NewsNation's 90-minute town hall broadcast live from Chicago Wednesday with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was an intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving event.
The issues at hand were much larger and more significant, as the hour and a half provided Kennedy with time to expand on the points that he's made in his half-dozen live interviews on FOX News since he declared for president two months ago.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not pledge to support his party's nominee, stood by his claims about vaccines and announced that "I want my party back" in his first national town hall presented by NewsNation on Wednesday.
"I'm running because I feel like my party has lost its way," Kennedy told NewsNation's Elizabeth Vargas.
Kennedy - an environmental lawyer and nephew of President John F. Kennedy - has positioned himself as a populist set on returning to the "Exact values that would have been promoted by my father and uncle." Despite never holding elective office, Kennedy's campaign has generated attention within the party.
Still, Biden is well ahead at 62%. In order to win the nomination, Kennedy will have to do something no primary challenger has done in modern U.S. history - unseat an incumbent president for their party's nomination.
Vargas asked Kennedy what he thought of Donald Trump after the former president praised him as a "Common sense guy" in a recent interview.
Kennedy said he'll wait to see if the person who emerges from his party is "Living up to Democratic values." Those values, as he described them, include fighting for the middle class, protecting civil liberties and embracing debate.
Kennedy: I'm running because I feel like my party has lost its way - that the values, my uncle represented, my father represented when they were Democrats have been neglected, let's say.
From the Wikipedia entry about that speech: William Crawford, a member of the Black Radical Action Project who had stood about 20 feet from Kennedy, credited Kennedy's speech for not resulting in riots.
Crawford claimed to the Indianapolis Star in 2015 "Look at all those other cities" and "I believe it would have gone that way had not Bobby Kennedy given those remarks." And last night, as I heard a genuine echo of the energy, the hope, and the optimism of America a half-century ago, these were the closing comments by RFK Jr. at the end of the NewsNation town hall: Our country is going to start healing when the government tells the truth.
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