Trump's Missed Opportunity

Introduction from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this is free expression with Jerry Baker hello and welcome to Free expression from the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal I'm Jerry Baker editor at large of the journal if you're not already subscribing to free expression please sign up at Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you do you're listening this week did that debate change the race on Tuesday night Donald Trump and K Harris went head-to-head in what may be their only debate of the presidential campaign there's no sugar cating it for Republican supporters Trump lost despite the fact that she is the vice president and has been the most loyal senior member of the Biden Administration for the last four years Harris managed to keep Trump on the defensive pretty much throughout the night as though he were the incumbent instead of being forced to defend her record and explain her very recent damine conversion on just about every leftwing policy she's ever supported it was Trump's record and character that were on the line instant polls suggest Harris prevailed so how bad was it for the former president what does he need to do to turn the campaign around if indeed he needs to in the next 7 and a half weeks this week I talked about the debate and other matters with Robert F Kennedy Jr Trump's newest campaign cheerleader last month he ended his own bid for the presidency and was named honorary co-chair of Trump's campaign we talked about the debate and what Trump needs to do next but also about why Kennedy joined the Trump team and what he wants a second Trump term to achieve Robert F Kennedy Jr thanks very much for joining fore expression very happy to be back with you Jerry lot's happened since we last spoke when you were running as an independent for president now you're of course you're supporting Donald Trump there's a number of things I want to talk to you about I know you want to talk about too some policy issues but we're recording this Wednesday afternoon can we start first of all with Tuesday night's debate president Trump and CA Harris in Philadelphia we can talk about the moderation which I'm sure you'll want to talk about the way the media's dealt with it but it wasn't a great night for Donald Trump was it no it was not you know clearly it spun delivery and her Debate Reaction polish and her preparation I think most people would agree that vice president Harris prevailed when you look at the substance when people look at the substance you know I think that they would they support president Trump but he did not do a good job of presenting his case you know the first question was a question that gave him this enormous opportunity that was lost because the moderators at that point asked vice president Harris whether Americans it was the old Reagan question the Reagan Carter question are Americans better off now than they were four years ago and that is an impossible question for vice president Harris to answer in a way that would be favorable to her case Americans are much worse off by every indic of social deterioration the inflation rates are double the housing costs are more than double there are 15 million more Americans living below the poverty line the suicide rates have broken every record the drug overdose rates 106,000 kids last year are unprecedented in history were now involved in two Wars two Foreign Wars and all of them attributable to the poor leadership and bad leadership Decisions by the Biden team in addition to that the mental health and the physical health of Americans is continue to deteriorate which you can't just blame on this white house but clearly they have done nothing to stop it so I think those are cases that vice president Harris launched into a discussion of her middle class roots in answer that question and Dodge the question and nobody calls on it the moderators who persistently fact checked Donald Trump did not impose any kind of discipline on her and president Trump lost the opportunity to do that as well so again I think it was lost opportunity if I may say so you just there in a couple of minutes just laid out very well why Americans are not better off than they were four years ago you gave a pretty straight and compelling answer why didn't Donald Trump do that it's hard for me to tell I think he was prepared to do that but Doris Kar said this really well that you know that she really put a lot of preparation and this was an excellent for him for vice president Harris because they're 90 second sound bites if you have a good team they're going to anticipate 95% of the questions and they're going to be able to give you really good answers it's like taking the bar exam if you have the capacity to memorize a certain amount of information you know when my uncle did his debate in 1960 he prepared intensely for it he had a hundred file cards that he memorized the answers to anticipating all the questions and the answers and he was able to deliver those very smoothly and Vice President Nixon at that time did not prepare well for the debate and in the eyes of most Americans lost it and it had a transformative impact on the campaign and I think the same thing happened last president Harris has not been able to do I think she's very vulnerable if she does a long form interview and she's been able to avoid interviews extraordinary extraordinary she's given one interview in the 40 odd days since she you know got the nomination but this is a particular kind of forum that I think is excellently suited toward her talents which is you don't have to have depth on any of these issues you have to have kind of a piffy answer that you can deliver in 90 seconds and she did that very very well were you involved in any way at all in helping president Trump prepare no I was not I sent a couple of suggestions that were not taken but I had nothing to do with the preparation I don't think he spent a great deal of time you mind telling me what your suggestions were specifically that if they asked him about his unfortunate comment about her race and instead of answering that that he talked directly about her record