Kennedy, who is running for president in opposition to President Biden, invited through Republicans to testify at a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the militarization of the federal government. But after Kennedy’s opening remarks, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. , proposed holding the hearing in an executive consultation to talk about Kennedy’s alleged violation of a House rule prohibiting testimony that defames or degrades others.
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Wasserman Schultz said the witness had made “despicable” anti-Semitic and anti-Asian comments in recent days, referring to his comment that COVID might have been “ethnically targeted” because those most immune to COVID appear to be Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. Kennedy later said he did not accuse anyone of intentionally engineering COVID to save certain ethnic populations.
Wasserman Schultz’s resolution to skip the hearing and move to executive consultation was defeated 10-8 due to the Republican majority on the committee. Some Democrats made “no to hate speech” comments as they voted against GOP pressure to eliminate Wasserman Schultz’s motion.
Democrats also sought to restrain Kennedy’s comments early on by noting that Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee, planned to give him 10 minutes to speak. Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate from the Virgin Islands, asked why she has 10 minutes when witnesses regularly have five minutes.
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Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. , attempted to prevent Robert Kennedy, Jr. from hearing as a witness. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
When Jordan said the committee should be current and former lawmakers talking longer, Plaskett said, “He’s none. “
Jordan agreed to give him five minutes on the clock and told Plaskett, “If you need to interrupt and censor you some more, welcome. “
“Oh, that’s not my job,” Plaskett said. It’s their job. Why don’t you threaten the witness so that he doesn’t need to be a witness?”
Kennedy used his opening remarks to lament Democrats’ efforts to censor his speech and broader efforts to censor his race for the White House. He said his speech in which he delivered his candidacy was censored within five minutes of his speech via YouTube.
“Censorship is contrary to our party,” he said. It’s terrible for my father, for my uncle, for FDR, for Harry Truman, for Thomas Jefferson, as the president mentioned. This is the basis of democracy. “
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is running President Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn/Fox News Digital)
“The First Amendment is not written for simple speech,” he added. “It’s written for the speech that nobody likes for. “
Kennedy noted recent emails showing that the Biden administration tried to censor his comments on vaccines, 3 days into that administration.
“They had to invent a new word called ‘bad data’ to censor other people like me,” he said.
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“My uncle Edward Kennedy has more laws named after him than any other senator in American history,” he said. “Why is this? Because he was able to succeed on the other side of the aisle, because he didn’t deal with insults, because he didn’t seek to censor people. “
Pete Kasperowicz is political editor of Fox News Digital.