On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show of selectively exiting the presidential race and throwing his support behind Donald Trump, hailing the former president as a champion of free speech. Less than a week later, Trump is already promising to crush First Amendment protections if elected in November.
On Monday, Trump complained about pushback to a proposal to sentence people to a year in jail for burning the American flag.
“I wanna get a law passed […] You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. Gotta do it — you gotta do it,” Trump said.
“They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.”
People may tell Trump that jailing anyone who burns the flag is unconstitutional because burning the flag is protected by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that while the desecration of the flag may be objectionable, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
RFK Jr. has long claimed that the government is censoring him in various ways, and on Friday blamed his failed attempt at a viable run for the presidency on “16 months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network really except for Fox.”
Kennedy added that the Democratic Party had “become the party of the war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, big money.” He cited Trump’s stances on free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on children as his justification for endorsing the former president. “These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump,” he said.
The endorsement may have also had something to do with Trump’s receptiveness to bringing Kennedy into his administration if he wins. Earlier this month The Washington Post reported that Kennedy’s campaign had attempted to secure meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign to discuss a potential role for him in her administration should she win the White House — to no avail. Kennedy held similar discussions with the Trump campaign in the time period surrounding the Republican National Convention.
He invited me to form a unity government. We agreed that we’d be able to continue to criticize each other on the issues where we don’t agree,” Kennedy said on Friday of his conversations with Trump on Friday.
Trump donor Omeed Malik told NBC News that same day that while Kennedy had not been explicitly promised a cabinet-level position, “should they be successful, there are plenty of roles,” where Kennedy might be placed. “I think the area of health is one,” Malik added of the vaccine conspiracy theorist.
Trump has said publicly that he would consider inviting Kennedy into his administration. “I like him a lot. I respect him a lot,” Trump said when asked ahead of Kennedy’s endorsement last week if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he won. “I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy — a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.”
