Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said three issues inspired him to run for president: ending the Russia-Ukraine war, healing chronic disease, and stopping censorship. The latter issue, he said, helped sink his campaign. 

“Governments and oppressors don’t censor lies. They don’t fear lies,” Kennedy said. “They fear the truth, and that’s what they censor.”

Kennedy spoke Friday, suspending his campaign and endorsing former President Donald Trump’s reelection. He said while his poll numbers reached more than 20 percent in some cases, the Democrat machine was determined to keep the people from electing him.

The Democrat Party manufactured a narrative of support for President Joe Biden, according to Kennedy. He said when Biden inevitably could no longer run due to his age, the party conducted a “palace coup,” bypassing the primaries to install Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee.

“In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it,” Kennedy said. “Lacking confidence that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.”

He said his father Bobby Kennedy and uncle John F. Kennedy – both Democrats during their lifetimes – would not recognize today’s Democratic Party. 

Kennedy said these efforts to bypass democracy, Democrats’ continual buzzword, went deeper. 

He detailed the deep, institutionalized censorship complex between leftist media and federal agencies, calling it a “naked exercise of executive power.”

“President Biden and his White House opened up a portal, and then invited the CIA, the FBI, CISA – which is a censorship agency, the center of the censorship industrial complex – DHS, IRS, and other agencies, to censor me and other political dissidents on social media,” Kennedy said.

CISA is working with private groups to target “misinformation” ahead of November’s election, The Federalist reported.

Corporate media supported suppression efforts against Kennedy, he said, denying him fair coverage.

“Networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile pejoratives and defamatory smears,” Kennedy said. “The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles, and it’s joined this systemic attack on democracy. The media justifies their censorship on the grounds of combating ‘misinformation.’”

Kennedy directly addressed corporate reporters covering the speech.

“Consider the many ways that your institutions have abdicated this really sacred responsibility, duty of a free press, to safeguard democracy,” Kennedy said. “Instead of maintaining that posture of fierce skepticism toward authority, your institutions have made themselves government mouthpieces, and stenographers for the organs of power. You didn’t alone cause the demolition of American democracy, but you could have prevented it.”

Kennedy said his concerns were not a “personal complaint,” but an attempt to “assess where we are in this country, and what our democracy still looks like.”

“Are we really still a role model for democracy in this country,” Kennedy asked, “or have we made it a joke?”

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo's editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.