Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to make the case on Sunday that he can do one thing no third-party or impartial candidate has come near doing in fashionable U.S. historical past: win a presidential election. Though polls present him far behind, each major-party campaigns, these of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, view Mr. Kennedy as a possible spoiler.
Talking at a rally on Lengthy Island outdoors New York Metropolis, Mr. Kennedy cited polls that he stated his marketing campaign had carried out, displaying him profitable in two eventualities: one wherein he confronted solely Mr. Biden with out Mr. Trump within the race, and one wherein he confronted Mr. Trump with out Mr. Biden.
The rationale he’s behind in a three-way race, he maintained, is that “so many People are voting out of concern.”
“Their solely technique is to attempt to hold me off the poll after which to make everyone frightened of Donald Trump,” he stated of Democrats, “and on the opposite facet, they do the identical factor,” he added of Republicans. “When any individual is telling you to vote out of concern, they’re making an attempt to govern you into abandoning your values,” he stated.
Mr. Kennedy acknowledged to the group in Holbrook, N.Y., that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump differed in quite a few methods.
“If you happen to have a look at their personalities, their inclinations, their presentation, their ideology, their way of living, their interactions with different individuals, there’s an enormous, large distinction,” he stated.
However he argued that points on which Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump held starkly totally different positions — like abortion, border safety, weapons and transgender rights — had been “tradition battle points” that “are used to divide us all.” He stated that on the nationwide debt and persistent illness — points he referred to as “existential for our nation” — their positions weren’t materially totally different.
In discussing the prevalence of persistent illness, Mr. Kennedy lamented america’ disproportionately excessive loss of life fee from the coronavirus in contrast with the loss of life fee skilled by different developed nations, a disparity attributable partly to the comparatively low uptake of vaccines that Mr. Kennedy has campaigned in opposition to.
He prompt — in contradiction of scientific proof of the security and efficacy of Covid vaccines, and knowledge displaying increased loss of life charges in states with decrease vaccination charges — that the nation’s poor Covid efficiency was a mark in opposition to vaccines.
“No matter we’re doing, no matter we did, it was mistaken,” Mr. Kennedy stated, referring to vaccine mandates, lockdowns and different pandemic responses.