The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo Grills Bobby Kennedy Jr. on Presidential Run

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Chris Cuomo heads to Palm Beach, Florida to interview Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Cheryl Hines about RFK Jr.'s surprise bid for the presidency in 2024. They discuss the state of American politics, RFK Jr.'s controversial views, and what Cheryl thinks about potentially becoming First Lady. Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, so this time we're doing something a little different, all right? This is a really cool West Palm Beach living, right? This is where a lot of campaigns have to begin, have to come to keep their momentum going. Everybody can talk about wanting those small donor dollars, but you need big money, okay? And you need people who have big money to believe in what you're about. And this is where we found Bobby Kennedy Jr. tonight. And I want to read you something, okay? And you need people who have big money to believe in what you're about. And this is where we found Bobby Kennedy Jr. tonight. And I want to read you something,

okay? All around us, all around us, not just on the question of reward, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just the question of problems of race, but all around us, and why you're so concerned, why you're so disturbed. The fact is, men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other. It's confidence which has sustained us so much in the past. Rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair, cries which usually tell us that we need to talk with each other until we split our nation, rather than answer those cries, hundreds of communities, millions of citizens are looking for their own answers to force repression and private guns to change reality so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility

of this trust. And again, I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States. I think we can work together. I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States. I think we can work together. I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, curse each other, criticize each other. I think we can do better. And that's why I'm running. Doesn't that sound good? You know who that was?

Robert F. Kennedy, 1968. And it tells you a couple of things. One, what we think is so unusual today is not so unusual. Turmoil has been the order of the day in America since its inception, frankly, since its birth, right? It was birthed out of turmoil. And that the standard in crisis has always been the same. We need leaders in America. We don't go for tough guys. We don't go for harsh strength. That's why what I think is evolving on the political right is a little misplaced. Yeah, we like people who are strong, but sweet and sensitive and see an ability

to make things better. Like this speech did. That's why Bobby Kennedy was getting such traction in the 1968 elections. Now I'm going to be talking to his son. What do these words mean to him? How is he going to convince people, not just that you have to fear the establishment because they're lying to you about vaccines and all these other things, but that he can make things better, that there is a beauty to the cause, that Americans can be together. So let me bring him in right now. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thank you very much. Good to see you. Thank you very much. I was listening to you here raising money,

I was listening to you here raising money and the message is resonating and people are hungry for an option to get them to a better place. First thing I want to talk to you about is you heard what happened last night with Christie. Another bite I was going to show was of Nikki Haley after Ramaswamy attacked her, basically calling her dumb without saying it. They asked her, do you want to respond? And she said, no, it's not worth my time. And I thought it was a really interesting contrast of who's getting attacked and how they deal with it. You, like many people, were too busy just to sit and watch the debate last night. You're trying to get your own campaign going. What do you think the debates you've seen tell us about the state of play on the Republican side? Because obviously no primary on the Democratic side, otherwise you wouldn't be here right now. I think what you said earlier is true, that there's a lot of vitriol and that I don't think

people like the vitriol. But strategically, they must be being told that that's what people want to hear, at least within the Republican Party, because they're all doing it. And I, like what you said, that, you know, we didn't hear any solutions about, except for blowing up people and, you know, having more wars and having us against them, etc. And, you know, I'm out there talking to, there was a poll, Chris, that came out in 2013 that asked young Americans, people under 35 years of age, whether they were proud of the United States of America,

and 85% said yes. The same poll taken last month, 18% say yes. Somehow, in the last 10 years in the administrations of two presidents who are now running for re-election, an entire generation of kids has lost faith in our country and lost hope for their own futures. The only generation in American history that believes that they're going to do worse than their parents. And I'd like to see debates with Republicans and Democrats that address that issue and that tell these kids,

how are we going to get you in houses? You know, the housing prices have gone from $215,000 two years ago to $400,000 today. The interest rates are up at 8%, and we need these kids in houses because when you're in a house, you can borrow money and you can build a business. And if you have an entrepreneurial impulse, you can build on it. And the credit card debt is now 57% of Americans are not making enough, make $5,000 less than

the cost of basic human needs. Why are we talking about that? Because it's hard. That's why. Because it's hard. Because to fix it, I know that to you, you know, to your whole bloodline, they're like, well, that's what you do. Service is about fixing. I get it. But that's hard in politics. And it's much easier to say, Bobby will make it worse. You know, so I'll stop him from doing that. And it's much easier to say, Bobby will make it worse. You know, so I'll stop him from doing that. And that's what we see as the state of play. I want to explain two things to people.

