The Bloody Truth About the DNC Attacks on Kennedy - and the Need to Keep Fighting

by Anne Keala Kelly  The Kennedy Beacon

These are the days, the hours, and the moments that will decide the future of our nation. 

After Nicole Shanahan’s interview on the podcast Impact Theory, it was like the wind went out of every sail of the Kennedy-Shanahan armada. Fear spread of the duo quitting their monumental campaign to tear down the duopoly and give people a chance to vote for an alternative.

Shanahan succinctly detailed the brute force of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) extraordinary assault on their campaign, which includes infiltration, perpetual lies fed to a willing and complicit media, and ceaseless lawsuits. Unable to win on principle, Democrats, absurdly in the name of democracy, are determined to sue Kennedy and all third-party opponents into submission by breaking them economically. 

Pinned at the top of Shanahan’s X page is a quote from the recent podcast interview:

“Clear Choice PAC—the most undemocratic, anti-American PAC in the game—has been suing our campaign in nearly every major jurisdiction with frivolous lawsuits to get us removed from the ballots. Seventy-one percent of Americans want a viable third-party choice. The American public, through this massive ballot effort, delivered it. Blood, sweat, and tears went into the biggest effort for democracy in my lifetime. WHO IS CLEAR CHOICE PAC? …They are ruthless saboteurs of democracy.”

Powerful words that make her a true patriot and a perfect running mate for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The fight Kennedy has waged since he announced he was running for president in April 2023, in Boston, has been so far off the known charts of political campaigns that new maps are being drawn to explain the more than 1 million people (total) – people from every state – who have signed his ballot access petitions. 

The media has irresponsibly underplayed this effort; to date, Kennedy/Shanahan are either officially on the ballot or have submitted enough signatures to be on the ballot in all of the nation’s 50 states, with new certifications happening every week.

But the DNC-backed lawsuits, with slick, high-priced lawyers and a war chest of millions of dollars, keep coming.

Earlier this week, Kennedy posted a brief rundown on X about the latest DNC legal assaults and a Pennsylvania judge who refused to let him testify. Within two hours, more than a million people had seen it. An X post by EndTribalism articulated Kennedy supporters’ frustration: 

“Judge Lori Dumas is the Democratic judge who didn’t allow RFK Jr. to testify yesterday in a case deciding if he can be on the Pennsylvania ballot. Can someone explain why a Democrat judge is allowed to preside over a case she clearly has a vested interest in? How is this not a conflict of interest? … Our judicial system is being manipulated and weaponized by the Democratic Party and they are not even trying to hide it.”

Nothing in modern presidential races has been as bloody as what is being done to Kennedy. The smearing, the lying, the Lis Smith-ing – nothing compares. But to a large extent, that says more about Kennedy’s character than it does about the DNC. He is a man on a mission who was forced to leave his party, the party his family’s name has helped sustain for more than 60 years, rather than to quit his conscience.

This thing we call lawfare, which is political warfare expressed through the DNC’s abuse of the legal system, is being waged at the expense of democracy itself. And that is the wall that Kennedy has been forced to scale. It is the highest, hardest climb, and it’s Sisyphean: he has to do it over and over because, as Shanahan said, the lawsuits are endless. Will Kennedy be the one to finally get the boulder to the top of the hill?

The battle he has fought for 17 months has been epic, and he’s been swinging the sword of Ronan — a rogue warrior without a master since he was forced out of the Democratic Party late last year. Running as an independent with only the cover of the Constitution, he has sliced backwards and sideways at every evil DNC assault heaped on him. 

Bearing witness to Kennedy defending against censorship has been a study of democracy in motion. Bitter and hard to watch at times, Kennedy’s dedication to the principles of free speech reminds us that the First Amendment is the most fundamental of all American rights. Without it, there can be no such thing as democracy. 

Kennedy also knows that every moment of national division is an opportunity for unity. He has preached that. His supporters believe it. But the duopoly doesn’t want to listen. 

Instead of bringing the country together, both parties go on about themselves, their “base,” which is code for their donors. Meanwhile, they have masterfully vilified and silenced  an independent candidate who, if given the chance on the debate stage, would prove he is the best person for the job.

Though Shanahan, during her Impact Theory interview, stopped short of saying the campaign is calling it quits, just the idea of giving up after so many months of struggle, and so many victories against the uniparty machine, feels like a gut punch.

But AV24 co-founder, Tony Lyons, reinjected reason to hope. “After a hit piece nearly every day for months, after rigged primaries, rigged debates, rigged ballot access, rigged polling,” Lyons told the press. “Bobby is still front and center as a potential spoiler, a potential kingmaker, as the candidate who might force a contingent election or a wild card candidate who might just emerge as a centrist, common sense alternative candidate who comes out of nowhere and wins the whole thing.”

If Kennedy leaves the presidential race, we will of course have to live with his choice. But as one of the millions who see him as the only candidate willing to put everything on the line, to move the needle on the toughest issues facing the American people, I hope he remembers that it is always darkest before the dawn. Things get really hard — even unbearable sometimes — before there is a breakthrough.