Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that President Joe Biden is a "much worse threat to democracy" than former President Donald Trump.
Although Kennedy said he is "not going to answer" the question of wheter Trump or Biden is "the worst threat to democracy," he said in a CNN interview that aired Monday: "I can make the argument that President Biden is a much worse threat to democracy."
Biden was the first U.S. president to use "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," Kennedy also said. "Those are really critical threats to democracy."
Kennedy, who was running against Biden in the Democratic primaries until he entered the race as an independent in October, said he is involved in a lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly censoring him on social media. A final decision will be made in his case after the Supreme Court issues a decision in a related lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana, per Bloomberg Law.
"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 uses 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 censor his political critics," Kennedy also said during the interview.
CNN host Erin Burnett pressed Kennedy to answer whether Trump's attempts to challenge the 2020 election results posed a threat to democracy.
"Trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy," Kennedy responded. "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."
However, he said that the 2001 election was "stolen" in favor of George W. Bush, and in 2004, he wrote an article for the "Rolling Stone" arguing that John Kerry had the election stolen from him.
"So I don't think people who say that the election is stolen not -- that we shouldn't make pariahs of those people. We shouldn't demonize them. We shouldn't vilify them," Kennedy added.
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