Susie Coen
US Correspondent,
in Philadelphia
01 October 2024 10:51am
President John F Kennedy would have no place in the modern Democrats because they have become the party of “censorship and surveillance”, Robert F Kennedy Jnr has claimed.
The former US presidential candidate, 70, said there has been an “inversion” of the two main political parties, leaving Donald Trump more aligned with the Democratic Party his late uncle led.
Asked where the former president and his father Robert F Kennedy Snr would sit in today’s political landscape, Mr Kennedy said: “I don’t think that they would have a place in today’s Democratic Party.”
Speaking to Dovid Efune, the British-born owner of the New York Sun who last month was reported to have joined the race to buy The Telegraph, Mr Kennedy said: “The Democratic Party that I grew up with was the party of peace.”
He added: “We were always the anti-war party, we were the party of civil rights and constitutional rights, including freedom of speech… today we’re the party of censorship and surveillance.”
Mr Kennedy, who abandoned his bid for the White House in August and endorsed Trump, said the Democratic Party’s support of transgender athletes had also pushed him away from the party.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration attempted to introduce new rules to stop gender discrimination in schools and colleges.
This involved attempting to revise Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funding – a move critics say will undermine protection for women in school bathrooms and on sports fields.
Mr Kennedy noted that his uncle, the late senator Ted Kennedy, had been a key supporter of Title IX.
“The Democratic Party are now against women’s sports and all of these different issues.
“You know, there’s been a complete inversion of the two parties, and that’s one of the reasons I left the party, because it no longer represents the kind of things that I checked with.”
He added: “All the policies that my uncle and father believed [in], and I believe I would check every one of those boxes, and Donald Trump today is much closer to that, and he doesn’t agree with me on everything.”
Mr Kennedy was also asked whether he is ever concerned about being targeted in an assassination attempt, in light of the recent attempts on Trump’s life and given how his uncle and father were killed.
“I do feel that way, but it’s not something that I ever worry about,” he told the audience at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, in Philadelphia.
Mr Kennedy said while he is not “stupid about it or reckless”, he does not “live in fear of anything”.
The former presidential candidate was also pressed on his thoughts about Taylor Swift, who was previously romantically involved with his son Connor Kennedy.
Ms Swift endorsed Kamala Harris following the presidential debate last month.
“Taylor Swift, in my encounters with her, was an incredibly classy human being”, he said.
“I think she has a lot of good sense and a lot of wisdom, and she’s a very good person in all of my interactions with her. And so I have nothing, nothing bad to say about her.”
Mr Kennedy also declined to comment on reports he had an affair with a political reporter who he took hiking in the mountains for a feature on his presidential campaign.
Olivia Nuzzi, the Washington correspondent for New York Magazine, was placed on leave last week after she admitted “the nature of some communications between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal”.
Asked about the relationship, Mr Kennedy said: “I’m just not going to comment on those I don’t comment on those stories.”
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