One, they should know by now, but let's explain it anyway. And the second is the process that you're gearing up for. The first is your voice. Explain to people how they should read the fact that your voice isn't what they might expect from you. They've heard you now. They understand what's going on. But just in case, just to be fair. I mean, I apologize for my voice. As you remember, and Chris and I, for those of you who don't know,

are brothers-in-law, or in-laws, and old friends. We've campaigned together across the country, and we have a long, long relationship with each other and a really, you know, a good friendship. But my voice used to be very, very strong until I was, until 1996. And something happened, I got some kind of injury in 1996 that resulted in a condition called spasmodic dystonia. And that makes my voice tremble. And actually, my voice was much worse even two years ago. And right now, you know, I had this very innovative surgery.

Cheryl and I went over to Kyoto to Japan and had this surgery. They only do there. And then I did a lot of kind of alternative therapies. My voice is now getting stronger. But it's terrible for people to listen to. And, you know, I can't listen to myself on TV. I will never hear this program, which is a blessing, I guess. But I cannot listen to it, and I feel sorry for the people who have to listen to it.

No, listen, it takes a second to catch on. But once it's there, people get it. And your ideas are coming through because we're seeing it in the polls. All right. So people are able to understand what you're saying because it's not all written. Now, what is the reality of what it costs to run for president of the United States? I don't mean to win. I mean, to get on the ballots and do the minimum standard required. And do you think you'll be able to do it? President Trump and President Biden are already on, are going to be on the ballot. Assuming that President Trump wins the primary and President Biden wins his, then takes nomination, they will be on the ballots because the parties are already have

a space on the ballot. If you're an outsider like me, you have to get on the ballot. And that means getting about a million signatures and navigating 51 state and the District of Columbia rules that are designed to keep you off the ballot in many states. About 35 states make it easy. It's very straightforward. You get 3,000, 5,000 signatures, and you can get on. But there are some states that deliberately make it very, very difficult to get on.

And you have to have signatures notarized, and you have to get them from every county. And you have to do it in a very, very short period of time. And then there's a lot of battery of lawyers on both sides that are going to look at every signature and try to get me off. So that's why people say it is a heavy lift. But we are going to be able to do it. It's a challenge, but we are going to be on the ballot in every state and the District of Columbia. By the way, on average, there's a whole industry that does this. We have 250,000 volunteers.

We have more volunteers than any other campaign. So we're going to probably be able to do it a little cheaper than other people. And most people rely on paid signature gatherers. And those costs, on average, they bill you in advance $15 a signature. on average, they bill you in advance $15 a signature. So to get a million signatures, the straight-out cost, without lawyers, without lawsuits, et cetera, would be $15 million. The worst state, the worst rules were Utah.

Right. I was going to say, you're in litigation with them right now. We just won the litigation. Oh, it's over? Yes. Thank you for the breaking news. Yeah, breaking news. So I, you know, I think this is kind of the first parapet of the fortress that is of the duopoly, the party duopoly that is crumbling, is that we were able to beat Utah in court. And they acknowledged that their rules are unconstitutional. And we now have, in two weeks, we got enough.

We got all 1,600 signatures in the state. So you'll believe you're going to be on all the ballots. Yeah, we're going to get on all the ballots. All right, well, one process question. And then I want to get into some issues and then we're going to open it up, take some calls. Then we'll bring in Cheryl to bail you out if you haven't been getting it done.

You can bring her in earlier. All right, if you start calling in for the, if you start going Then we'll bring in Cheryl to bail you out if you haven't been getting it done. You can bring her in earlier. All right, if you start calling in for the, if you start going like this to bring in the relief pitcher, we're going to have a problem. All right, so in terms of, it's easy to call somebody a spoiler when you are addicted to the two-party system because that's what we're used to covering.

