RFK Jr. streams his own "real debate" during Trump-Biden debate
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to the Trump-Biden debate Thursday night in real time, in what his campaign called "The Real Debate."
CNN excluded RFK Jr. from the debate, determining he didn't meet criteria including a polling threshold and appearance on a sufficient number of states' ballots to win the presidency. Kennedy and his team argued that former President Donald Trump and President Biden aren't yet on any ballots, since the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention haven't yet taken place.
Kennedy's campaign filed a complaint last month with the Federal Election Commission accusing CNN, Mr. Biden, Trump and their campaigns of violating federal election law.
"CNN is making prohibited corporate contributions to both campaigns and the Biden committee and the Trump committee have accepted these prohibited corporate contributions," the complaint said.
Kennedy's response was streamed on "X" and TheRealDebate.com from a studio in Los Angeles. John Stossel, who formerly worked for ABC News and Fox News, served in the role of a moderator during the one-man appearance.
During the event, the CNN debate was shown, but was paused after Mr. Biden and Trump gave their answers to a particular question to allow for Kennedy to respond.
Kennedy blamed both Mr. Biden and Trump for inflation and the national deficit, the first two questions posed by CNN's moderators Thursday night, and also criticized both for their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for the closure of businesses.
On the issue of border security, Kennedy said Trump was "more right" than Mr. Biden, but on foreign policy, he again had heavy criticism for both candidates. While Trump alleged Mr. Biden allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, Kennedy noted Trump also transferred weapons to Ukraine during his presidency and walked away from a nuclear treaty with Russia.
"The two of them are equally culpable in the provocations that led to this war," Kennedy said, while also noting he was not "excusing Putin," who he said should not have invaded Ukraine in the first place.
Kennedy also pledged support for Israel in its war against Hamas and against any Iran-backed proxies.
Kennedy stressed the importance of funding Social Security. "It would be outrageous if the United States government did not live up to its full faith and credit of paying back those obligations."
Unlike the Trump-Biden debate, Kennedy's appearance had a live audience.
Earlier this week, in a video posted to Twitter, one of Kennedy's sons described his father's debate plan, saying Kennedy would "have the other two candidates up there as well, saying what they say live, and then we're gonna give my dad a chance to respond, live."
CBS News covered the Biden-Trump debate live as it happened.