on racial issues and particularly the issue that I found in traveling around the country the last 18 months is the number one and number two issue to Black Americans which is the school to prison Pipeline and kamla Harris has been a public official for many years in California which now has the worst social deterioration San Francisco which was once our one of our arguably our greatest city is now just kind of a hell hole in California we they have the highest homeless rate % of the homeless in America live in California and we're 49th in school and educational outcomes I mean after Mississippi this is extraordinary for the richest economy this the ninth richest economy in the world the richest state in our country and it's very very bad leadership but also specifically president Harris was putting young black men and black boys in jail for marijuana when she admits that she was smoking marijuana herself at that time and the supreme court ordered her to release 5,000 black prisoners who were serving nonviolent drug crimes because of unconstitutionally cruel conditions in California's prison she repeatedly defied supreme court orders because she said the state needed those prisoners for fire suppression and for other tasks you know this is like a kind of modern form of slavery and she was a direct decision maker and participant in those decisions and I think those are the issues that president Trump should have pivoted and focused on but you know I think a lot of times president Trump has certain issues that he's interested in and he tends to focus on those rather than the issues that I think you know are persuasive to the public I don't think the public cares about his crowd sizes yeah I think most people probably don't briefly obviously we should talk about the conduct of the debate that I think most people would agree the moderators were slanted do you think that made a significant impact to the way people viewed the debate I think it's through him off you know it was a 3 to1 fight and I think that that threw him off and particularly that first question when they let her get away with just not giving an answer to giving this very very evasive answer and clearly a canned response and then immediately began factchecking president Trump on these trivialities and as far as I recall they didn't fact check her a single time maybe they did once but I don't remember a single time and they fact checked him repeatedly and I think that that probably disc him do you think Donald Trump should do another debate do you think that's it I would advise him to do another one if I was advising vice president Harris I'd probably advise her not to we're going to take a short break there when we come back I'll have more with Robert F Kennedy Jr we'll be talking about not just the campaign but about what he hopes the second Trump term will achieve stay with Commercial Break us you're listening to free expression with Jerry Baker don't forget you can listen to the latest episode any time on your smart speaker just say play the opinion free expression podcast now back to Jerry Baker I'm back with Robert F Kennedy Jr and we're talking about the remaining seven weeks in the presidential election campaign let's talk about some of the issues well first of all explain to me Why He Endorsed Trump you've made your case for coming out and supporting Donald Trump still a lot of people are puzzled by it from your political career your political history doesn't seem like you're a natural Ally explain why you think that Donald Trump should be president the United States you know I gave three issues listen we have a choice between two candidates right now and that's the way that our two party system has I would say devolved so we have these two choices and I think that President Trump after the shooting in buler I had a series of very intense and lengthy and detailed conversations with them and to look for areas of agreement and the areas that I was surprised about the strength of his agreement was to end the wars he said that very well last night he said I'm going to end the Ukraine war which I think is really important for our country it's a war we should have never gotten into it was a war of choice it was a war that Putin has repeatedly tried to settle on terms that were very favorable to Ukraine and to us and we refuse to do it and we've had 600,000 Ukrainian kids and 300,000 Russians die unnecessarily there and the the economic impacts are devastating Europe Europe is being de-industrialized and economically destroyed eviscerated by this war we're also very close to nuclear war closer according to the nuclear clock and we've been at any time since 1948 so even 1962 which is a time that I remember very well I was on my way with my brothers to being shipped to uh these bunkers in Southern Virginia my uncle sent president my father was attorney general and spent 13 days at the White House trying to avert the war but I remember that very well but today we're closer to nuclear war even than we were then oh I think that's very very dangerous for our country and president Trump understands that I don't think vice president has any clue about it and I think that she is in the hands of the people who have orchestrated this situation and who are very satisfied with it in other words the neocons one of the things that she did at the debate is she applauded her endorsement by Dick Cheney and John Bolton and you know there 225 other neocons from the Bush Administration or from the um bry's group endorsed her this week and John McCain's group endorsed her this week and they did not endorse her these are the people that have been in exile for 20 years because of their role in creating the Iraq War which was the biggest foreign policy deal in American history and then orchestrating the passage of the Patriot Act and the initiation of America away from being the world's exemplary democracy into becoming a Security State a surveillance State a censorship State and they have not changed their values or their position they've been living in Exile they're endorsing vice president Harris not because they've come around and changed their position but because