And that's what the people in the party are saying. Well, if you're not one of, from either team, then you're just a problem. I think people were rejecting that notion now. And I think that's part of what you see in your polls. With all due respect to your personal appeal, I think your existence matters to people. The really only question that matters is if you were to get to a point in the race where you did not think you could win, was not going to go your way, your estimation, and you saw that you were affecting, I don't know which candidate, let's say it is Trump and Biden, I don't know which one you would be affecting more. Would that matter to you in terms of whether you were going to end the campaign?

If you said, well, I don't think I'm going to be able to win, and you see that you're affecting one of them disproportionately, would that matter to you? I don't want to seem like I'm dodging a question, but I really don't know the answer to that question. I, you know, it would depend on a million different circumstances. I suppose there'd be some circumstance where I, you know, that conceivably that, you know, I can make a decision to withdraw from the race, but I can't think of that circumstance at the moment. So, and, you know, as you know, there's a myriad of configurations that can happen.

Right now, I'm taking more votes away from President Trump than from President Biden, according to most of the polls, if you believe the polls. My intention is to spoil the race for both of them. I think I'm going to win the race. And I wouldn't have said that, and I didn't say it

a month ago. But I'm looking at the polls now. I'm looking at the trends. I'm looking at the energy of the crowds that we have. I'm looking at the polls now I'm looking at the trends, I'm looking at the energy of the crowds that we have I'm looking at the declining enthusiasm for the other two candidates and

I have 11 months, I'm in better shape now than any independent candidate's been since Teddy Roosevelt for over 100 years and I'm beating both candidates with young people, which is the bellwether group. So people under, Americans under 45 altogether

are choosing me over President Biden, President Trump. The other big bellwether are independent voters, and I'm beating them decisively with that group too. I'm in a three-way tie right now with Hispanic voters and with many other demographics. And I have greater popularity, favorability than any candidate. I'm at 52 points.

Nobody's even close to that. And I think I'm 25 points over water, whereas both of the candidates. When the poll came out, I wasn't going to report on it until Dusty, my EP, started yelling at me because I couldn't believe

that anybody was found more favorable than Trump because he has a following unlike anything I've ever seen in politics, but you were beating him by one or two points. Let's do this.

Let's take a quick break. We have a lot of new people sampling NewsNation because of the debate last night. Did boffo numbers because people are desperate for choices. So we'll take a break.

When we come back, we'll talk about a couple of the issues that may make Bobby Kennedy Jr. popular with Trump voters. And is that a good or bad thing? And then we're going to get into your questions. Stay with us. Appreciate you being here. Support for The Chris Cuomo Project comes from PrizePix. I got to tell you, there's a reason PrizePix is America's number one fantasy sports app. Three million members. Why? Easy, plenty of action if you're into DFS, and it's just you against the numbers.

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Prize picks. Pick more, pick less. It's that easy. All right, I'm back with Bobby Kennedy Jr. down here in Florida. He is very, very hungry to get the resources he needs to have a campaign that he believes can win. You don't want to just affect the race. You want to determine the outcome of the race for president. And we were just saying off camera, the timing is in your favor. The country is tired of the two parties. They see him as the same part of the problem. And you have a plurality of the country saying that they are neither Democrat nor Republican. Now, you had said, hey, the polls say I'm taking more votes from Trump, though it is suspicious that he doesn't come after you, especially when you're here in his backyard like that. I'm sure he knows you're here. He doesn't come after you. So I wonder if he perceives the threat.

But a criticism of that reality would be, yeah, that's because you feed a lot of his conspiracy folks the kind of food that they like by feeding them about the vaccines. Are you concerned that you have independent voters who are critical thinkers who don't believe in a lot of what is out there about how vaccines are bad and some of it has not been fair to you in terms of what your position is? We talked about this before. But how do you deal with that? That what may want to get some people to like you may hurt you with other people. Let me just say this. I think virtually 99% of the American public, if they understood my position, my real position on vaccines, not what has been talked about on the media, they would agree with me. All I say is we should have good science. We should have good safety studies.

