
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t hold back at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, where he took the stage and ripped into the party he used to call home.
With a crowd of Republicans cheering him on, Kennedy declared that he hadn’t left the Democratic Party—it had left him. And he didn’t hesitate to explain why, taking the opportunity to outline exactly how, in his view, the Democrats have veered far from their original values.
“It is not the party anymore of Martin Luther King, of Robert Kennedy, of John Kennedy,” he stated. Back in the day, Kennedy recalled, Democrats stood for things like civil rights, constitutional freedoms, and nurturing the middle class. “That was the party of peace,” he said, emphasizing that it’s now become the party of censorship and surveillance—the very things Democrats once swore to protect citizens against. Kennedy noted that his uncle, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, wrote Title IX to protect women’s sports, yet the Democrats are now “dismantling women’s sports by letting men play women’s sports.”
The Democratic Party, Kennedy continued, is hardly the party of the working class anymore. Today, it’s a playground for Wall Street elites and tech titans. He didn’t mince words, mentioning that Bill Gates recently poured $50 million into Kamala Harris’s campaign, and the Harris team is “proud” of endorsements from figures like John Bolton, Dick Cheney, and a crew of CIA veterans—hardly the “man of the people” endorsements Democrats would have worn proudly in his father’s day.
Kennedy didn’t stop at corporate influence; he delved into how the party is weaponizing government agencies against political rivals, from Trump to Kennedy himself. He pointed out that, instead of playing fair, Democrats have opted to sideline the traditional primary system.
“It’s the party of Wall Street. It’s the party of Bill Gates, who just gave $50 million to Kamala Harris,” he said. “The Harris campaign is very proud that it received the endorsement of 50 former CIA agents and officers and of John Bolton and of Dick Cheney.”
“These are the people that are trying to undermine voting rights in this country by weaponizing the federal agencies against political candidates, including me and Donald Trump and all other political candidates,” he continued. “They can’t win an election. And instead of bringing in a candidate who wins the primaries, abolish the primaries, and then picked two candidates, anointed them, without receiving votes. We don’t even know how Kamala Harris received the nomination.”
Taking aim at the Democrats’ alliances with “Big Pharma, big banks, big tech, and big food,” Kennedy argued that the party has essentially turned into a cash cow for special interests. And his critique went beyond politics—Kennedy hit on the health crisis sweeping the nation. Today, 60% of Americans suffer from chronic diseases, he said, comparing this figure to when his uncle John F. Kennedy was president and only 6% of Americans had chronic health conditions.
“It is the party that’s given us the sickest children in the history of the world,” he continued. “When my uncle was president, 6% of Americans had chronic disease, and we spent zero on chronic disease in this country. Today, 60% of Americans have chronic disease. This is existential for our country. We’re spending $4.3 trillion a year, five times our military budget, 77% of American boys cannot qualify for military service because of chronic disease diagnoses.”
.@RobertKennedyJr‘s full speech at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. pic.twitter.com/pmtJS5gRMy
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 27, 2024
For Kennedy, the Democrats’ shift toward catering to the elite rather than representing the everyday American is a betrayal of what the party once stood for. By calling attention to this, he’s making his position clear: the values he believes in align much more with Trump and the Republicans than the party that once bore his family name. And judging by the crowd’s reaction, plenty of Americans seem to agree.