Kennedy Dazzles on Fox's 'Hannity'

Spirited Town Hall broadcast Tuesday night

In a packed and at times raucous town hall event on New York’s West Side on Tuesday night, Fox News anchor Sean Hannity welcomed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., declaring near the top of the live-to-tape one-hour show, “We are not going to shut him down!” 

The audience boisterously applauded.

Hannity’s first question to Kennedy was direct yet significant: Why was he challenging a sitting president within his own party? Kennedy responded by referring to a study that revealed a decline in American pride over the years. “I want my own children to grow up as proud of this country as I was,” he said. “I grew up in a time when we believed that this country was the greatest country in history.”

Over the hour, Hannity asked Kennedy about poverty, healthcare, vaccines, censorship, and the war in Ukraine. When asked what he would do if he could negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, Kennedy said, “We have to, there is no choice. Russia can’t lose this war. It’s like us losing a war to Mexico.”

As one sign of his fatigue with liberal-leaning media bashing, Kennedy referenced an interview he had with an editor at The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago. “‘What qualifies you to be the president?’ he asked me,” Kennedy recalled. “You have never been in Congress, never been a governor, never been in the Senate. Well, for me, that’s probably the best qualification.”

Both Hannity and Kennedy brought up the nature of today's Democratic party throughout the event. Hannity opined that the party seemed to prioritize compliance, pushing for unwavering support for President Biden without providing room for dissenting voices like Kennedy's. Hannity pointed out that despite such intolerance,  Kennedy remained loyal to the party. “You are a Democrat, you said that in the censorship hearing where they censored you,” Hannity said, referencing last week’s ‘weaponization of the government’ hearing, during which Democrats attacked Kennedy and signed a petition to forbid him from testifying. (It failed to pass.) 

Kennedy responded that he remains the kind of Democrat the party used to produce. His party, he said, has changed. 

“The Democratic Party does not censor people, we are not the party of war, we are not the party of the neocons dictating foreign policy,” he said. “We are the party of the middle class and we are the party of the working people and that’s not where the party is anymore.”

Questioning President Biden’s fitness to lead the country, Hannity showed Kennedy a slickly-produced video featuring Biden’s recent verbal faux pas. The host then asked Kennedy whether he thinks Biden is fit to lead, noting, “the world is a dangerous place.”

Diplomatically, Kennedy answered: “Well, he has never been good with words,” an understatement which elicited laughter in the crowd. Hannity playfully responded, “You get an A+ for that answer.” Kennedy calmly continued, “I avoid personal attacks on people.”

Kennedy concluded the town hall by stating that he aims to end the polarization in America by telling the truth. “People in this country know that the system is rigged and they know that they are being lied to,” he said.

Hannity didn’t let Kennedy off easy, but he gave him an open platform for dialogue and a chance to explain his views on a wide range of pressing issues. That is more than most media outlets have done.