And people should have choice. The government shouldn't be telling you do this or do that with your body. We should have choice. And we should have great science. We should have choice. The government shouldn't be telling you, do this or do that with your body. We should have choice and we should have great science. We should have robust and we should have regulators that are independent of the industry that they're supposed to be regulating. We shouldn't have an FDA where 50% of the budget comes from pharmaceutical companies. Nobody thinks that's a good idea when they hear it. And that's a good idea when they hear it. And that's my problem.

I've never been anti-vax in terms of saying all vaccines are bad. There's some vaccines that are going to be good. Some are going to be bad. You know, you know me for 40 years, Chris. I've been telling, you know, I've been trying to get mercury out of fish. Nobody called me anti-fish, you know. So I want safe vaccines. I want robust science. I want independent regulators and I want choice. And I think most Americans would agree.

But of course, the pharmaceutical industry and some of their allies in the media don't want the public to hear that there are problems in those areas. So they brand me because I'm the messenger, as anti-vax and crazy and conspiracy theory. Now, in terms of President Trump, what I did at the beginning of this race is I said, I am going to try to focus not on these culture war issues and the vitriol that keep us all apart, but I'm going to focus on the values that we all share in common. And one of the things that I really try hard not to do is to not criticize personally either President Trump or President Biden.

And we're going to the lawsuits or the litigation or whether that's fair or that's fair. I just stay away from that. And I try to talk about the issues that they care about. And I think that that, you know, President Trump knows that I'm popular with his constituents, that I'm their second choice. And I don't think it's his advantage to attack me. I'm sure he will at some point. But he also knows that I'm not going after him personally, that I, you know, that I do attack his policies. I do criticize him for his failures,

particularly during COVID. He should not have shut down 3.3 million businesses with no sign of excitation, with no public hearings, with no environmental impact statements, none of the processes of democracy. But what I've tried to do is really focus, identify the values that we have in common. And what I found is there's a huge landscape that is so much bigger than things that Americans agree on.

Everybody wants to protect veterans. Nobody likes that, you know, veterans' wives are now at food kitchens, soup kitchens. Everybody wants us to have the best education system in the country. Everybody wants to end the forever wars. Everybody wants to end the chronic disease epidemic. And now 60% of our kids now have chronic disease. When my uncle was president, it was 6%. Everybody wants to end this corrupt merger of state and corporate power

that have turned our regulatory agencies into predators against the American public and sock puppets for the industries they're supposed to regulate. And there are so many of these issues. Everybody, look, if you want to talk about climate change, and that's the only environmental issue you're going to talk about you're going to have everybody fighting each other if you talk about clean water clean rivers clean air about stopping the destruction the Appalachian mountains about the fact that a hundred percent of our freshwater fish now have dangerous levels of mercury in them that acid rain is destroying the forest cover on the high peaks of the Appalilations from Georgia to northern Quebec. People don't like that.

And there's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. Nobody wants that. Everybody wants our kids in houses. Everybody wants that. And what I'm trying to do is look at solutions and find those issues. I found out that those landscapes are so much larger than the little culture war issues that are being used to keep us apart.

Yeah, look, people are saying it a hundred different ways that they want somebody, they know what's wrong. They want somebody who can find ways to put it right. Dusty says the phones are blowing up. So let's take a break. When we come back, it's going to be all you. All right, 844-968-7720. You want to speak to Bobby Kennedy Jr.? You have a question? Be decent. Dusty's listening. But the question's from you. Next. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70.

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off your first order. CozyEarth.com, and the code is CHRIS. Wow, listen, I literally need to give no introduction to any of that. You all know exactly what you were watching. You know Curb Your Enthusiasm. You know Larry David. You know Cheryl Hines, Emmy nominated, just has become part of the American fabric.

It is great to have. Thank you. Great to be here. And it is very odd. I did not know that Larry bases his character on Bobby. I didn't know that that was true. But it is true that he introduced you to, yes? Yes.

Informally. Yes. It was never meant to be, oh, oh. You know, it was just like, here, you, this is this, this is this. And then years and years later, it turned into this. Yeah, and I actually went and asked Larry for permission to date her because I know he has all these rules that are unwritten, but you're supposed to know about it.

And I know that if I started dating his television wife without getting permission. It would be trouble? Yeah, it would be. But he gave me a big endorsement. But then when he talked to Cheryl about it, he said to me, he said, I'm so happy. He said, she's the best human being I've ever met. She's absolutely beloved in the industry. She's the only person in Hollywood that doesn't have a single enemy.

