LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday denied he was hurting incumbent President Joe Biden's chances of winning in November.
In an interview before delivering a speech to the annual Freedom Fest convention at the Caesars Forum, Kennedy said Biden would lose even if Kennedy withdrew from the race.
"If I'm put in a head-to-head race with either one of these candidates, I win," Kennedy said. "In a head to head race, President Biden cannot beat [former] President [Donald] Trump, but I can."
Watch the full interview with RFK Jr. here:
The most recent fivethirtyeight.com polling average, however, has Kennedy at 9.1%, with Trump leading at 42.3% and Biden at 40.5%. Kennedy noted, however, that the most recent Pew Research Center poll showed 15% either for him or leaning that way, and a HarrisX poll conducted after the June 27 debate showed Kennedy with 16%, Trump with 41% and Biden with 36%.
"I can beat President Trump," Kennedy repeated.
Channel 13 has reached out to the Biden campaign for a response.
Initially, Kennedy intended to run as a Democrat, but switched in October to become an independent. He said he did it because both parties were captured by corporate interests. But he saved special criticism for Democrats, saying the party of his uncle former President John F. Kennedy and his father, ex-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had changed.
"And my party had completely morphed. The Democrats, the party I was born and raised in, it has become a party of war, the party of Wall Street, it had lost touch with the American middle class," Kennedy said.
He said neither party was addressing issues such as inflation, the $34 trillion national debt, the inability of many people to buy a house, the environment, rising health-care costs and political divisions that both parties feed on.
"I felt like I was in a unique position to solve those issues and nobody else was going to do it," he said.
Kennedy — who is most widely known for linking vaccines to autism and criticizing COVID-19 remedies and government policy meant to contain the disease — claimed that he was the only candidate telling the truth to the American people.
"My pledge from the beginning is I'm going to tell the truth to the people and everybody else is lying," he said. "If there's appetite for people hearing the truth then I will win in November. And, you know, if not, I'm just going to keep telling it."
The Annenberg Public Policy Center, however, fact-checked Kennedy's claims in a three-part series and found them to be false and misleading.
Kennedy does benefit from the unpopularity of both major party nominees: The so-called "double haters" are looking for an alternative, and Kennedy is the most high profile "other" in the race.
Making the ballot
Kennedy's campaign submitted well more than the required number of signatures needed to appear on the November ballot, the secretary of state announced Friday.
According to a memo sent to county clerks and voter registrars around Nevada on Friday, Kennedy's campaign submitted 30,880 signatures statewide. That's well over the 10,236 signatures required by law.
Now, counties will verify that the petition contains enough valid signatures, a process that must be completed by July 25. If the petitions are verified, Kennedy's name will appear on the November ballot alongside President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The Kennedy campaign submitted a separate petition earlier this year, but it lacked the name of his vice presidential running mate, which state law requires. Kennedy sued the state, claiming the campaign had received inaccurate guidance and challenging the requirements in general.
After Kennedy named California lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his running mate in March, the campaign gathered signatures on a new petition. That's the document that local officials will now verify.
But there's yet another hurdle, as well. Last month, Democrats filed a lawsuit in Carson City District Court to keep Kennedy off the November ballot, claiming he's not an independent candidate since he's running as the nominee of various minor political parties in other states. That lawsuit is pending.
Kennedy said he's defeated similar challenges in other states and is confident he will defeat this one as well. He said because Biden couldn't win, the Democrats were using the legal system to keep other choices from voters.
"It's not very democratic," he said.
