RFK Jr. is all over conservative media. Trump’s camp is concerned. (Politico) May 2024

POLITICO – Story by Natalie Allison, Alex Isenstadt and Brittany Gibson

RFK Jr says Biden is ‘worse’ for democracy than Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s increasingly frequent appearances on conservative media platforms are beginning to raise alarms at Mar-a-Lago.

It’s another sign of the rising threat that Kennedy, the independent presidential candidate, poses to Trump.

In recent months, Kennedy has become a regular on Fox News and Newsmax, and he is now a staple on the conservative podcast circuit — being interviewed by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly. While railing against President Joe Biden, Kennedy is actively courting an audience with the young listeners of bro podcasters and conservative-coded YouTubers that skew anti-“woke.”

That’s squarely on Trump’s turf, not Biden’s.

“It is concerning and beyond logic,” said Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager, “that there are some conservative platforms that continue to give a voice to someone that has called the NRA a terrorist group, who believes in eliminating gas powered engines, believes in a 70% tax bracket and generally subscribes to the same school of thought as Karl Marx.”

Two other senior Republicans close to Trump’s campaign and granted anonymity to speak freely similarly expressed frustration about Kennedy’s appearances on conservative airwaves.

Though Kennedy has been popular with conservative media since he initially launched his candidacy as a Democrat, his frequent appearances on Trump-aligned platforms now come as he runs as an independent candidate who could cut into Trump’s support. The former president this past weekend went on multiple tirades about Kennedy on his Truth Social site, declaring him a “Democrat ‘Plant’” and “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat.” And he said “A Vote for Junior’ would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE.”

Kennedy, meanwhile, is talking to millions of right-leaning voters on traditional conservative platforms. A POLITICO analysis of Kennedy’s 69 media appearances since January, as listed on his campaign’s website, found a plurality of them — nearly half — were with conservative, libertarian-leaning, or openly anti-”woke” hosts, with the remaining interviews divided between liberal, politically neutral, and spiritual or environmentalist hosts.

“They see an opening, they see a robust ecosystem on the right that they can pull votes from,” said Matt Gorman, a former communications adviser for Sen. Tim Scott’s presidential campaign, referring to Kennedy. “I think sometimes, Republicans tend to lull ourselves into believing, ‘Oh, he’s just taking votes from Biden.’ No, he’s going after everybody.”

Kennedy has also taken on championing one of Trump’s top policy issues: closing the U.S. border. That’s in addition to questioning the legitimacy of the charges brought against rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, a cohort who Trump has praised and suggested he would pardon.

In a statement to POLITICO, Shapiro, one of the conservative hosts who has interviewed Kennedy, described him as a “fascinating figure” worth interviewing.

“RFK Jr is the highest polling third-party candidate since Ross Perot,” Shapiro said. “He’s a fascinating figure and I regularly interview newsworthy people across the political spectrum on my show. With that said, I’ve made clear that I support President Trump’s reelection effort, and have even co-hosted a campaign event for him.”

While polling averages show Trump with a slight lead over Biden in most swing states, Kennedy is currently averaging 8 to 10 percent of the vote in those states, drawing about evenly from both major-party candidates.

A Monmouth poll released this week shows 17 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of both Biden and Trump — sometimes referred to as “double haters” — and tend to be younger. Among voters under 35 years old, 27 percent fall into that category, the poll found, while Kennedy’s overall favorability rating has gone up by double digits among both independents and Republicans since December.

And a survey of under-30 voters conducted in April for Snapchat by SocialSphere, which is owned by Harvard pollster John Della Volpe, found that 52 percent of those young voters were at least considering a vote for Kennedy.

If Kennedy’s appearances on conservative media are frustrating to Trump’s campaign, Kennedy’s supporters are reveling in the increased attention that Trump’s broadsides against the candidate have given him.

“No one is worried that Kennedy is on Trump’s radar,” a person familiar with the Kennedy campaign said, adding it’s seen as free advertising.

One Republican strategist speaking on condition of anonymity noted that Kennedy seems to be following a strategy employed by a number of GOP candidates in recent years trying to drive up their name recognition among conservatives — not just going on conservative television channels like Fox News and Newsmax, but taking advantage of the proliferation of right-leaning podcasts and other programming.

“In a way Kennedy’s taken the tack of a B-level Republican Senate candidate,” the GOP strategist said.

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RFKjr Book – Fauci – Audiobook Mp3 (38:03 min)

Cornel West chooses Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah as his vp – by Brittany Gibson (Politico) 10 April 2024

Cornel West tapped university professor and prominent Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah to be his running mate on his long-shot presidential bid.

Abdullah has never run for political office before and is the former chair of the Pan-African Studies Department at California State University, Los Angeles.

Melina Abdullah

“I wanted to run with someone who would put a smile on the face of Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King Jr. from the grave,” West said.

He announced his pick on Wednesday’s episode of the Tavis Smiley Radio Show on KBLA radio.

West is running as an independent candidate and faces significant challenges in his campaign for the White House. West’s fundraising has lagged behind his opponents, raising less than $1 million since launching his bid last summer.

Since getting in the race, West has switched parties twice, leaving the People’s Party and the Green Party to ultimately run as an independent. The switch mandates an expensive and difficult process to get his name on the ballot in 50 states and Washington, DC. Officially choosing his vice president allows him to start collecting petition signatures to get on the ballot in about 20 states.

“Both of us want to disrupt the narrative that you have only two choices,” Abdullah said of their ticket. “We can be expansive and imaginative … we enter this really as faithful people who are not more pragmatists than we are faithful.”

Through partnerships with existing third parties, West is already on the ballot in three states. But this method was not successful in California, one of the hardest states to gain ballot access, as West lost the Peace and Freedom Party’s primary to the Party for Socialism and Liberation candidate in March.

(Party For Socialism and Liberation candidates for US President and VP)

Abdullah, who is also an organizer of grassroots and local Black Lives Matter chapters, said she “was not expecting the phone call that I got last week at all, like it was the furthest thing from my mind. And then he and his wife Annahita [Mahdavi West] asked and immediately my heart just soared.”

Black Lives Matter doesn’t endorse candidates, she said, but individuals involved with the organization may endorse her separately. Abdullah, who is also a Howard University graduate and member of the AKA sorority, said she would not step away from her work organizing with the grassroots local chapters.

West also said there wouldn’t be any political “burden” being associated Black Lives Matter, which has called for defunding the police and was alleged to be associated with property destruction at civil rights demonstrations in 2020.

As a practicing Muslim, Abdullah also spoke of the auspiciousness of her announcement on Eid, the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramandan. She talked openly about her faith, using a similar approach to West’s on the campaign trail. West is a Christian and the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary.

“I’m running for Jesus. She’s running for Allah. That’s a beautiful thing,” West said.

The announcement was a major milestone for West’s campaign but was not without issue. A technical difficulty affecting West’s audio input cut him out from their joint interview for almost 10 minutes.

Democrats were swift to criticize West’s announcement. “Despite Cornel West announcing a running mate, our view remains the same: only two candidates have a path to 270 electoral votes, President Biden and Donald Trump,” said DNC spokesperson Matt Corridoni. “The stakes are high, and we know this is going to be a close election — that’s why a vote for any third party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump.”

On the morning of West’s announcement, the New York Times reported that Trump allies view third-party candidates as advantageous for Trump’s reelection chances. One ally, Scott Presler, has messaged both West and the Green Party’s Jill Stein about helping them get on the ballot on social media.

West co-campaign manager Ceyanna Dent said, “Scott Presler has not worked with the campaign in any capacity.” Though Dent added that the campaign staff was briefed on his overtures.

West was asked by Smiley about being a possible spoiler in 2024, and said, “No politician owns a vote. We stand for what we stand for. If you go with us, then come with us and change the world.”

