Club Random with Bill Maher - Listen Now: RFK Jr. | The Sage Steele Show

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Sage Steele and RFK JR. on his true stance on reproductive rights, why he hasn’t been given a Secret Service detail, his plan for the border, the morality of the current war, controlling A.I., the moment Bobby realized he was a Kennedy, how his life changed when he was fourteen, what makes an addict, his life changing arrest, his quest for love, the epidemic of children with chronic disease, and much much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be honest, and I was annoyed, upset with your family recently when in Philadelphia. It's one thing to vote for a different candidate. It's another thing for the, what, 15 people in the Kennedy family to stand on a stage at a rally for Joe Biden when they know that- It was six. to stand on a stage at a rally for Joe Biden when they know that— —it was six. —six. It was only six. —up.

—Okay. For a huge portion, big names, people that mean something in your life from day one, to stand on that stage publicly and endorse Joe Biden instead of you. And even if they were going to vote for Joe Biden to go to those lengths to support him, you've said, okay, I love my family, we all have different politics, we all have different opinions. I believe you. Was there not a part of you that thought, what the heck? Why? Why as my family members go to that level to say, no, I am against my brother,

my cousin, etc. and with this man. That annoyed me as a human. Yeah. It wasn't a pleasant experience for me, but here's how I look at it, which is, first of all, we were, when my family was raised in Millieu, where we argue with each other, we differ on political issues, we were raised, we debated every night at the dinner table,

my father orchestrated debates, and we were taught to disagree with each other with passion, with good information, and, but at the same time, to love each other. So, and, you know, I understand why people in my family are dismayed about me running. There's five members of my family that have jobs with the administration or rely on them for their work.

President Biden has, you know, is a long-term friend of me and my family. He has a statue of my uncle, of my father behind him in the Oval Office. So, you know, I see why, and they, you know, my family's tied in with the DNC. They don't like what I'm doing. But, you know, from, you asked a more personal question

about how I internalize that. And what I believe is that any hardship that I encounter, I have to look at as a gift. Oh, I need to process everything as not as something that's meant to happen and that I'm meant to learn from it. And that I need to be grateful for it.

And everything is teaching me something and it's there to teach me something. So I don't spend any of my life in living in resentments. If you are resentful about somebody, it's like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. It's corrosive. And I am very disciplined about never going there. Isn't there a difference between resentment and hurt?

Yeah, but again, my way of processing the experience of life is to say, these things ultimately are gifts for me. And every person in my life who I've admired historically, Charles Darwin to Alexander the Great, to Lewis and Clark, to Richard Speaks, and any great St. Francis, St. Augustine. They all went through periods in their lives where they were disparaged by friends, by family,

rejected by their communities. Winston Church, all another great example. And if you want to do something worthwhile in your life, that you have to expect that that's what you're going to go through. And the reason that people, not more people are doing what I'm doing is because if it were easy, they'd do it.

It's difficult and that's part of the difficulty. But my, you know, I'm very disciplined about not carrying that stuff around. That, I think that's the right word, discipline. Either as hurt or as anger. And I, you know, if there's a microsecond in my head that says, oh, that's hurtful, I have now developed the ability to immediately change it

and say that means it's good. You know, if somebody, listen, God is talking to you through every encounter that you have. Everybody that you meet is a messenger. And if somebody throws you the finger on a highway, you have to think to yourself, that's God, what does he want me to learn from this experience?

What does he want me to do with this interaction? Does he want me to be kind? Does he want me to pray for that person? So are you praying for your family? Are you like, have you had, I mean, I don't mean that literally, but as they are doing something that might be hurtful for a split second and then okay. Absolutely.

And have you had conversations with them since? Yes, I have. I mean, one of the things is that they've, several of them have said that, you know, they've sent me notes saying, we made sure not to criticize you. of them have said that, you know, they're when they were, they, you know, they've sent me notes saying, we made sure not to criticize you. They, in our earlier iterations, some of them said a couple of things about me.

At this time they said, and I told them I had a dinner with my cousin Maria's driver and one of my brothers, who was there, Max, the other day. And I said, look, I really don't mind you guys doing this with endorsing Biden, but I don't want you to be saying, and I don't think it makes you look good, to be saying bad things about me, and it's hurtful to my children,

and I think the whole family. So I think they made an effort not to do that. And they all, they, several of them said to me that they had used those moments with President Biden to ask him to provide me secret service protection. And, you know, so I'm happy with that. I think that that maybe he'll reconsider his decision. The fact that it's even a decision.