me a few minutes later, and I met with him the following day.
27:41A few weeks later, I met again with President Trump and his family members and close advisors
27:47in Florida. In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover
27:55that we are aligned on many key issues. In those meetings, he suggested that we join
28:00forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln's team of rivals.
28:07That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and fiercely, if need be,
28:15on issues over which we differ, while working together on the existential issues
28:21upon which we are in concordance. I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies
28:29during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches
28:34upon which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned with each other
28:44on other key issues, like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemic,
28:50securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of
28:56our regulatory agencies, getting the U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business
29:02of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections.
29:11Following my first discussion with President Trump,
29:14I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris.
29:20Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me. Suspending my candidacy is a
29:28hard-rending decision for me, but I'm convinced that it's the best hope for ending the Ukraine
29:34war and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation's vitality from the inside,
29:41and for finally protecting free speech. I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save
29:49millions of American children, above all things. For 19 years, I prayed every morning
29:57that God would put me in a position to end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was one of
30:05the primary reasons for my running for president, along with ending censorship in the Ukraine war.
30:11It's the reason I've made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support
30:18President Trump. This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes
30:25my wife and my children and my friends, but I have the certainty that this is what I'm meant to do,
30:32and that certainty gives me internal peace even in storms. If I'm given the chance to fix the
30:41chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years
30:48we will watch chronic disease burden lift dramatically. We will make Americans healthy
30:53again. Within four years, America will be a healthy country. We will be stronger, more resilient,
31:01more optimistic, and happier. I won't fail in doing this. Ultimately, the future, however it happens,
31:09is in God's hands and in the hands of the American voters and those of President Trump.
31:15If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that now
31:22demoralizes and bankrupts the country will disappear. This is a spiritual journey for me.
31:29I reached my decision through deep prayer, through hard-nosed logic, and I asked myself,
31:36what choices must I make to maximize my chances to save America's children and restore national
31:43health? I felt that if I refused this opportunity, I would not be able to look myself in the mirror,
31:50knowing that I could have saved lives of countless children and reverse this country's
31:55chronic disease epidemic. I'm 70 years old. I may have a decade to be effective. I can't imagine
32:04that President Harris would allow me or anyone to solve these dire problems. After eight years of
32:14President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever.
32:20President Trump has told me that he wants this to be his legacy. I'm choosing to believe that
32:26this time he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, his closest friends, and
32:34all support this objective. My joining the Trump campaign will be a difficult sacrifice for
32:42my wife and children, but worthwhile if there's even a small chance of saving these kids.
32:49Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country
32:53and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.
33:01That's why I launched my campaign to unify America. My dad and my uncle made such an enduring mark
33:09on the character of our nation, not so much because of any particular policies that they
33:15promoted, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify
33:22our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by ideals. They were able to put
33:29their love into the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans and to unify a national
33:36populist movement of Americans, blacks and whites, Hispanics, urban and rural Americans.
33:44They inspired affection and love and high hopes and a culture of kindness
33:51that continued to radiate among Americans from their memory. That's the spirit on which
33:58I ran my campaign and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump.
34:04Instead of vitriol and polarization, I will appeal to the values that unite us,
34:10the goals that we could achieve if only we weren't at each other's throats.
34:15The most unifying theme for all Americans is that we all love our children. If we all unite
34:23around that issue now, we can finally give them the protection, the health,
34:28and the future that they deserve. Thank you all very much.
34:34When a U.S. president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political
34:41speech, it's an attack on our most sacred right of free expression, and that's the very right
34:47upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest. President Biden
34:53mocked Vladimir Putin's 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin
35:02and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from
35:08appearing on the ballot. But here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing
35:14on the ballot, and our television networks exposed themselves as Democratic Party organs
35:22over the course of more than a year in a campaign where my poll numbers reached at times
35:28in the high 20s. The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintain a near-perfect embargo
35:36on interviews with me. During his 10-month presidential campaign in 1992,
35:43Ross Perot gave 34 interviews on mainstream networks. In contrast, during the 16 months
35:52since I declared, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN combined gave only two live interviews from me.
36:05Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile,
36:12pejoratives, and defamatory smears. Some of those same networks
36:18included with the DNC to keep me off the debate stage. Representatives of those networks are in
36:25this room right now, and I'll just take a moment to ask you to consider the many ways that your
36:32institutions have abdicated this really sacred responsibility, duty of a free press to safeguard
36:40democracy and to challenge always the party in power. Instead of maintaining that posture of
36:47fierce skepticism toward authority, your institutions have made themselves government
36:54mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power. You didn't alone cause the devolution of
37:02American democracy, but you could have prevented it. The DNC waged continual legal warfare against
37:09both President Trump and myself. Then when a predictably bungled debate performance
37:15precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed
37:22his successor, Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted
37:30encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose
37:38when they don't know whom they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world?
37:44My father and my uncle were always conscious of America's image abroad because of our nation's
37:51role as the template for democracy, a role model for democratic processes, and the leader of the
37:58free world. Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs
38:06engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing. No policies,
38:15no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus.
38:25How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate
38:30during the entire election cycle? We know the answers. They did it by weaponizing the
38:36government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition
38:44and by disenfranchising American voters. What most alarms me isn't how the Democratic Party
38:51conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to
38:58censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies.
39:04The DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Then when a
39:11predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden,
39:18the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, Vice President Harris,
39:24has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days.
39:32This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose
39:37when they don't know whom they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world?
39:44My father and my uncle were always conscious of America's image abroad
39:49because of our nation's role as the template for democracy,
39:53the role model for democratic processes, and the leader of the free world.
39:59Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs
40:06engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing. No policies,
40:14no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly
40:22reduced Chicago circus. How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done
40:28an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answers. They did it by
40:35weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the
40:42opposition and by disenfranchising American voters. What most alarms me isn't how the
40:50Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the
40:56resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies.