FactChecking RFK Jr.’s Rival Debate
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Summary
Excluded from the CNN presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on June 27, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. livestreamed a parallel debate on social media, answering the same questions put to the major party candidates.
In our fact check of the CNN debate, we described a “relentless barrage of false and misleading statements” from the two candidates, and in Kennedy’s addition — what he called the “real debate” — he added a few of his own distortions and falsehoods.
- Kennedy made a few unsupported and inaccurate claims about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motives for the invasion.
- He falsely claimed that Trump “spent more money in office than every president in the United States history combined.” Federal outlays during Trump’s presidency didn’t come close the $79 trillion the government spent before he took office.
- Kennedy incorrectly claimed Trump and Biden “shut down every business in our country” during the COVID-19 pandemic, falsely adding that the businesses were forced to close for “no scientific reason.”
- He also blamed Trump and Biden’s pandemic policies for transferring wealth to billionaires, but misleadingly used global statistics.
- Kennedy misleadingly claimed that “Russians are in Cuba firing missiles” as a warning to the U.S. about its resolve to win the war with Ukraine. Russian warships on the way to an annual trip to Cuba conducted simulated missile drills in the Atlantic but did not fire live missiles from Cuba.
- Kennedy proposed taxing marijuana to fund free “rehabilitation farms” to treat “depression … alcoholism, drug addiction to illegal drugs, but also addiction to SSRI’s,