And I'm happy for you. And then he went to her and he said, it'll never work. That sounds like him. Were you worried that when you were going to run, he's a big Democrat, he's an outspoken critic. Were you worried that it was going to create tension? With him? Yeah. Well, we both are, you know, are very, very close to Larry. And, you know, I talk to him about my candidacy all the time. And, you know, he knows me. He loves me. I think it's difficult for anybody in Hollywood to endorse me, particularly early on.

I think it's getting easier and easier. And I'm pretty confident that at some point I'm going to be able to rope them in. So Marion Kennedy is enough already, right? It comes with a lot of history and a lot of cachet and a lot of people. But now to be in a campaign like this, how do you handle it? I was going to say vodka, but that's not funny. How do you handle it? I was going to say vodka, but that's not funny.

I, you know, you take it one day at a time. And I stay in the moment. Try to really focus on things that need attention and things that I shouldn't give attention to. I have to let go by the wayside, which is not always easy. Right. That is easy to say. It's easy to say. Yeah.

But that's my intention anyway. What was it that you saw in Bobby that made you realize, OK, he wants this enough for the right reason that it's worth what comes with it? Well, for him to even come to me and ask me how I felt about him running for president, was that was like a tidal wave. But also he doesn't come to me and talk to me about something if it's not important. So, you know, I took some time with it and really thought about it and really. Six months. And really, that's some time. I'm sure you were very patient. I knew to be patient.

But, you know, Bobby inspires a lot of people. And to watch that is really beautiful. And so even in the last, you know, three or four years, he has supporters that are Republicans, the Democrats and independents. So I think he's extraordinary in that way that he's, he has all of these people coming together that usually do not come together. So I just feel like he has, he has something that's very, very special. And in terms of dealing, look, you're a celebrity. You know what comes along with it. You know, some people are kind for the wrong reasons and some people are unkind for the wrong reasons.

Yeah. What is this like, this experience for you now in terms of where it could lead? Bobby, theoretically, it's not going to be easy. Nobody has to tell him that. it could lead. Bobby, theoretically, it's not going to be easy. Nobody has to tell him that. He could win. And that would put you in a position that would be a very different one than you've ever been in before. Is it worth thinking about? And I'll think about that when we get to it. Let's just make sure. I think it's good to think about that when we get there. I don't need to spend time thinking about, you know, what the curtains are going to look like.

I'm just going to keep doing what I do. And then, yes, as life presents itself, I will accept it and embrace it. Well, in one way, we've seen this before. I actually grew up in one of these where the candidate is on most boxes that you need to check, not as impressive as the wife. No disrespect, but it was true. It was true with my mother and father. Everybody loves my mother. You know what I mean? But she was always too smart to want to get other people's approval and run in a system that she was like a little sideways. But we see people saying about Governor DeSantis, they're like, wow, if his wife were running, forget it, it'd be a no-brainer. And now you have to figure out how do you help him without just blowing him out of the water

every time that you're in a... Yeah, that's why I don't bring her out too often. I mean, how do you make sure you're not using the fastball the whole time? Well, you know what? We're a good team because he has, you know, I was going to say traits, I guess. There's probably a better word. Virtues.

Okay, let's say virtue. I don't think that's what you meant. That is not at all what I meant. I was going to say, you have something in your personality that I don't have and vice versa. So I think it's good, you know, I'm just like a little, I was going to say side dish, and that sounded weird too. But I don't need to be there all the time to, you know, I'm like the cranberry sauce on the side. You know, it's interesting because you are a master at figuring out how to be someone that you're not. You're an artist when it comes to acting.

You're not someone who just plays themself all the time. And now this is a new way to do it. And everybody in his position and all their family and loved ones, and he knows this from both sides of the ball, has to do the same thing. You have to figure out how to be who you need to be to get where that cause needs you to be. And it is not easy. I don't envy it, but I respect you very much for coming here and being it. And I thank you very much for taking the time to speak to the audience directly. I appreciate you both. Happy Hanukkah, the best for Christmas. It's the first night of Hanukkah to everybody there. I hope you celebrate it, especially in these hard times. Bobby Kennedy, Cheryl Hines, thank you very much to you both. Both.

