RFK Jr. made false claims in campaign against censorship
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused President Joe Biden of being a greater “threat to democracy” than former President Donald Trump, arguing that Biden censored him.
“President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech or to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said in an April 1 interview on CNN.
Kennedy, who is running as an independent, referred to his lawsuit against the federal government in which he alleges the government censored his social media statements against vaccines.
Biden, Kennedy said on CNN, “started censoring — not just me — but 37 hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me. No president in the country has ever done that.”
Kennedy then pivoted to a lawsuit two Republican-led states filed to challenge the federal government’s communications with social media companies. “The greatest threat to democracy is not somebody who questions election returns, but a president of the United States who uses the power of his office to force the social media companies … to censor his political critics,” he said.
There are a few problems with Kennedy’s statement.
First, he wasn’t Biden’s political opponent in January 2021, when a Biden administration official noticed Kennedy posting an anti-vaccine conspiracy theory and contacted Twitter. Kennedy didn’t declare his presidential run until April 2023.
Second, history shows there have been other U.S. presidents who have taken far more extreme measures to silence political dissent.
Third, the court cases that Kennedy alluded to remain pending; Kennedy can continue to freely make statements about vaccines. Experts told PolitiFact that the Biden administration’s efforts to get social media platforms to moderate false posts is not the same as censoring opponents.
We emailed the Kennedy campaign press team and received a response that our request for comment was under consideration.
Biden White House sought removal of COVID-19 misinformation
Kennedy wrote Jan. 22, 2021, on Twitter, that U.S. Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron died as “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly” following his COVID-19 vaccine. Aaron, 86, died from unrelated natural causes, a medical examiner found.
A Biden White House official emailed Twitter on Jan. 23, 2021, and said, “Wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.”
At the time, social media companies, including Twitter, had developed policies to handle false or misleading claims about COVID-19. Kennedy’s post wasn’t removed; it is still live today.
Instagram’s parent company disabled Kennedy’s personal Instagram account in February 2021 for spreading false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines, but restored it after he launched his presidential bid more than two years later. His Instagram account has nearly 2 million followers.
Courts weighing censorship question
Kennedy, along with his legal advocacy group Children’s Health Defense and a Louisiana resident sued the administration in 2023, arguing that the government worked to have tech companies suppress First Amendment-protected speech, including items that could make the public “hesitant” toward COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The lawsuit is not only about COVID-19 posts or posts by Kennedy — it alleges that the government sought to suppress posts about the 2020 election and Hunter Biden’s laptop. The lawsuit says that “efforts by federal officers to induce social-media platforms to censor speech appear to have begun in 2020,” which would have been under Trump, and criticizes actions by the Biden administration, which started in January 2021.
Our ruling
Kennedy said “President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech ... to censor his opponent.”
There are several factual issues with the claim. Kennedy was referring to a Biden administration official emailing Twitter in January 2021, asking the platform to remove Kennedy’s false post about the COVID-19 vaccine causing Hank Aaron’s death. Kennedy didn’t announce his presidential candidacy for more than two years after that post, which remains live on X.
Kennedy has sued the administration over its communications with social media companies. And courts are weighing whether these communications amount to censorship.
But even if someone deems the Biden administration’s actions censorship, Kennedy is wrong about history. Presidents John Adams and Woodrow Wilson signed sedition legislation that made it a crime to criticize the federal government. Those laws led to the prosecution of political figures, including Eugene Debs, who ran for president. Their actions also targeted the free press.
We rate this statement False. PolitiFact copy chief Matthew Crowley and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.