they believe that she represents that position and I think that by all indication she does during the Democratic Convention she gave this extraordinarily bellicose speech about essentially proclaiming us Global hemony and the domination of the globe by US military power and at that convention for the first time in history you had a CIA director speaking before her and you had generals and you know people from the military this has never happened before at a democratic convention the Democrats used to be the party of peace they are now the party of war and that's one of the major reasons I think president Trump is going to be much better present president Trump also opposes the censorship which I you know right now we're seeing the emergence of this totalitarianism across the globe Europe no longer has free speech this is an extraordinary development that should be reported every day in the news and everybody of course is ignoring it because of the censorship two weeks ago you had pavle der off the head of telegram pulled off an airplane that he landed for a fuel stop in France and thrown into a prison and by the way Europe is already censoring content the internet there's no reason for them to arrest PA der off they did that to show their strength to show that that they are going to punish people who cross them it's really an extraordinary and by the way France where this happened that is a robust commitment and tradition of free speech as we have in the United States FR passed all of these laws protecting free speech in 1789 during the French Revolution and then they passed on new raft of laws in the 1880s and they their pride in it their commitment to it has been as strong as ours here in the United States and now it's gone a week before that you had tyry Bretton who was the chairman of the European commission threaten Elon Musk that if he interviewed Donald Trump live on X that he faced criminal and civil prosecution and civil prosecution were a value for 6% of the value of his company it would be existential for him and this is a live interview with the former president of the United States and the current nominee of one of the two big political parties in our country and the Europeans are saying that this is too d dangerous for Europeans or Americans to hear that debate it's this is extraordinary and then last week you had Brazil censored Twitter removed Twitter and or X so the Brazilians can no longer hear it and they're doing the same thing now with a number of the other social media platforms but we're seeing this rise of totalitarianism and censorship all over across the world America needs to be the fortification we need to be the beacon around the world and as the exemplary democracy for the one place where we can still have free speech where people can still criticize their government where denters don't have to be frighten that they're going to be locked in jail or that they're going to be punished and I don't think vice president Harris has any understanding of that she is repeatedly said that free speech is a privilege not a right she says that if people who put disinformation and misinformation on the that that's not protected by the First Amendment which by the way it is first amendment protect all speech it protects lies as well as the truth it was written not to protect convenient speech but to protect speech that nobody wants to hear then nobody wants us to hear and that is critical when the government becomes the Arbiter of what's true and what's not true then that's the end of free speech and that's the beginning of slavery then the biggest issue for me is Children's Health and the health of our society we're now the siest country in the world and president Trump is a commitment to end that I want to get on to that because you read an article in the Wall Street Journal last week called Trump can make America healthy again I know this is an very important topic very dear to your heart but some of the issues that you've championed Public Health Policy and Vaccines particularly over things like vaccines and your allegations that all kinds of vaccines cause enormous harm in Children's Health to Public Health generally some of those as you know are very controversial a lot of people challenge them do you think a trump Administration would be sympathetic to your skepticism about and your opposition to vaccines and could we expect that to be a of Health policy in a trump Administration well I don't have a hostility to vaccines at all you know the term antiva is a pejorative that is applied to me by people who want to silence me but it's not something I've said for 20 years I'm not anti vaccine I vaccinated all my kids I got my on my own I was fully vaccinated and compliant I didn't get the covid vaccine some of my kids did some of them did not but what I am for is I'm for I'm Pro science and I'm for removing the corruption and the corrupt entanglements the corrupt control that the pharmaceutical industry has over our Public Health agencies and I think all Americans would agree to that I want good science if I were in charge of you know if I were president myself I would do nothing to prevent people who are happy with their vaccines from getting those vaccines so all I want to do is to make sure that people are well informed that they have informed consent in other words that they have a full full understanding of the risks and the benefits of these products and that the products are adequately tested so that we know exactly what the risk profile is for them you know I think what my issue is really Common Sense my Approach is common sense and I think that's very very threatening to the pharmaceutical industry and as a result of that the pharmaceutical industry the medical cartel the Allied media tries to Tar me with being anti science and antifa but I'm never ever advocated a ban on vaccines so what do you expect from a trump Administration again you you laid out a lot of things that need to be done in that article last week and I'm sure you've had conversations with Donald Trump about this what do you expect a trump Administration to do in terms of Public Health policy the reason we have the