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Source

US Election 2024 – RFKjr Supported By ‘Young Turk’ Radical Liberal Cenk Uygur – by Gabriel Hays (Fox) 5 April 2024

#News#RFKjr Wins Radical Liberal Support – Prominent independent pundit stuns co-host by saying he’s considering RFK Jr. for president – by Gabriel Hays (Fox) During a recent episode of political web show “The Young Turks,” co-host Cenk Uygur admitted that he is considering voting for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., slamming President Biden and the Democratic Party for being anti-democracy.

Prior to his announcement, Uygur discussed why he agreed with the candidate’s recent headline-grabbing claims insisting that it could be argued that Biden is a “much worse” threat to democracy than former President Trump.

Kennedy claimed that the Biden administration is “worse” than Trump because it has pushed social media companies to censor certain opinions, especially during the pandemic, among other reasons.

Uygur supported this notion, though he claimed Biden and the DNC were anti-Democratic for reasons different than Kennedy gave, saying that Biden and his party members “love to rig” elections.

“He’s right to be concerned about Biden being a threat to democracy himself, maybe not for the reasons that he’s stating, but Biden did, you know, support anti-Democratic movements within the primary,” Uygur said.

He continued, “The Democratic Party canceled the election in Florida. They tried to keep out every candidate in North Carolina, Tennessee, et cetera. So, they love to rig elections.”

Slamming the media, he added, “Yes, I used the word rigged, OK? So, you can go cry about it if you’re mainstream media. How about you do your job and talk about how they canceled an election in Florida in the primary and just declared Biden the winner.”

Uygur also claimed that the “establishment in a of lot ways has killed democracy long before Donald Trump tried to,” explaining that this has happened through wealthy donors influencing most of the policy in America.” He also slammed both major parties for using “fear” to get votes.

He was critical of Kennedy, too, accusing him of trying to pander to both Republicans and Democrats in his campaign, but went on to say he’s currently considering voting for the independent.

Uygur declared, “The most surprising thing is, for the first time today, I’m now considering RFK, Jr.”

Co-host Ana Kasparian appeared stunned by the announcement, exclaiming, “What?!” on air.

Uygur attempted to explain it to her, granting that the candidate is “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs on vaccines. And on several other things where he believes in conspiratorial theories that I don’t believe in at all.”

“So why on God’s green Earth would I consider RFK, Jr.?” he asked, and then said, “But I thought about it, Ana, and Trump I would never support in a million years, Biden is now funding a genocide and is an awful choice, has been corrupt his whole life. A totally — you’re never going to get anything but corruption from Joe Biden.”

His main rationale was that he doesn’t believe Kennedy would be worse than Biden on major issues.

“So am I positive RFK Jr. would be worse?” Uygur asked, adding, “He would probably — on health and science, definitely he would be worse… But on everything else, like anti-establishment, money out of politics… I’m not positive RFK Jr. would be worse than Biden.”

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RFKjr Book – Fauci – Audiobook Mp3 (38:03 min)

RFKjr Book – Fauci – Audiobook Mp3 (38:03 min)

US: Socialist Alternative Backs Cornel West for President – 5 April 2024

US: Socialist Alternative Backs Cornel West for President Audio Mp3 (5:57 min)

The American left organization Socialist Alternative, which in the past supported “independent” socialist US Senator Bernie Sanders as the ”left wing of the possible” in 2016 and 2020, is now moving to back the presidential campaign of leftist gadfly academic Cornel West in the 2024 elections.

Socialist Alternative

Most recently, in an article published last month on its website headlined, “The Two-Party System Is Killing Us—Can We Build An Alternative?” Socialist Alternative points to West’s recently formed “Justice for All” party as a potential “mass working-class left party.” In reality, the Justice for All party is devoid of any clear political program and was established primarily as a vehicle for West to obtain ballot status.

Cornel West

Socialist Alternative first declared its support for West last year, when the former Democrat and former member of the Democratic Socialists of America was seeking the presidential nomination of the Green Party—after initially announcing he would seek the nomination of the Peoples Party, a political operation set up by former Sanders supporters. West later bowed out of the Green Party contest and said he was running as an independent. None of these political gyrations have given pause to Socialist Alternative.

