An Interview With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.


This text is featured in Bitcoin Journal’s “The Major Problem”. Click on here to get your Annual Bitcoin Journal Subscription.

After a airplane, a ferry, and a prepare had introduced me to Manhattan, NY, we discovered ourselves with thirty-something minutes to arrange for a sit-down interview with presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., thirty-something flooring excessive in a Hudson Yards’ lodge. Captured by filmmaker Jeremy Poley, RFK answered our questions for about forty minutes. His responses have been sharp and effectively articulated with an encyclopedic recall capability. He answered each single query I had ready. Maybe misplaced within the mainstream noise making an attempt to decrease his inarguable counterculture resonance is his basic likability. However whereas People would possibly love their Kennedys, the DNC positive doesn’t. No less than not whereas his marketing campaign is placing an outside-yet-still-partisan strain on the Democratic get together, forcing the Biden reelection marketing campaign to at the very least fake to get their act collectively.

His entrance was hurried. His respiration managed, however heavy just like the palms of a prizefighter, wrapped round his tea cup. After a heat however truncated introduction, Jeremy gave us the inexperienced mild and the interview began in earnest a couple of minutes after the center of the hour.

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Goodwin: In case your father was round at this time, would he acknowledge the present state of the DNC? What’s a Kennedy Democrat to you?

RFK: I’d say Kennedy Democrats are the normal Democratic Occasion which was the get together of the working class, the working poor. It was a celebration that was very robust historically on the surroundings. Its custom has been anti-war and skeptical of the navy industrial advanced, and likewise skeptical of Wall Avenue. I’d say taking the place of stopping Wall Avenue from dictating insurance policies that find yourself serving the American basic curiosity of the company aristocracy and the company kleptocracy and stripping of the center class, working folks, and union members of their wealth and their energy.

Goodwin: This does not sound just like the DNC at this time.

RFK: No.

Goodwin: How do you intend to tackle the tremendous monopolies that management our meals, media, foreign money, and well being?

RFK: For every sector it’s important to do one thing completely different. It’s true that there’s been this extraordinary consolidation the place these three large finance homes — BlackRock, State Avenue, and Vanguard — management 88% of the S&P 500 and so they management just about all the navy contractors. They management a lot of the U.S.-based agricultural sector, the large packing firms and seed firms, the pharmaceutical business. For every sector, it’s important to do various things. And in every sector, these industries even have 20 or 30 years of growing methodologies for capturing and controlling the regulatory businesses — which are supposed to guard the general public from dangerous habits by these firms. However as an alternative these regulators have develop into sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to manage. And in every case, it’s important to unravel company seize. I believe that I’m most likely one of the best individual at this level, on this nation, that’s suited to do this as a result of a lot of my profession has been litigating towards these businesses and the industries which have corrupted them.

And while you carry litigation, you actually nearly get a PhD in company seize. You actually perceive the dynamics of it and perceive, due to this fact, the strategies for unraveling it. And I’ll provide you with an instance. After we introduced the Monsanto case, we uncovered discovery paperwork that confirmed that the top of the pesticide division at EPA, a person named Jess Rowland, was secretly working for Monsanto and that his orders have been being given to him by Monsanto executives who have been instructing him to kill research that they thought would possibly hyperlink glyphosate — the lively ingredient of their flagship pesticide Roundup — from hyperlinks to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and different cancers. And it was clear that though he was being paid by the American taxpayer, he was really working for Monsanto. And that is true sadly all through the businesses. That is extra the rule than the exception. As a result of I’ve been so deeply concerned in this sort of litigation, I really know the names of those that I would like to maneuver as quickly as I get into workplace.

Most politicians are very intimidated by these businesses as a result of the businesses do have the capability at many ranges to commit civil disobediences to embarrass the president in the event you really feel that they’re coming beneath strain. And I perceive that dynamic and I perceive what must be finished to unravel this corrupt merger of state and company energy.

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Goodwin: A carousel of C-suite executives to regulatory positions. If you do take workplace, what actions would you are taking to make sure free speech, free press, and an open web appearing as a public sq. for discourse, particularly for dissident voices towards these sorts of propaganda machines?

