Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming the media for warping his view of Donald Trump, who he is compared unfavorably to Hitler in one respect in shocking newly unearthed audio recordings.
The comments came in 2016, when RFK, Jr. described Trump as a grave threat, and around the time when Vice President-elect J.D. Vance called Trump ‘America’s Hitler,’ in a comment he has since retracted.
‘Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump. I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements,’ RFK, Jr. said in response to the release of the recordings.
The comments that drew the combative statement of regret came in audio recordings from RFK’s radio show that were unearthed by CNN.
The Hitler comparison came when RFK, Jr. called Trump ‘non compus mentis’ and said one difference was that ‘Hitler was interested in policy.’
In one comment, he said that ‘every statement that Donald Trump makes is fear-based.’ He said Trump, who has been hosting him at Mar-a-Lago since the election and who says he’ll nominate him to be secretary of Health and Human Services, encouraged fear of Muslims as well as ‘Black people, and particularly the big Black guy Obama, who’s destroying this country, who’s making everybody miserable.’
Trump’s succesful run for the White House began with falsely questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship.
Vaccine skeptic RFK, Jr. read a long passage by journalist Matt Taibbi that eviscerated Trump approvingly.
Under the influence: ”Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump,’ RFK, Jr. said when confronted with 2016 statements comparing Donald Trump to Hitler
‘One of the things that you write so beautifully – and your stuff is so fun to read – but you write about Trump, quote, “The way that you build a truly vicious nationalist movement is to wed a relatively small core of belligerent idiots to a much larger group of opportunists and spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to things,”‘ Kennedy said.
Continuing to quote the author, he said: ‘We may not have that many outright Nazis in America, but we have plenty of cowards and bootlickers, and once those fleshy dominoes start tumbling into the Trump camp, the game is up.’
Trump embraced RFK., Jr., who first ran as a Democrat and then as an independent and then endorsed Trump. The vaccine skeptic is Trump’s choice to run HHS
RFK, Jr. blamed the mainstream media in a statement to CNN
Then Kennedy added his own Hitler comparison – years before Trump’s allies reacted with fury when former White House Chief of Staff James Mattis called Trump ‘fascist to the core’ and Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign picked up the comments.
‘And, you know, he’s not like Hitler,’ Kennedy, Jr. added. ‘Hitler had like a plan, you know? Hitler was interested in policy. I don’t think Trump has any of that. He’s like non compos mentis. He’ll get in there and who knows what will happen.’
If the Hitler comparison wasn’t enough, RFK, Jr. also compared him to ‘historical demagogues who rose during times of crisis’ like Benito Mussolini.