Watch RFK Jr "debate" alongside CNN tomorrow night, on Twitter. And my good friend Madhava Setty wrote a satire about RFK I wanted to include, too

https://www.therealdebate.com/

The show starts at 9 pm Eastern time, 6 pm Pacific time. RFK will be answering the same questions that Presidents Biden and Trump are being asked.

• You have a right to hear the opinions they don't want you to hear. You pay for their salaries and their mistakes and their wars.

• You are an American voter in the land of the free.

• The Real Debate will present all the choices. It will bring in the ideas they're trying to keep away from you. You may not agree with all of those ideas. The point is that you will be able to hear them and decide for yourself.

And now for the satire:

CNN and Corporate Interests repel an anti-American Insurgency this week

Lifelong environmental attorney-turned-vaccine/medicine safety advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has posed a serious threat to Democracy in this country since he announced his candidacy for POTUS back in April of 2023. Working through the Uniparty national committees, the pharmaceutical, agricultural and military industrial complexes, institutions which have kept hard-working Americans healthy, well-fed and safe, have once again successfully silenced the shaky but radical voice which has called for seductive measures like campaign reform, vaccine safety, health freedom and, worst of all, open debate.

Kennedy falsely claims that open debate is ultimately necessary to protect so-called “freedom of expression”, a right all individuals are guaranteed under an obscure, two centuries old document called the “Constitution”. This claim has been widely debunked. Nevertheless, a small but growing minority of the voting public has fallen for the wily lawyer’s clever arguments.

Kennedy, a one-time Democrat, first attempted to undermine the political process by insisting that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) should arrange for public debates so that members of that wing of the Uniparty system could choose their candidate in another now defunct process called “a primary”. He insisted that candidates for POTUS should be elected and not selected. Despite this embarrassing display of naïveté, his supporters remained faithful to such ideologies.

Next, in order to circumvent the selection process, Kennedy left the Democratic Party in October, 2023 to run as an Independent candidate. President Biden soundly beat Kennedy in every state-wide Democratic primary. In lieu of the political thrashing, Kennedy’s supporters desperately rationalized that Biden’s victories were due to the fact that Kennedy’s name was not on the ballot. While this may have played some role in Kennedy’s poor showing, the margin of Biden’s victory is an indication that the sitting President is the clear favorite among the people—who voted for him.

Unable to secure any corporate sponsorship of his candidacy, Kennedy has been forced to devote a significant portion of his campaign funding to pay for his own security detail. This should have ended his political aspirations. President Biden and his Department of Homeland Security have been able to diffuse Kennedy’s demand for Secret Service protection under 18 U.S.C. 3056(a)(7), which states:

"[m]ajor Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates," as identified by the Secretary of Homeland Security, are eligible for Secret Service protection.

This statute was enacted in 1968 after a Democrat Senator from New York was murdered in cold-blood soon after winning the California primary. Coincidentally, the victim of the assassination shares the same name and an uncanny resemblance to the 68 year old Kennedy.

However such meaningless coincidences should not have any bearing on how this law is to be properly enforced. The law is universally interpreted as follows:

“…the term “major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates” means those individuals identified as such by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee consisting of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.”

None of the unbiased leaders of the two wings of the Uniparty named above consider Kennedy a “major” Presidential candidate. Therefore his appeal for federal funding is not only unwarranted, it hints at the kind of extravagant spending a future Kennedy administration would have.

Predictably, Kennedy and his rabid supporters paint Biden’s unwillingness to use taxpayer money to protect Kennedy’s life from a would-be assassin as a sick political ploy.

The First Presidential Debate of 2024

This week CNN will host the first Presidential debate between President Joseph Biden and President Donald Trump, the only two major candidates in the upcoming election.

CNN has openly set the requirements for a candidate to be invited to their debate stage. While acknowledging that Kennedy meets the requirements outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution to serve as President, he has not met the requirements of being on enough state ballots to potentially secure 270 electoral votes.

The Kennedy campaign claims that they have submitted enough signatures to appear on enough ballots, but not all of the states have certified the signatures as of the June 20th deadline. Posturing dishonorably, Kennedy now blames state legislature delays for his campaign’s inability to be prompt. He believes that a democratic process should not be undermined by what is a minor technicality in his mind. Ironically, Kennedy cites an even smaller technicality: neither Presidents Biden nor Trump are on enough state ballots either. Inexplicably, Kennedy believes that the rules are to be applied to every candidate, not just him.

Yes, Mr. Kennedy, they aren’t on any of the state ballots. Why should they be? The Party has not held either of their two national conventions where the presumptive candidates are officially anointed.

In any case, without arbitrary restrictions that are enforced inconsistently, how can we as a nation ever protect justice and the rule of law? Though such measures may seem incongruent with the American way, these are the sacrifices we as a society must be willing to make to ensure that the voting public will not be swayed by new and transformative ideas, something that history has proven to be destabilizing to governmental institutions.

Though a crisis in meaning has been averted this week, Kennedy will very likely meet the requirements to participate in the Democratic process moving forward. Our country is at a critical juncture. We as Americans must ask ourselves how precious freedom is to us. Are we courageous enough as a people to sacrifice it now so that future generations will be spared the burden of having to protect and defend it at every turn? I hope so—for the sake of our children.