RFK: Primary, my first day in workplace, I’ll difficulty an govt order towards any federal company or any federal regulator encouraging or selling censorship at any social media website. Along with that, I’ll promote laws to alter the RICO Act, the Racketeering Act, which my father initially wrote, to incorporate as a predicate offense government-dictated censorship of free speech. I’ll additionally summon the heads of all the main social media websites, together with YouTube and Google, which proceed to censor political speech on this nation. And I’ll inform them that they should provide you with a plan about how they’re going to keep away from censoring political speech. The sanction, finally, is to rework them into public utilities and acknowledge that they now have develop into the general public sq.. After which I’ll put in laws to amend the Communications Act, which incorporates Part 230, and I’ll, in that act, make the censorship of political speech unlawful.

Goodwin: If democracy innately necessitates knowledgeable consent, can the U.S. authorities pretty name for the violent protection of democracy as a pillar of international coverage whereas working with Large Tech to censor tales inside its personal nation?

RFK: Can the federal government censor criticism of, for instance, the conflict in Ukraine? That must be unlawful. Particular person media websites, after all, ought to be capable of criticize the conflict, and so they can both criticize it or they’ll select to not enable criticism on their pages. That’s their choice. But when they’re doing it on the path of the federal government, then the First Modification is implicated and it turns into unlawful. And that’s the way in which that I’d deal with it.

The concept that America promotes democracy worldwide is usually thought to be canard around the globe. The CIA has participated, I believe, in 87 coups between 1947 and 1997 — a 3rd of the nations on Earth. And most of them are democracies. And the USAID, which is a CIA entrance, spends $10 billion a yr in efforts to overthrow democracies in varied nations. They do a regime change operation. If you do a regime change operation, you’re countervailing democracy in that nation, as a result of often the regime has been put in place by way of some type of consensus by the individuals who dwell in that nation. Usually this consensus is manufactured by initiatives like Operation Mockingbird. The CIA at this time is the most important funder of journalism on the earth. It’s not alleged to fund journalism within the U.S., nevertheless it does. And in the event you look around the globe, it owns newspapers, it runs newspapers, it pays editors, and it pays main journalists in a lot of the growing world and in Europe.

Goodwin: Talking of journalists, do you plan to pardon Julian Assange while you take workplace?

RFK: I’ll pardon Julian Assange on day one and doubtless Edward Snowden as effectively. After which I’ll take a look at different circumstances for pardon. I’m going to have a look at Ross Ulbricht’s case to see if he was justly convicted and whether or not his conviction in his sentence displays the seriousness of his crime, or whether or not he was being made an instance of as a way to discourage Bitcoin or the business of cryptocurrencies. And if I discover out that’s the case, I’ll pardon him as effectively.

Goodwin: How is what Ross did any completely different than what AT&T executives did, permitting drug sellers and human traffickers to make use of their methods? Or JPMorgan Chase, permitting recognized human traffickers to make the most of their financial institution providers? How is what Ross did any completely different than that?

RFK: There are lots of ironies that accompany Ross’ convictions. I believe that’s a extremely good level — the issues that he was accused of are issues which are simply a part of the enterprise construction and the marketing strategy of those main blue chip companies. However he didn’t have that energy of the lobbying clout. And if I discover that his sentence was unjust, I’ll reverse it.

Goodwin: Do you suppose if folks knew that they might have their taxes raised and expertise excessive inflation as a way to expense the trillions of {dollars} wanted for these wars, or for the COVID response, that there can be public assist?

RFK: I don’t suppose any of the wars that we fought at the very least for the reason that Korean Battle, and perhaps together with the Korean Battle, would have been permitted by taxpayers prematurely. Fiat foreign money was created as a way to allow nations to go to conflict with out levying the taxes outright on populations. The inhabitants nonetheless pays by way of a self-tax known as inflation. However fiat foreign money was invented lengthy earlier than the Fed. And it was invented on the outset, from the start, as a way to fund the reason for conflict.

Goodwin: Talking of fiat currencies, what initially sparked your curiosity in bitcoin and why are you curious about the Bitcoin voting bloc?

