FORBES INTERVIEW: Robert Kennedy, Jr on what his presidency would be like
Addressing the chronic disease crisis, especially among our children
Below is the text of a recent interview of Robert Kennedy, Jr. by Forbes reporter Brittany Lewis. Here he talks about the health of Americans, something no one in the federal government or our political parties is focused on, especially concerning the health of our children. Several years ago Kennedy said this:
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
This should be the biggest concern of everyone in positions of power or those seeking those positions. Sadly, Kennedy’s is the only voice out there.
June 7, 2024, Forbes: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Slams Biden And Trump For Deficit Spending, Claims They 'Feed' On U.S. Political Anger
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss running for president his shift from the Democratic Party, where he thinks the party of his father has failed, why former President Trump failed on debt and deficits, the threat of AI, and much more.
Reporter Brittany Lewis interviewed Robert Kennedy, Jr on what he sees as his priorities as President.
Kennedy talked about why he left the Democratic Party. He said today’s party isn’t the party he knew growing up. He described the Democratic Party back then as “rooted in the American middle class and the promise of America, that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you can buy a home, you can take a summer vacation, you can raise a family, you can put something aside for your retirement.”
“The Democratic Party was the champion of constitutional rights, including free speech . . . and avoiding this corrupt merger of state and corporate power that, from the beginning of our democracy, the framers of the Constriction, our great visionary leaders, were warning against. The power of corporations, corporate power could actually overwhelm democratic power and our democratic values.
Teddy Roosevelt said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign enemy, but that our institutions would be destroyed, subverted from within by malefactors of great wealth. . . .
Roosevelt was a progressive and left his party in the end to become an independent. . . .
Washington, in his farewell address, warned about partisanship and that the parties would be captured by corporate donors, etc. . . .
Kennedy said he could trace “the terminal corruption of the two party systems” to the 2008 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which “released a tsunami of corporate money into the political process.”
A hundred years before, Congress had passed a law making corporate donations to federal political candidates illegal.
Kennedy continued.
Unfortunately, both parties have now been captured by the corporate machine. Both parties are funded by BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, the pharmaceutical companies, by the military industrial complex, by the oil and coal companies.
Our political leaders are responding to their check writing capacity rather than the needs and the demands of the American people.
The parties really are not that different from one another. . . but the big issues, the issues like the budget deficit, the war—both parties are now the war parties, both parties are the spending parties.
The parties have presided over this dramatic rise in chronic disease.
Both parties have forgotten about the American middle class and are responding more to their corporate patrons than to everyday Americans.
I found that leaving that party was necessary for me to speak with a voice that represented the issues, the demands, the values of the people I want to represent. . . .
Lewis asked Kennedy what people would be getting if they vote for Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy:
You’re voting for the issues that I care about.
Number one, the issues that I think are existential to our country, that every American is really deeply concerned with, but neither of the other parties are talking about.
We’re about ending these huge budget deficits. We’re now at 34 trillion dollars.
President Trump added eight trillion to that. President Trump, in four short years, added eight trillion dollars to our debt. That’s more money that he spent than every President combined, from George Washington to George W. Bush, 283 years of American history.
President Biden is now in a race to catch up with him. President Biden is adding a trillion dollars to the deficit every 90 days, and servicing that debt now costs more than our military budget. Within five years, the cost of servicing the debt will devour 50 cents out of every dollar that we raise in taxes. Within 10 years, 100 percent of every dollar that we raise in taxes is coming from that.
Neither President Biden nor President Trump can address this issue. President Trump promised that he was going to have a balanced budget, and he did exactly the opposite.
Neither of them can do anything about it because they’re the ones who ran up the problem.
I am the only one that’s talking about a plan for reducing that debt, and that ultimately is the only way we’re going to reduce inflation, which for every American, basically, that is the biggest issue right now. . . .
At 8:20 in the interview, Kennedy talked about the rapid decline in the health of Americans, especially when it comes to our children’s health.
Neither of these Presidents can deal with the chronic disease epidemic which I have a plan for ending very, very quickly.
Chronic disease, when my uncle was President, affected six percent of Americans. Today, it’s 60 percent. No other country in the world has a chronic disease epidemic.
We’re the sickest nation on earth, and we pay more for health care than any other country.
During the pandemic, we had the highest death rate from COVID of any country in the world.
We have only 4.2 percent of the globe’s population, why did we have 16 percent of the COVID deaths?
CDC says it’s because we have the highest chronic disease burden. Why isn’t anybody talking about that?
Why isn’t anybody talking about the fact that diabetes—when I was young, a typical pediatrician saw one case of diabetes in his lifetime.
Today one out of every three kids who walks through a pediatrician’s office door is diabetic or pre-diabetic, and nobody is talking about this or what we’re going to do about it.
Right now today, in my generation, 70 year old men, one in 10,000 of us has autism. Why it is in my children’s generation, one in every 34 kids has autism, one in every 22 boys?
Where did all the food allergies come from, the juvenile diabetes, the rheumatoid arthritis, all these autoimmune diseases, the neurological diseases, all the allergic diseases.
And the obesity has suddenly disabled an entire generation. It is the biggest problem. 4.3 trillion dollars a year, it’s costing us, five times our times the military budget.
And not a single person in the federal government is talking about it how to end it, and it’s not complicated. We can do it. We’ve got end the toxic exposures that are causing it.
And that’s what I’m going to do with NIH. I’m going to end the polarization. I think most Americans are sick and tired of the hatred, the anger, the vitriol in our political debate.
Our political conversations today are nonexistent, and President Trump or President Biden can’t do that because they feed on that anger. They feed on the vitriol. They are the products of it. They’re telling us to hate the other person.
I also would say I don’t have any confidence, I don’t think most Americans do, that President Trump or President Biden can deal with these new issues, these emerging issues like blockchain and AI. . . .
Kennedy explained how these industries could be regulated to benefit the American people and not be used to control human behavior.
We need to make AI transparent. We need to require the big social media sites and anybody else who uses AI to make their algorithms transparent. We’re going to be manipulated. We to be able to know we’re being manipulated. We can only do that if we have transparent algorithms. . . .
Kennedy called for international cooperation and treaties concerning AI and bioweapons. He would get us out of the worldwide military interventions we’ve been involved in and improve our economy here.