Robert F. Kennedy doubles down on claims Biden is a threat to democracy, with the claims administration bullying social media companies into censorship with an ‘existential threat’ to their survival

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy expressed concerns Tuesday that President Joe Biden posed a threat to democracy and the First Amendment over his administration’s efforts to censor social media.

In a interview with NewsNation’s CUOMO (weeknights, 8 p.m. ET), Kennedy cited his own lawsuit against the Biden administration, arguing that the president unlawfully violated the First Amendment by collaborating with Meta, Google and Twitter to publish social media posts censor media. A similar lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana.

“What these cases show is that 37 hours after he took the oath of office, senior White House officials met with the social media companies YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram and Twitter and ordered them to censor President Biden’s political opponents.” , Kennedy said. to host Chris Cuomo.

Kennedy argued that the Biden administration had unfairly weaponized the federal government’s powers to force private companies to censor their speech.

Kennedy accused President Joe Biden of threatening the First Amendment and democracy by trying to censor social media

“The influence that the White House had, it was said, if you don’t do that, we’re going to file a trust lawsuit against you and we’re going to revoke your Section 230 immunity,” he said, calling the administration’s actions a “crime ‘. ‘existential threat’ to social media companies.

He said government agencies demanded censorship of select posts from him and other users about public health and the Covid-19 vaccine, as well as posts criticizing Biden’s Ukraine policies and even a parody video of First Lady Jill Biden. blasphemous children while you read them.

“It was an existential threat and the social media companies went ahead and censored us,” he said.

In February the Kennedy case won a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration prohibits them from taking action to “compel or significantly encourage social media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or diminish posted social media content that contains protected freedom of expression, including by modifying their algorithms modify.’

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy warned that it was a bad precedent for the Biden administration to have access to social media companies for the purpose of censoring political opponents.

“Once you set that precedent, the next president, whoever he is, even President Trump, now has that power at his fingertips, and he can now use it to censor political opponents,” he warned.

The Supreme Court took up the case brought by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, but denied Kennedy’s request to join the case.

Despite signs of early success for the cases, a majority of Supreme Court justices were skeptical on the freedom of expression arguments put forward by the states of Louisiana and Missouri and individual plaintiffs during the court hearings.

During his interview with Cuomo, Kennedy complained that CNN’s digital media and other media outlets had unfairly cut off his quote when he indicated that Biden could be considered a greater danger to democracy than former President Donald Trump because “it made me look crazy for liberals. .’

“What I said was that I can make this argument, but I didn’t say definitively whether I believed one or the other was more dangerous to democracy,” he said.

He said he did not believe Biden or Trump could actually destroy democracy.

Kennedy’s full quote, as reported by DailyMail.com, was:

“I can make the argument that President Biden is the far worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is that President Biden is the first candidate in history — the first president in history to use federal agencies to suppress political speech.” censor, so as to censor his opponent,” he said.

Kennedy added that while both Biden and Trump did things to threaten democracy, he did not believe they would actually destroy it.

“I didn’t say definitively whether I believed one or the other was more dangerous to democracy. “I did say I don’t believe either will destroy democracy,” he said.