Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last week that President Biden is a greater threat to American democracy than Donald Trump.
It’s an odd assertion from a truly odd fellow. He believes the coronavirus was fiendishly designed to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews, and that 5G towers are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.”
But we can’t flip the channel on RFK Jr.’s rantings anymore, sadly. He is polling well enough to spoil the election, so we have a civic obligation to endure this nitwit for the next eight months. And while he is whacky, he’s not quite as obnoxious as Vivek Ramaswamy. We can get through this.
So, what is he talking about? Biden, he says, is ruining the country by using government power to censor his political opponents, an argument that a handful of MAGA states recently made before the Supreme Court.
Now, as a journalist, I’d be first in line to scream about censorship, if the government really practiced it. But I’ve never seen it.
What Kennedy and his allies in the MAGA movement are objecting to stems from the federal government’s efforts to combat lies on the internet, or honest mistakes that can wind up killing people. Like the characters who warned that the Covid vaccine was dangerous, or that it just didn’t work.
Lots of scared people bought that stuff, especially conservatives. That’s one reason Republicans were 50 percent more likely than Democrats to die of Covid, according to the National Institutes of Health. It was a public health imperative to combat the disinformation.
But two red states – Missouri and Louisianna – filed suit, arguing that the Biden administration’s contact with social media companies amounted to censorship, and a Court of Appeals based in New Orleans agreed last year, ordering the administration to stop those contacts. The Supreme Court put a temporary hold on that order and heard arguments on the merits two weeks ago.
Over and over, the justices asked the plaintiffs to point to the actual censorship, rather than old-fashioned jawboning. Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, compared it to government exchanges with newspapers, which he described as a valuable dialogue that does not violate the First Amendment.
A lawyer for the Biden administration, Brian Fletcher, pointed out that the social media companies often told the Biden crew to pound salt. Where were the censorship cops then?
“These were sophisticated parties,” he said. “They routinely said no to the government. They weren’t open about it. They didn’t hesitate to do it. And when they said no to the government, the government never engaged in any sort of retaliation.”
The red states argued that repeated and urgent requests from the Biden administration, along with their suggestions that new regulations might be needed to combat disinformation, amounted to coercion. Only one or two justices seemed sympathetic, according to most reports.
Maybe it’s because I’ve practiced journalism in Jersey all my life, but I can’t imagine that even this Court will buy the argument that a tough talk amounts to censorship. The plaintiffs sound like a bunch of whiny creampuffs.
What the Biden administration did is contact the social media companies and urge them to either take down the misinformation or put a warning label on it. And I have no doubt those warnings were expressed with urgency, even with screaming and shouting.
But as any journalist can tell you, that is part of this game. I have had the honor of several governors either screaming at me, as Gov. Chris Christie did, or hissing at me, as they all have at one time or another. George Norcross, the iron-fisted boss of South Jersey, was the most colorful of them all. Trust me.
But a politician screaming at a journalist is natural, like a dog chasing a cat. If that scares you into changing your story, you’re in the wrong business.
Which brings us back to Kennedy. This is his first bid for public office, and that tells you something about his judgement, and his arrogance. He calls this censorship because it’s flashy, and it fits his view of the world as a place full of goblins and misanthropes that only he can see. Yeesh.
His own sister, Rory Kennedy, called his campaign “dangerous” recently. “I do worry that Bobby just taking some percentage of votes from Biden could shift the election and lead to Trump’s election,” she said.
It could indeed. But even the Kennedy family can’t penetrate a skull as thick as RFK Jr.’s.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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