Posted on 04/23/2023 5:03:38 PM PDT by lightman
Democratic 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said COVID-19 lockdowns across the United States decimated the middle class, suggesting that it has yet to recover.
“The strength of a nation comes from a strong economy and a vibrant middle class,” Kennedy told Fox News over the weekend, “and we have wiped out the middle class in the country systematically.”
The 69-year-old, who is a prominent skeptic of vaccines, stated that COVID-19-related policies benefited the elite ruling class at the cost of the middle class. Those lockdowns, he asserted, shifted $4 trillion in wealth from the middle class to a “new aristocracy of billionaires.”
Those lockdowns “created 500 new billionaires,” Kennedy stated. “The Oxfam report, which came out this week, shows that the billionaires that existed at the beginning of the pandemic, the people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Bezos, Bloomberg, etc., increased their wealth by 30 percent during the pandemic. From the lockdowns. And [Bezos’s] Amazon got to shut down all of its competitors.”
And Kennedy, the son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, stated that he believes that former President Donald Trump initiated those lockdowns.
Kennedy added, “I’m in a better position to run against Donald Trump than any of the Democrats because I can hold him accountable for the worst thing that he did, which was the lockdowns.”
However, Trump, as president, had little authority to issue lockdowns at the state or local level. And in early 2020, Trump said that keeping the United States shut down would “ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent.” For those remarks and others, mainstream media outlets frequently criticized Trump and essentially blamed his policies for the rise of COVID-19-related deaths that year.
“It’s important for all Americans to recognize that a permanent lockdown is not a viable path forward producing the result that you want or certainly not a viable path forward,” the president said in April 2020, about two months after the first COVID-19 cases were detected inside the United States after spreading from mainland China.
The younger Kennedy, who is married to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines, has never held public office but is perhaps best known for his stance on childhood vaccines. Polls suggest he has a long-shot chance against President Joe Biden, who is reportedly readying a 2024 presidential announcement on Tuesday.
“Like my dad ran on principle, he did not believe that he could win. And his objective was to tell the truth to the American people,” Kennedy said on Fox News. “And that’s what I’m going to do. And if there’s an appetite for that, I’ll be in the White House in 2025.”
When he made his presidential ambitions known last Wednesday, Kennedy told supporters that he knew he is being counted out against Biden. But he maintains that it makes him like his father, who campaigned against incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 before Kennedy was assassinated at a hotel following his victory in the California primary.
“He was running against a president in his own party. He was running against a war. He was running at a time of unprecedented polarization in our country,” Kennedy said. “That hopelessness of his campaign,” he added, “freed him to tell the truth to the American people.”
Kennedy also noted that his critics have accused him of disseminating misinformation about vaccines. However, he said that “a lot of the misinformation is just statements that depart from government orthodoxy.”
Outside of Kennedy, Democrat self-help author Marianne Williams announced a presidential bid earlier this year. Like Kennedy, she’s also seen as a longshot candidate.
He’s a liar. Democrat governors were the lock down kings.
There was some Republicans also, Asa Hutchinson in my state of Arkansas.
Trump did nothing about it either.
The federal government made recommendations. It was the governors that acted in their own ways on these recommendations.
Wow, you are an idiot. The man is a liar and a fool.
There was no federal lock down except on federal facilities like military bases etc.
Yup...it was CDC “guidance” which the paranoid exaggerated into laws of the Medes and the Persians.
Free Republic used to be place for intelligent conversation about politics. Seems that is gone.
But Trump did nothing to dissuade the lockdowns that happened, Fauci and Birx pushed them as well. Our whole response was flawed and a disaster and many of us knew it at the time. The problems we are having in the economy and I mean Inflation is because of those responses and the irresponsible policies that Trump did as far as bounties paid to hospitals and clinics for Covid-19 and all the stimulus money given out all over the place.
Biden continued the same policies and made it even worse and now we are paying for it.
Trump either gets ahead of the disaster that is Operation Warp Speed or he will be carrying a lot of baggage into the primaries, etc., and election.
Hindsight is 20/20. And because you have your head so far up you butt you would know.
Nice try - Trump still owns this
Re: 27 - Oh please. Go back and read the posts you have made calling people stupid, etc, etc because of their VIEWPOINTS.
Knock off the look of the wounded deer.
Ummm, the feds had the power to probibit travel, deny funding to uncooperative states, fire employees, discharge military servicemen, and ruin the economy.
Got the blinders on don’t you. Truth hurts doesn’t it. Even DeSantis had lockdowns going on in Florida until he saw the political winds.
C'mon man.
He has a rare kind of palsy.
Florida Governor Orders Statewide Lockdown April 1, 20202:42 PM ET
“RFK Jr. claims middle class was ‘systematically’ wiped out under COVID lockdowns”
When did any Kennedy care about the middle class?
“his 69-year old voice sounded incredibly old and weak. Is this his norm?”
Yes. His norm. For years.
Can you say selective editing?
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