Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has repeatedly denied the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol over the past year, according to a series of interviews reviewed by NBC News.
“What’s the worst that could happen? Is that true?” Kennedy asked in October The Aubrey Marcus Podcast. “I mean, we have an entire army just a few blocks away, the Pentagon.”
“Then, you know, arrest the lawbreakers and let’s move on,” he said.
On January 6, 2021, the National Guard took more than three hours to respond to the crisis. At that time, more than 140 police officers were injured during the attack, and 5 officers lost their lives in the following months. Members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence were also evacuated from the House, effectively delaying certification for the 2020 election.
Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
one interview On Fox News last month, Kennedy said if elected president he would “look at individual cases” about potentially pardoning the January 6 rioters.
Last spring, Kennedy complained about Democrats’ “obsession” with the January 6 attack.
“I think it’s more serious if we start censoring free speech. You can rebuild a Capitol,” Kennedy said in another podcast. The Jimmy Dore Show.
Kennedy’s campaign Thursday, as first reported by NBC News retracted the fundraising email Echoing Trump’s rhetoric about the 2021 riots, supporters called the defendants “activists” who had been “deprived of their Constitutional freedoms” on Jan. 6.
Kennedy spokeswoman Stephanie Spear later said the language was “erroneous.”
“This statement was a mistake and did not reflect the views of Mr. Kennedy. It was entered by a new marketing contractor and went through the normal approval process,” he said.
Kennedy has also suggested that Biden is a greater threat to democracy than Trump, downplaying the implications of the Republican’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss. His comments are based on allegations that the Biden administration is illegally trying to pressure social media companies to remove certain content online.
“What is more dangerous? Is it the President of the United States, who is ordering social media sites to censor their competitors?” Kennedy also said in an interview in October. It appears that a former independent candidate from the Democrats is intended A case in the Supreme Court may affect the level of communication between government officials and social media companies regarding the removal of content.
“I can make the argument that the president is Biden a greater threat to democracyThis is because President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history to use federal agencies to censor political speech… to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said in a recent television interview. CNN.
A well-known anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy has used social media to spread misinformation about vaccines and Covid. In 2022, Children’s Health, an anti-vaccine group led by Kennedy, was kicked off Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, for such misinformation.
In another example, Kennedy, in an interview in September PragerUHe suggested that he was “at least as concerned” about social media censorship as he was about physical attacks on democracy like the January 6 attack.
When asked in the exchange if he thought the attack was insurrection, Kennedy replied, “You know, I don’t know. I’ve seen all kinds of… evidence to the contrary and I don’t — I still didn’t dig into it.”