worst Health when my uncle was president and I was a little boy 10 years old we spent zero annually on chronic disease in this country is zero we didn't even have any drugs for treating it today we spend four .3 trillion it's about 95% of our healthc care cost and we've gone from 3.2% of Americans being obese to 74% we've gone from 6% of Americans having chronic disease to 60% we're the sickest country in the world we had the highest death rate body count from covid of any country on Earth we had 16% of the covid deaths in the United States we only have 4.2% of the world's population and when you ask CDC why did we do worse than any country in the world under Co they say because we're the sickest country we have the sickest people the average American according to CDC who died from covid had 3.8 chronic diseases so they had asthma they had obesity they had diabetes and one other thing and that's why we did worse than anybody else so if we want to protect Public Health we got to eliminate chronic disease why do we have chronic disease it's because of perverse incentives because the corrupt capture by the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry of the Regulatory Agencies the most valuable the most profitable asset today in America is a sick child if you can make a child sick which we do with our food system the pharmaceutical industry can profit from that child forever if he has a chronic disease it means he has a lifetime dependence on pharmaceutical drugs and that is a giant profit Center and that's why you know OIC for example under a new bill that's being passed in the house that is paid for by the maker of OIC NOA Nordisk is a bipartisan bill that is likely to pass both Chambers because of legalized bribery by the biggest company in Europe OIC will now be available under Medicare I think it's $1,500 a month to every American who qualifies that 74% of the American public the cost of that to our country will be $3 trillion a year you could eliminate diabetes in this country by a tiny fraction of that just by buying organic meal for every American three meal a day which would be a tiny fraction of that cost diabetes is absolutely curable by food but we don't do that instead we pay people to eat bad food to eat poison food food likee substances that are just loaded with chemicals that we use a thousand chemicals in this country on our food that are illegal in Europe and about 70% of our food stamp program is going to those Ultra processed foods the seed oils to ultra processed sugar Ultra processed starch and all these chemical contaminants about 70% of our school lunch program we poisoning our children 10% of food stamps goes to Sugar drinks which is causing the diabetes and obesity epidemics and then the feed stock which is soy corn and wheat that goes into that food are these GMO monocultures that farmers are growing because they're paid to grow them and they're paid giant subsidies only about 2% of agricultural subsidies are going to fruit and vegetables the beef industry gets almost nothing those are the cures for diabetes and instead we're making people sick on one end by paying you know these absurd subsidies incentives and then we're paying for the medicine and the treatment for life and it makes no sense it's destroying our country 70% of kids of American kids are now ineligible to join the military because of health reasons this is destroying our national security it's destroying our economy it's destroying Heth and happiness of our people and we've got to end it finally Mr Kennedy Donald Trump has named you and telsey gabard and others to his transition team to help pick the team that will be in the next Trump Administration well I have two questions first of all have you talked to Mr Trump about a role for yourself in that Administration and secondly what kind of an Administration will you be trying to build again you were politically somewhat at odds I think it's fair to say with many of the things that Donald Trump has said or stood for he said some very critical things about you in the past what do you think Trump is trying to do by naming you what kind of an Administration is he trying to create I think he's trying to bring our country together and and the polarization and you know when we talked about how to bring our campaigns together we talked about starting a Unity government where Independents like myself could ally themselves like they do in European countries where you have coalitions between big political parties who could ally themselves with the Republican party with Republicans on Capitol Hill it doesn't mean that we endur everything he says or agree with everything and we agree that we'd be able to continue to criticize each other but on the issues on which we differ but the most important issues to me the existential issues which are censorship and surveillance the ending the forever Wars and making America Health again we're going to work together on those issues and we're going to create a Unity government we're going to end the polarization and we're going to bring Americans together around the health of our children we can bring our country together can end the chronic disease epidemic we just have to start loving our children more than we hate each other and that's what to make America healthy again is all about it's about loving our children more than we hate each other and have you talked to Mr Trump about a role for yourself not about a specific role but generally yeah I mean he wants me to help clean up the agencies clean up the corruption and this corrupt merger of state and corporate power drain the swamp and I've had 40 Years of doing that I've litigated against almost all these agencies I know who the Bad actors are and many of them I know the perverse incentives that put agency capture on the steroids and I've agreed to do that but in terms of a specific role we have not decided robt F Kennedy Jr thank you very much indeed for joining free expression thank you very much for having me well that's it for this week thanks very much for joining us I'll be back next week with another episode of free expression in the meantime have a great week and goodbye