Now, is this how it always is? No. Why? Because this is a good example of a delicate line that I have to walk, which is someone who has a lot of personal contact with a lot of the people I wind up covering. And sometimes it's for better and sometimes it's for worse. So Bobby said he was my brother-in-law. No, he's my brother's brother-in-law. My brother was married to Bobby's sister for many years. They have three amazing daughters together. His sister, Carrie, is a great woman. They had a long marriage, not married anymore. So I grew up, Andrew's much older than I

am, around Bobby. Played football with him, watched him, watched him at the Riverkeeper, watched him go through life's ups and downs. And then, of course, now, I don't have anything to do with this campaign. I was shocked to hear that he was running. But I have to tell you something. I believe that things are changing in our political culture. And I have to tell you something. I believe that things are changing in our political culture. And I have to tell you, for a lot of people, that's a throwaway statement. Things are always changing. No, they're not. They're usually getting more frozen in place in this two-party system, right?

It's been a downward trend. It's always been this way. It's always been combative, right? This is not new. America in turmoil is not new. We were born of turmoil. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you're fighting

and why you're fighting and what happens as a result, okay? So what we're doing now is we're just fighting the fight, right? What you're doing right now is just having a battle to the bottom. You're having this binary, zero-sum poison politics. The other guy's worse. Vote for me. I mean, where else do you do that in your life?

I'm going to hire this person to paint my house because the other guy sucks even worse. Nobody does that. But that's where we're stuck. So I believe in choice. And I believe that you're hungry for choice. And I think we see that in people wanting insurgents in politics, seeing establishment as a bad thing. I'd be careful with that. Why? Because you need your institutions to run and you need people who know how to run them. They don't have to necessarily be deep state. Right. Civil servants are servants. They do good work for not a lot of money and they often do it for the right reasons. Right. work for not a lot of money, and they often do it for the right reasons, right? It's too easy to just throw out all of it, to say all of it sucks. They're all bad. Drain the whole swamp. You have that work out for Trump.

He wound up having more members of his administration get kicked out for missing malfeasance than anything we'd ever seen before. Anything we'd ever seen before. That's draining the swamp, adding more alligators. See what I'm saying? Easy to say, hard to do. Why? Because it's not as simple as getting rid of all of it. See what I'm saying? Easy to say, hard to do. Why? Because it's not as simple as getting rid of all of it. Rama Swami, get rid of 75%.

So what does it mean with Bobby Kennedy Jr.? More of you than say you are Republican or Democrat say that you are neither. That's where he comes in. Look, he wanted to run as a Democrat. The guy's a Democrat, okay? What it means to be a Democrat is changing, by the way. My father, I saw someone sending a podcast of how Mario M. Cuomo, the last liberal,

yeah, that's dramatic, you know? I don't know that that is a true statement. I know my father would not have liked being called a liberal. He referred to himself as a progressive pragmatist. What does that mean? That you have a set of principles and philosophy and you go case by case about what's needed. OK, more money for this, less money for that, you know, whatever it is that you go case by case based on principles that you just don't have a set where you always spend more or where you always cut this. You know

what I mean? Like we have to go case by case like we do everywhere else in life. However, my point is the Democratic Party that he was part of is nothing like the one today. The people that he fought for that, you know, the the the middle class families, the working class families, those who were paycheck to paycheck, as Bobby said today, pretty eloquently, that can't put their hands on a thousand dollars if their life depended on it. Those were my father's people. That's what he thought government was about, was helping them. All the government you need, only the government you need. Helping people do what they cannot do for themselves. Now there are Republicans, those people. Why? You have a two-party system. It's going to shift. They only have two places to go.

That's why I'm here in Florida. You have made it very clear that if you're going to watch News Nation, it's because you're a critical thinker and you don't want the same old, same old. So I went from Alabama to Florida to interview him because this is where he was. And I had said the last time I interviewed him, I'd give him a chance to take calls. You got to do that in person. So I'm here.