RFK: My curiosity in Bitcoin started after I noticed the truckers and what occurred in Ottawa. You had peaceable demonstrations for individuals who have been exercising their proper to protest, to petition public officers, for superb causes. And so they have been silenced and punished by the federal government in a rare approach. The federal government used surveillance methods to find out their identities, to find out the license plates of their vehicles, after which closed their financial institution accounts, depriving them of their entry to their very own cash with none costs being filed, and positively with none conviction. Merely to silence them. The federal government has the capability to close down your checking account to hunger. These are individuals who couldn’t pay their mortgages. I talked to 1 trucker who couldn’t pay his alimony and he was getting in prison bother with the courts. Folks couldn’t pay for his or her youngsters’s clothes, medication, and meals. And naturally they couldn’t pay for gasoline to maneuver their autos — their bank cards now not labored. And if the federal government has the capability to do this, the federal government has the capability to enslave us. If they’ll starve their critics, they’ll accomplish any atrocity. At that time, I started to know that freedom of transaction is as necessary as freedom of speech. And that Bitcoin is that this. I also can see the trajectory towards central financial institution digital currencies, and that may give nations this final energy over whether or not we dwell or die. And I understood that we’d like a foreign money that may be a freedom foreign money — a foreign money that’s impartial and that may’t be managed by the federal government.

Goodwin: You latterly floated this very novel concept of, alongside different arduous belongings, backing the U.S. greenback with bitcoin. Are you involved in any respect about authorities affect or restrictions on the subject of Bitcoin or bitcoin mining?

RFK: I’m very involved about all the federal government assaults on Bitcoin. However what I wish to do is to at the very least present some issuance of Treasury payments which are backed by arduous foreign money. And that may very well be a bucket that features bitcoin, that features platinum, gold, silver, and different arduous belongings. And that may not be fully coated, however perhaps starting with 1%. And the rationale for that — it’s actually a drop within the bucket — however we are able to see if there’s a market on the market and if it might impose a type of self-discipline on this out-of-control printing of cash as a result of the customers would have entry to an asset that at the very least had some foundation in arduous foreign money — at the very least some immunity from runaway inflation. And if there’s a desire for that, then we might enhance the quantity yearly, 1% to 2%, 3%, and so forth. And get again to at the very least some stage of choices for base currencies.

Goodwin: How do you see the way forward for the U.S. greenback growing as we’re seeing CBDCs, stablecoins, and other forms of greenback derivatives popping out? We’re seeing a speedy globalization of the greenback at a really excessive velocity. Clearly, I believe you’ll be able to see this potential Bitcoin future, however how do you see the greenback growing?

RFK: I believe the way forward for the greenback is unsure. One of many huge components is the exponential progress of BRICs. BRICs, which, you understand, started with simply Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, at the moment are including one other six nations. They’re providing an alternative choice to the greenback as a reserve foreign money and whereas they don’t difficulty their very own foreign money, they permit transactions to be settled in native currencies. In the end this can be a menace to the place of the greenback because the world’s reserve foreign money, and to American energy, to American wealth. It’s accelerating, and it’s our personal doing. It comes from the weaponization of foreign money, the usage of navy and even merely navy posture from america. The unilateral bellicosity of our nation, which has made many different nations cautious of collaborating with us, or placing themselves inside our energy. After we freeze belongings of people who find themselves Vladimir Putin’s associates or Russian oligarchs, who might or might not have something to do with what’s taking place in Russia, folks say, “Why are we placing ourselves able the place we are able to do this? Why don’t we begin our personal markets?” and that’s a really harmful factor for the U.S. greenback.

Goodwin: Do you consider the U.S. authorities ought to straight difficulty a digital foreign money to residents?

RFK: No, I’m towards central financial institution digital currencies. I believe they may develop into an instrument of energy and management. And finally, they’ll be used as an excuse to abolish money currencies. And so they give the federal government full management over our lives. Even earlier than the Ottawa occasion, I gave a speech in Milan warning the folks of Italy as a result of they have been taking a look at vaccine passports and central financial institution digital currencies at the moment and I mentioned, “Right here’s what they’re doing in China”. In the event you don’t meet a sure social credit score rating, in the event you present up on a masks day not sporting your masks correctly, otherwise you’re not boosted, no matter your offense is, the federal government can flip off your capability to spend cash. They will program it in order that your bank cards will solely work, for instance, at grocery shops inside a half a mile radius of your private home, however they gained’t purchase you gasoline. They gained’t assist you to get an airplane ticket. They don’t need to assist you to journey and purchase gadgets and meals in different components of the nation or overseas. And if the federal government has these sorts of powers over us, we’re all in a variety of deep bother.

