On Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said again that he thinks President Biden is the biggest threat to democracy, noting the administration’s alleged efforts to censor political speech online.
“President Biden has done something that no other president in history has done, which is to order media, particularly social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google, to censor his political opponents,” the candidate for president told “Fox & Friends.”
“If you have a president who can censor his political opponents, he is the license for any kind of atrocity; that is a genuine threat to our democracy,” he said. “What Trump said about… questioning the election and… to the extent that he engaged… in an effort to overthrow that, of course, that’s a threat to democracy, but it is not the worst threat undermining the First Amendment of our Constitution and then weaponizing the federal agencies to get his opponents off the ballot.”
Kennedy said in a previous interview on CNN’s “Out Front” on Monday that Biden is a “much worse” threat to democracy than Trump because Trump has been “weaponizing” government agencies to silence political opponents.
“I can make the argument that President Biden is much worse,” he said. “And the reason for that is that President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech or censor his opponent.”
“The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns but a President of the United States who will use the power of his office to force the social media companies Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, CIA, the IRS, and the NIH to censor his political critics,” he said.
Kennedy’s words came after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that claimed top Biden officials worked together with Big Tech to block political speech on social media sites.
The Supreme Court took up Murthy v. Missouri last month. The case started with a lawsuit from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. They said that top government officials were working together with big social media companies to spread false information.
The lawsuit claimed that this cooperation eventually silenced speech about Hunter Biden’s laptop, the origins of COVID-19, and the effectiveness of face masks.
“All of this, the use of the courts, the use of prosecutors, the use of all these federal agencies to change our political landscape—it just is wrong, and we should be debating about it,” Kennedy said. “He forced… he told the social media companies… we’re going to bring an antitrust case against you, and we’re going to withdraw your Section 230 immunity, which is existential for those companies, if you don’t give us a portal to censor.”
“So who did he then let use that portal?” “The CIA, the FBI, CISA, the IRS, and the NIH—all of these federal agencies could now silence people who were speaking out against their policies, which is really cocky and against democracy,” he said.
During the day, the Masquerade club in Istanbul remained closed for repairs. It was in the basement of a tall building.
The fire started just after noon, according to Davut Gül, the governor of Istanbul. He also said that it wasn’t clear what caused it.
Based on what Mr. Gül said, the people who died in the fire were likely working on the renovations.
Eight people currently have arrest warrants issued for them in connection with the fire. These include the nightclub boss and the person in charge of the renovations.
They have arrested three of them, and arrest warrants are still out for the others.
Around the smoking and charred entrance to the club, which is two floors below a 16-story apartment building in the city’s Gayrettepe area.
The governor’s office has been sending out a lot of reports about how the number of victims has been rising quickly all afternoon.
Recently re-elected Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu stated that the club had not applied for the correct building permit.
“There is no application [to the local municipality] for a renovation or a construction regarding the place, and as it was two floors down from the ground level, it [the work] wasn’t visible,” said the man.
He also sent his respects to the victims on social media.
He said in a post on X, which used to be on Twitter, “May God have mercy on our citizens who died, and I wish a speedy recovery to our injured.”
Erdogan, who is president of Turkey, knows about the tragedy after talking on the phone with Yerlikaya, who is interior minister.