Does he win? Of course the odds are against him. But I'll tell you what. Ordinarily, I would say, and that's it. That's the end of the analysis. I don't know about that anymore. Why? I've never

seen where not just the incumbent is not polling well, but his main challenge isn't polling well. And that almost two out of three of you, maybe a little more of you, don't want either of them. That's new territory for us, okay? A guy being in a party as a prohibitive favor without even participating in the process? I've never seen that before. You know what I'm saying? So we have a lot of I've-nevers. So why count them out? Oh, he's just going to be a spoiler and ruin it for Biden and give us Trump.

I don't know that there's proof of that right now, and I don't know that that's a good argument. Oh, but Trump is an existential threat. Look, the bad guy's always an existential threat. I've heard it in every election. If we don't win this one, everything will be over. Enough. Enough with the brinkmanship. Enough with the existential talk. We have problems in this country that demand different, that demand someone who is obsessed with better, not just who's bad. And I don't mean that because it sounds like a slogan for a bumper sticker. And you look at what's happening on the campuses,

it doesn't make sense anymore. You want to protect the minority, you start censoring voices because you're so worried about protecting minorities. Okay, I get it, I get the rationale. Do I agree with it? No, you know me. I'm about more debate Do I agree with it? No. You know me. I'm about more debate, not less. I'm about a marketplace of ideas. I don't believe that you

smother a bad idea. I think that you actually empower it when you do that. I think expose it, let it be argued, and show that you have such better ideas than this. That's how you deal with it. So censorship is never my thing. And I was always worried about that on campus because I saw it as censorship. But you tell me how we can be in a situation where for university presidents to be before Congress, when they knew what they were going to get asked, OK, by a representative who you knew was playing a gotcha game. You change the word Jewish with black or trans and then ask them the same question. And you think they would say, well, it's a matter of context. If people are saying they're trans people, you have to go. You know, it would depend.

Did you say it to them directly? Was there a reasonable outcome of violence? They wouldn't be asking any of those questions. We know this. We know this. You look at examples where they say you have to use the right pronouns. Otherwise, it's tantamount to abuse. So there, there's no context, right?

Well, you did it, and it's bad. There it is, absolute liability. But with Jewish people, now we ask a couple more questions. Really? And now we start to see it with what happened on October 7th? Well, rape, in quotes. Oh, now it's rape in quotes. Women say they were raped. Forensicists say they were raped. But now you want to see how the facts fall before you take a position as a woman's rights

group. Where did that come from? You see what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense anymore. It doesn't make sense. The rationales don't make sense. And that is a good indicator that things need to be changed. And how do you change? Well, you know the old cliche, right? Nothing changes if what? Nothing changes. So you got more people than ever say that they're independent, okay? You got more people than ever say that they don't like the two choices. You got more people than ever that they say they don't like the two parties. Well, then why would I say Bobby Kennedy Jr. doesn't deserve a platform? And the idea of, well, you're only doing it because you know him and like him,

that's bullshit. It's just demonstrably bullshit. I have Vivek Ramaswamy on. He calls me like a lying member of the deep state or whatever he called me. I have Christie on. I have all these people on. Why? You deserve choice. I promise you,

you will have to be a great poker player to know who I really like and who I really don't like when I'm interviewing. Because it's not about me. It's about presenting you with an opportunity to see somebody at their best and decide if they're going to make things better or worse. That's the job. And Bobby Kennedy has a lot to say. The voice is going to be a little bit of an issue. I think people are going to get past it. I think the polls reflect that they are. But it definitely is something he's going to have to deal with as a challenge. And that's on him. But the vaccine stuff, the Epstein stuff is bullshit. He didn't know anything about

what Epstein was about. There's no proof otherwise. I'm not wasting time with that kind of discussion. You give me proof, then I'll start asking questions. OK, you don't you don't you know, it's like finding the crime in search of proof. It's not how it works. You give me proof, then I'll start asking questions, okay? You don't, you know, it's like finding the crime in search of proof. It's not how it works. You give me the proof, I'll start asking the questions. However, you got to take him seriously because you're saying take him serious in the polls. So I hope you were able to get something out of this. You don't like Bobby?

Good for you. You think he's the guy? Good for you. It's your choice. Appreciate you giving it a watch. I hope you learned something. Let me know. Let's get after it.