Goodwin: Do you will have any issues with the replace of the legacy system with the formation of FedNow and this sort of permissioned walled backyard that already exists within the Federal Reserve System?

RFK: I believe FedNow is step one. It’s not basically a digital foreign money, nevertheless it’s step one. We’re all on this slippery slope. It worries me.

Goodwin: Are you able to discuss somewhat bit concerning the authorities’s actions throughout COVID? Do you consider it was orchestrated just like the 2008 disaster to close down small companies and regional banks as a way to consolidate monetary energy throughout the tremendous monopoly?

RFK: I don’t suppose it was orchestrated particularly for that function. I believe those self same entities, highly effective entities, will use any disaster as a pretext for eradicating public rights and for clamping down totalitarian controls.

Goodwin: Like 9/11 and the Patriot Act?

RFK: Each disaster all through historical past turns into a pretext for highly effective actors within the society to increase their energy and to cut back public energy and to subvert democracy.

Goodwin: Would you take into account canceling debt or recovering ill-gotten positive factors from the tremendous monopolies that stole wealth from the working class?

RFK: I’d take a look at litigation towards any sort of fraud.

Goodwin: Why do you suppose Trump will get a free cross from the media for the lockdowns and disastrous financial coverage selections made throughout his administration? Do you suppose he will get a free cross?

RFK: Yeah, I believe the mainstream media have been dedicated to that agenda. And so it’s an space that they’re not going to criticize him on. In all probability due to a battle of curiosity of comparable investments in pharma. There’s large pharmaceutical advert revenues — one of many main promoting revenues going into the main media retailers. And people pharmaceutical firms additionally finally dictate content material on the stations.

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Goodwin: How do you hope to guide a motion towards such a robust, unified coalition? And what do you say to those who are demoralized and don’t consider that the political system can be utilized to assist residents anymore?

RFK: I’d inform them to observe me and watch what I do. I nonetheless consider that there’s hope for democracy. And let’s give it an opportunity. And, if I get in there, I even have absolute confidence that I can repair it.

Goodwin: Do you suppose that Bitcoin will play an enormous a part of that? Do you suppose foreign money addresses the tremendous monopoly head on?

RFK: I’m going to guarantee that Bitcoin is protected and that individuals can preserve their very own wallets, and that the present White Home’s conflict on Bitcoin will likely be over, that transactions will likely be protected and inspired. I’ll look finally at treating it as a foreign money fairly than a commodity. Significantly for smaller Bitcoin house owners, for transactions made by house owners. I don’t need to present a windfall for the billionaires who amassed bitcoin, however I believe smaller actors and their transactions must be protected. They need to be capable of alternate currencies the identical approach as while you go to Canada and also you’re utilizing the Canadian greenback. You shouldn’t need to pay for it in taxes if there’s some appreciation within the Canadian greenback.

Goodwin: Do you see utilizing one thing akin to the Part 230 protections and even an modification that may defend such transactions?

RFK: I don’t understand how I’d do it, however I can inform you the final tenure of my method and my administration. I can’t inform you the small print about how I’m going to do it. I’m going to seek the advice of the neatest folks within the business, folks like Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones. After which Bitcoin specialists as a way to determine one of the simplest ways to do it in methods that may defend our freedoms in methods that may encourage the re-industrialization of America and that advantages can accrue to working People.

Goodwin: Say proper now you’re sitting subsequent to one of the best good religion illustration of the Bitcoin group as doable, and I’m feeding you precisely what it’s that must be finished. How do you intend to work with a compromised Congress to get a few of this regulation in place to guard Bitcoin?

RFK: I’m going to do all the things that I can with out having to go to Congress. I’m going to do it by way of my management over Treasury coverage, even when it means bringing within the banks. Quite a lot of the dangerous insurance policies towards Bitcoin should not being pushed by laws. They’re being pushed by White Home insurance policies. I’m going to finish the conflict.