On June 16, 2023, the Socialist Alternative Executive Committee hailed West’s campaign, declaring that his “candidacy has the potential to offer a sorely needed left alternative for working people and the oppressed.” In that statement, there were no less than 15 separate references to Bernie Sanders. The Executive Committee lamented:

The loyalty of Sanders and the “Squad” to the Democratic Party has been used in service of vicious attacks on workers, including the blocking of the railroad workers strike, and it has profoundly undercut the ability to organize movements of working people, squandering the momentum Bernie generated with his campaign’s “political revolution” against the billionaire class.

In August, Socialist Alternative announced a “Students for Cornel West” campaign, writing, “We need systemic change, and Cornel West’s campaign offers us an opportunity to fight back. … To be effective, we need Cornel West’s campaign to have a mass grassroots character. Young people have a central role to play in building the initial grassroots momentum that can draw in larger and larger layers of people hungry for change.” Socialist Alternative has since campaigned for West on every campus where it has been active. Some see the activity as a way to connect with the public through a name they may recognize and then sway them over to their own point of view simply using Cornel West’s campaign for their own ends.

In an article from November, Socialist Alternative raised concerns about “left and progressive voters who are sick and tired of the Democrats’ false promises” and called for West to “step into the void” caused by the likely upcoming election between two widely despised candidates, Trump and “genocide Joe.”  

The organization’s support of the West campaign as a “left-wing, pro-worker” opposition to the Democrats and Republicans is a kind of wishful thinking. West is a left flavored performer.

The political record of Cornel West

The Democratic Party is currently waging an “all-out war” on third parties and independent candidates, including the West campaign, in an effort to keep them from getting ballot status. This does not, however, mean that West represents a genuine challenge to the two-party system.

Any serious review of West’s record would both undercut the ability of his campaign to keep this immense anger tied to the dead-end of capitalist politics and show Socialist Alternative as an empty political organization that simply latches onto the leftwing of the leftwing of the Democrats.

West has spent decades promoting and endorsing Democratic politicians. He joined the radical liberal Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the 1980s and served as its honorary chair. He campaigned for Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, and endorsed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before raising criticisms following the election. 

Democratic Socialists of America

West has made limited criticism of the Democratic Party, calling Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs.” West, as well as Socialist Alternative, participated in the political circus known as the People’s Party, formed in 2017 on the basis of pressuring Sanders to launch a new party. Both West and Socialist Alternative also backed Sanders’ presidential campaigns.

Jill Stein

In 2016 West and Socialist Alternative switched to supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein after Sanders endorsed Clinton. In 2020, they went separate ways, with West calling for a vote for Biden in the general election. Socialist Alternative backed Green Party co-founder and 2020 presidential candidate Howie Hawkins.

Howie Hawkins

The Green Party operates as a pressure group oriented toward the latest fads of a segment of the political and academic class with bizarre anti-science solutions to many problems. Greens also exhibit an emotional trigger that propels them to vicious warmongering.

If there is any consistent thread in West’s transition from one political alliance to another, it is his vague house broken reformism. In his book The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, West explicitly outlines a pedestrian laundry list of minor changes to bring about a ‘better world.’ West’s philosophy belongs to the school of American pragmatism as it was developed in particular by Richard Rorty, with whom West studied while at Princeton in the early 1970s. Pragmatism has different varieties, all revolving around a denial of the possibility of objective truth, and, bound up with this, a rejection of history as a law-governed process where patterns can be observed and changed. In its modern forms and especially in the writings of Rorty, pragmatism is directed explicitly against intervention into social life to change the course of events for the better for most people.

Cornel West’s pragmatic approach to politics and theory entails an eclectic mixture of Black nationalist, racial and identity politics, which he combines with openly religious and irrationalist conceptions.

Joe Biden knowingly and purposely blew up the US southern border in 2021 — don’t believe his blame game now – by Rich Lowry (NYPost)

Opinion by Rich Lowry

President Biden was inaugurated Jan. 20, 2021.

