Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has earned a reputation for peddling bizarre ideas, so it didn’t come as too big of a surprise when the conspiracy theorist sent out a fundraising appeal last week referring to Jan. 6 criminal defendants as “activists” who have been “stripped of their Constitutional liberties.”
Soon after, Kennedy’s campaign distanced itself from its own message, claiming that the language was an “error.”
Generous observers might’ve been willing to give the candidate and his team the benefit of the doubt. After all, it’s not as if Kennedy is overseeing a credible and professional political operation. Maybe, the argument went, there was a breakdown between the candidate, his team, and his fundraising vendor.
Alas, it wasn’t quite that simple.
Kennedy is on record telling The Washington Post, for example, he would consider pardoning Jan. 6 defendants — and he echoed the point on Fox News. The independent candidate has also repeatedly dismissed the severity of the attack on the Capitol.
It was against this backdrop that Kennedy decided to elaborate on his perspective in a written statement late last week. NBC News reported:
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that he would appoint a special counsel to investigate the “harsh treatment” of Jan. 6 defendants if elected president. … Kennedy expanded on his views, saying he doubted that the incident qualifies as an “insurrection.”
Not surprisingly, Kennedy’s statement contained several assertions that were plainly false, including the claim that Jan. 6 rioters “carried no weapons.” (Reality, whether the candidate knows this or not, proves otherwise.)
As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim added, Kennedy also took the opportunity to peddle absurd claims about the “weaponization” of the federal government, which are impossible to take seriously.
I mention all of this in part because Kennedy’s strange worldview…
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