Goodwin: Talking of ending the conflict: The navy industrial advanced that Eisenhower warned about appears to be in full impact with the provocation of Russia by NATO growing its navy presence in Ukraine. And but there are some right here again residence that may say that that is good for the U.S. economic system as a result of they’re shopping for U.S. arms. Would you say the conflict in Ukraine is definitely an financial victory for Biden?

RFK: No. The conflict is a disaster for everyone. We’ve killed 400,000 Ukrainian youngsters and doubtless 70,000 to 100,000 Russians. I do know Mitch McConnell mentioned that we shouldn’t fear concerning the $140 billion that we’re paying over there as a result of it’s all going again to U.S. arms makers. Who owns all these arms makers? It’s BlackRock, State Avenue, and Vanguard, proper? It’s going to the richest folks in our nation. It’s not serving to the working poor. It’s really draining a variety of mental assets that may very well be used to re-industrialize our nation at residence, to construct merchandise which are really beneficial, that don’t kill folks, that make folks’s lives higher, to rebuild our training system. With the $8 trillion that we’ve spent on conflict, we might make Social Safety solvent for 30 years. We might pay for each American little one’s training up by way of college, and provides them unbelievable training. We might pay for little one care for each American. We might liquidate all of the bank card debt in our nation. So lots of the issues we face may very well be solved if we saved that cash at residence. And that’s what I’m going to do as president.

Goodwin: Are you able to perhaps discuss concerning the Weimar Republic and its penalties as an analog or metaphor to what’s taking place within the U.S. now? May this inflation trigger a revolution of types? And is there another for the decrease, center, and dealing class that isn’t a violent revolution?

RFK: I’m going to attempt to remedy the issues, starting with housing. Proper now, you will have these huge firms — once more, BlackRock, State Avenue, and Vanguard — that personal a lot of America already now attempting to purchase all of the single-family properties. By 2030, simply six and a half years from now, companies will personal 60% of the single-family properties. My youngsters can’t purchase properties. So many individuals, youngsters your age, my youngsters age, are nonetheless dwelling in a house with their mother and father or they’re dwelling in leases. There’s only a few of them which are really buying properties. They exit to attempt to purchase a house and any person is available in on the final minute with a money supply or some amorphous LLC with an ambiguous title you can hint again to BlackRock. And it’s not a great factor. Thomas Jefferson mentioned American democracy needs to be rooted in tens of 1000’s of impartial freeholds owned by particular person People. It is a colonial mannequin; it’s an aristocracy; it’s a feudal aristocracy. If companies personal all of the land in our nation, People can’t personal a house. If they’ll’t personal it, they don’t have fairness. When you’ve got a house and also you need to begin a enterprise, you’ll be able to take a second mortgage and take that danger. However in the event you don’t personal fairness, you’ll be able to’t get entry to capital. And that’s the place the ability is — entry to capital. And people firms have entry to capital at less expensive charges due to their financial institution books — and so they’re competing towards our kids to purchase properties. We constructed prosperity on this nation after World Battle II ensuring People might get into properties. Now that promise throughout the American dream is being misplaced.

Goodwin: Do you suppose it’s a coincidence in any respect that simply moments after the Civil Rights Act handed that the Nixon shock occurred and we acquired taken off the gold commonplace?

RFK: In 1971, the tipping level of getting taken off the gold commonplace was the Vietnam Battle, which was placing us in debt and so they wanted to print cash. And so they have been pissed off. Kissinger and Nixon have been pissed off that they could not be capable of get assist from the conflict, from People, and assist for these appropriations from Congress. And they also modified the principles. They deserted Bretton Woods. They divorced America from the gold commonplace. And so they began this inflationary cycle that we’ve been coping with ever since. There’s positively a selection made between, for instance, the conflict on poverty and the Vietnam Battle. Martin Luther King mentioned we are able to both go to conflict towards poverty at residence or we are able to go to conflict towards yellow folks in Vietnam. And we are able to’t do each. We don’t have the cash. And I believe these are connections which are clear.

Goodwin: I admire your time and your considerate solutions to all these questions.

RFK: Thanks very a lot.

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