Former President Donald J. Trump has refused to just accept his loss within the 2020 election, painted as martyrs the supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, laid groundwork to disclaim the 2024 election outcomes if he loses, and stated he can be a dictator on his first day again in workplace if he wins.
However in line with the impartial presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., it’s President Biden who poses the larger menace to American democracy — a view that Mr. Kennedy shares with Mr. Trump himself, and that democracy specialists referred to as “absurd” and “preposterous.”
Such a perspective is feasible as a result of Mr. Kennedy, who has based his political profession on selling vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories concerning the authorities, sees the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the unfold of misinformation as a seminal situation of our time. Censorship, as he calls it, overpowers all different issues concerning the political system.
Mr. Kennedy’s stance drew recent scrutiny this week after he stated in an interview on CNN, “President Biden is a a lot worse menace to democracy, and the rationale for that’s President Biden is the primary candidate in historical past, the primary president in historical past that has used the federal companies to censor political speech, to censor his opponent.” He repeated himself on Fox Information on Tuesday, saying {that a} president like Mr. Biden was “a real menace to our democracy.”
The remarks by Mr. Kennedy, who carries the title however not the assist of a storied Democratic household, have been an escalation of his assaults on Mr. Biden and the Democratic Occasion.
He has lengthy stated that the federal government’s engagement with media firms and tech platforms — to stop the unfold of disinformation or unlawful supplies or, in Mr. Kennedy’s case, the arguments he and his allies made towards vaccines — quantities to unlawful censorship, an argument that was met with skepticism on the Supreme Court docket final month.
Within the CNN and Fox Information interviews, Mr. Kennedy — an environmental lawyer who till final fall was himself a Democrat — skilled his outrage immediately on the Democratic Occasion’s chief, whose allies fear that Mr. Kennedy might tip a detailed election in November to Mr. Trump.
Democratic officers have devoted growing sources to a multipronged effort to undermine Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign, fearing that his presence on swing-state ballots might siphon votes from Mr. Biden.
On the similar time, it stays unclear whether or not Mr. Kennedy — whose anti-establishment message has additionally made him well-liked with some disaffected Republicans, independents and Libertarians — would draw extra votes from Mr. Biden than from Mr. Trump. A latest Fox Information ballot confirmed him drawing about equally from each candidates, and Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Kennedy final week as a “radical Left” candidate, in a possible signal of nervousness about his candidacy.
In marketing campaign appearances, Mr. Kennedy has usually drawn comparisons between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Final week, when he introduced his operating mate, Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer, Mr. Kennedy stated that to younger People, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump “seem like two sides of the identical coin.”
However a number of students who’ve studied democratic governments and the methods they’ll backslide instructed The New York Instances that it was nonsensical to counsel that social media moderation — which the Supreme Court docket appeared inclined to uphold as a reliable aim of presidency — posed a larger menace than what Mr. Trump has completed.
They pointed to his refusal to just accept an election loss, his stoking of political violence, and his efforts to consolidate govt energy and undermine public confidence in impartial sources of data.
The 2 most basic tenets of democracy are that politicians “should at all times unambiguously settle for the outcomes of elections and should at all times unambiguously reject political violence,” stated Steven Levitsky, a professor of presidency at Harvard who co-wrote the e book “How Democracies Die.” “I don’t suppose you’ll discover a democracy professional on the planet who will declare that the gentle efforts to manage social media in the US are one way or the other equal or worse than an effort to overturn an election or the encouragement of political violence.”
Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard School, stated Mr. Kennedy had not solely downplayed Mr. Trump’s election denial — a menace that’s “basic” and “needs to be acknowledged as such if democracy goes to work,” she stated — but additionally inflated Mr. Biden’s actions.
“If we had a president who was utilizing federal companies to chase down his opponents, to drawback them politically, to cease them from with the ability to converse to residents and voters, that may be a serious infringement of democratic norms,” Dr. Berman stated. “That’s not what Biden was doing.”
Within the CNN interview, Mr. Kennedy stated Mr. Trump’s try to overturn the 2020 election “clearly” was a menace, however added: “The best menace to democracy is just not any individual who questions election returns, however a president of the US who makes use of the facility of his workplace to power a social media firm — Fb, Instagram, Twitter — to open a portal and provides entry to that portal to the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the I.R.S., the CISA, the N.I.H., to censor his political critics.”
He then stated he was not making the argument he had simply made, however was merely saying it was an argument he might make.
He additionally didn’t present proof of any “portal” by way of which federal companies can take away posts. Slightly, he referred to a lawsuit he filed final yr alleging that, by threatening regulatory motion, the Biden administration had “induced” social media firms to limit speech — together with anti-vaccine misinformation — in methods the First Modification would prohibit the federal government from doing immediately.
A federal decide in February granted a preliminary injunction however stayed it till the Supreme Court docket guidelines in a associated case, Murthy v. Missouri, with which Mr. Kennedy’s case was consolidated. Within the meantime, the Supreme Court docket allowed the federal government, together with the F.B.I., to proceed contact with main social media firms — and in listening to the case final month, the justices appeared skeptical of the arguments towards the federal government.
A lawyer for the federal government, Brian H. Fletcher, instructed the courtroom that banning the regulation in query would itself prohibit speech, together with public feedback from a press secretary or different officers searching for to discourage posts which are dangerous to youngsters, antisemitic or Islamophobic. He added that the social media firms had acted independently of the federal government and sometimes rejected requests to take down postings.
A senior adviser for the Democratic Nationwide Committee referred to as Mr. Kennedy’s feedback “MAGA speaking factors” that put to relaxation “any doubts that he’s a spoiler candidate.”
“With a straight face, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated that Joe Biden is an even bigger menace to democracy than Donald Trump as a result of he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories on-line,” the adviser, Mary Beth Cahill, stated. “There isn’t a comparability to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on Day 1.”
Within the CNN interview, Mr. Kennedy additionally stated falsely that Mr. Biden was “the primary president in historical past to make use of his energy over the Secret Service to disclaim Secret Service safety to considered one of his political opponents for political causes,” referring to the federal government’s refusal to date to increase safety to Mr. Kennedy.
“Main” presidential candidates are eligible for Secret Service safety however will not be assured it. Whether or not to grant safety is as much as the secretary of homeland safety, in session with congressional leaders from each main events, and impartial and third-party candidates are much less probably than Democrats and Republicans to obtain it.
In a fund-raising e-mail on Tuesday morning, Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign reiterated its complaints concerning the Biden administration and the Democratic Occasion, describing the celebration as corrupt and attacking its escalating authorized efforts to problem his poll entry and its refusal to permit a debate between Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Biden.
“The Democrat political machine is pulling out each trick within the e book to cease our large momentum,” the e-mail stated. “With infinite sources, institution Democrats wish to cease a debate between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Biden. They’re utilizing an unlimited community of shadowy darkish cash teams and cruel attorneys to maintain Kennedy-Shanahan ticket off state ballots and unfold malicious smears.”
Dr. Levitsky and Dr. Berman each famous that it was uncommon, in a democratic nation, for a politician to explicitly reject democratic norms. It’s extra frequent for them to attempt to create a cloud of doubt so voters battle to know what’s true.
“Those that have interaction in misinformation about democracy, those that muddy the waters about what’s and isn’t democratic, are complicit within the assault on our democracy,” Dr. Levitsky stated. “The form of conduct that sustains a democracy hasn’t modified over time.”