Weeks later, Feb. 2, he issued the executive order that began the unraveling at the border in earnest. 

The border crisis isn’t something that happened to Biden.

It’s not a product of circumstances or understandable policy mistakes made under duress.

No, he sought it and created it, on principle and as a matter of urgency. 

It wasn’t a second-year priority or even a second-quarter-of-the-first-year priority.

The new president set out in his initial days and weeks in office to destroy what President Donald Trump had built, most consequentially in the Feb. 2 executive order. 

By then, mind you, there had already been significant action to loosen up on the border, including on his first day in office. 

The Feb. 2 order emphasized an effort to “enhance lawful pathways for migration to this country” and revoked a slew of Trump rules, executive orders, proclamations and memoranda.

The sense of it was that there’s nothing we can or should do on our own to control illegal immigration; rather, we had to fix deep-seated social, economic and political problems in Central America instead.

It called for getting more refugees into the United States, using parole to let more migrants join family members here, enhancing access to visa programs and reviewing whether the United States is doing enough for migrants fleeing domestic or gang violence, among other things. 

No, he sought it and created it, on principle and as a matter of urgency. 

It wasn’t a second-year priority or even a second-quarter-of-the-first-year priority.

The new president set out in his initial days and weeks in office to destroy what President Donald Trump had built, most consequentially in the Feb. 2 executive order. 

By then, mind you, there had already been significant action to loosen up on the border, including on his first day in office. 

The Feb. 2 order emphasized an effort to “enhance lawful pathways for migration to this country” and revoked a slew of Trump rules, executive orders, proclamations and memoranda.

The sense of it was that there’s nothing we can or should do on our own to control illegal immigration; rather, we had to fix deep-seated social, economic and political problems in Central America instead.

It called for getting more refugees into the United States, using parole to let more migrants join family members here, enhancing access to visa programs and reviewing whether the United States is doing enough for migrants fleeing domestic or gang violence, among other things. 

And it put on the chopping block numerous Trump policies that had helped establish order at the border, from Trump’s expansion of expedited removal, to his termination of a parole program for Central American minors, to his memorandum urging the relevant departments to work toward ending “catch and release.”

Most important, it targeted two of the pillars of Trump’s success at the border: the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as Remain in Mexico, and the safe-third-country agreements with the Northern Triangle countries that allowed us to divert asylum-seekers to Central American countries other than their own to make asylum claims. 

Joe Biden: The most unfit incumbent president up for re-election since FDR

After a few fits and starts thanks to legal challenges, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas indeed ended Remain in Mexico.

Although he’s now attempting to portray himself to sympathetic journalists as an innocent bystander to Biden’s border policy, he killed the policy knowing exactly what he was doing. 

“After carefully considering the arguments, evidence and perspectives presented by those who support re-implementation of MPP, those who support terminating the program and those who have argued for continuing MPP in a modified form, I have determined that MPP should be terminated,” he said in an Oct. 2021 memo.

He acknowledged, by the way, the policy “likely contributed to reduced migratory flows.” 

For his part, Secretary of State Antony Blinken moved expeditiously.

On Feb. 6, 2021, he announced the end of the asylum agreements. 

And just like that, the carefully crafted suite of Trump polices that had given us control of the border were demolished. 

It didn’t require esoteric knowledge of border policy to realize how this would play out.

During the transition, Trump officials warned of a catastrophe if Biden followed through on his promises, and in April 2021, The Washington Post ran a piece headlined “At the border, a widely predicted crisis that caught Biden off guard.”

Now the Feb. 2 memo feels almost like an artifact from another era, as the open-borders orthodoxy begins to show cracks.

The White House sent Biden to visit the border and is considering measures to curtail illegal immigration and calling on sanctuary cities to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while Mayor Eric Adams criticizes aspects of his city’s sanctuary regime. 

The executive order, though, is a stark reminder the current chaos is the product of deliberate policy.

It’s all there in black and white, a prelude to a disaster that has roiled the country and could well play an outsize role in Biden losing the presidency.

Twitter: @RichLowry