All right, guys, very excited to welcome back to the program.
RFK Junior.
He, of course, is presidential candidate, activist, and author.
Great Cazar.
Good Cazar, thanks for having me back. It's wonderful to be back with you.
Yeah, truly, it's truly our pleasure.
I wanted to get off the top of your reaction to breaking news. Of course, we have new charges filed against former President Trump with regards to his handling of classified documents and alleged obstruction. Just wanted to get your reaction to those indictments.
You know, I don't know enough about him. I mean, I would say this, and you know I'm not giving you anything special or any kind of special insight, information or insight. I thought the New York case was a very weak case, and if I had been a prosecutor, I would not have brought it, mainly because it's the president of the United States, and so you have to kind of tiptoe through the minefields of your prosecutor because you want to avoid the optics that this is a
political prosecution. In the United States, We've always tried to avoid those optics. But this case looks much stronger, and the reason to me it's surprising is because the judge penetrated the attorney client privilege, which almost never happens. And you know, normally the conversations between between an attorney and a client are privileged and no court can look at those.
But in this case, the exception is if the attorney and the client are plotting a crime together or involved in sort of some kind of criminal conspiracy, then the
courts will allow that to be penetrated. And once the determination is made and that threshold is passed, where the court says, okay, you can now look at conversations between the client and its attorney, it is it is really really, it'll be mayhem the client because a client was was having those conversations assuming nobody would ever see them, and
that he could he could say anything he wanted. I think that that, you know that that makes this case look very real and I think very dangerous for President Trump.
Sir, would you ever consider a pardon for President Trump?
I wouldn't even talk about that at this point. Got it?
Gotcha?
We wanted to ask you too a little bit about your views of current President Biden. So one of the concerns among the general public and among Democratic primary voters as well, is about his age and his just ability to perform the job that is entailed as president of the United States. Do you personally think that Joe Biden is fit to serve as president for another four years?
You know, I don't know. I don't have any idea. I think people around him should be giving him good advice on that if they think that there's a lack of mental acuity, or lack of capacity to deal with crises, or lack of independent and you know, an ability to exercise the independent and very good judgment. I think that they have. His family and his counselors have a have an obligation to our country to, you know, to tell him to step down. But I don't have any kind
of insight. And you know, I see some of the films.
And stuff, right, and you know him, don't you.
Yeah, but I haven't seen him in years. And when I you know, when I had interactions with him, he was always very sharp, and so I don't know what he's like now behind the scene, I mean always we see them in these kind of bubbles and and so I have no idea how to assess that.
Yeah, well, that's why it'd be good to have debates so that the American people could assess for themselves.
I agree, sir.
One of the interesting things in primary differences between yourself and President Bien eve Ben talking about is the way that you would approach the war in Ukraine. So I'm curious right now we see recent polling have in front of me about seventy nine percent of Democrats saying, according to Axios IPSO, say that they support continuing military aid
to Ukraine. Since you are a Democratic candidate, how do you plan on changing some of people's minds within the Democratic base about the US approach to Ukraine.
I mean, my only way of doing that is to continue talking about it and continuing to sort of get people too. You know, I don't think you even have to change people's minds about the war. You know, about what there. I mean, you know clearly Putin is you know, I broke the law. He's a gangster. You know, this was a brutal invasion that could have been avoided. So and I don't think you need to change people's minds
about that. I think we all want peace. And you know the number of Ukrainians who have now died, some estimates are over three hundred and fifty thousand the kids Ukrainian kids on the front lines, and then fourteen or fifteen thousand civilians, and that's not good for anybody, and then one hundred dollars thirty to eighty thousand Russians, and you know, nobody, it's just not good for anybody. We
should we should be looking for paths to piece. And I think most America, if you frame the polling question, should we be looking for paths to piece? I think most people will agree that we should be. That this
is not good for anybody. And it's definitely not good from a geopolitical strategy for US because it's you know, we said, well, we're going to bankrupt Russia, but we really destroying the economy in Europe and pushing Russia into the embrace with China, which is the worst geopolitical outcome that we could possibly have. So I don't think this is good for us. It's not good for America certainly.
And the cost of the war is enormous, one hundred and thirteen billions so far that you know, the entire budget of EPA is twelve billion dollars a year. The budget for CDC is twelve billion we have. We have fifty seven percent of Americans who cannot put their hands on one thousand dollars if they have an emergency. We've just cut food stamps, the SNAP program, the thirty million
Americans by ninety percent. Oh you know, I have a friend who is a commercial fisherman, worked his whole life building his business, but he doesn't benefit and he's now on disability and he's been surviving on two hundred and eighty dollars with the food stamps a month. He got a call on March first that that was cut to twenty five dollars a month. And try to feed yourself on ninety cents a day. And meanwhile, because of them, we're paying for all these wars and sixteen billion dollars
for the lockdowns. We have spiraling inflation which has driven the cost of primary food stuffs seventy six percent in two years. So he's dealing with, you know, this rising cost of food and his food stamps getting cut to twenty five dollars. That same month, we topped off Ukrainian eate at one hundred and thirteen billion and we pin at printed three hundred billion more for the silicon. But Tabilla at the Silicon Valley banks, and so we got
lots in the ridge and for the war machine. And yet Americans are really in a place of terrible, terrible hardship. If we took money that we're giving to the Ukraine, we could pay for all of the food stamps for every American without any cuts at all. And so those the choices we're making are you know, we're going to
starve people in our country. And in order to do something that I think we also need to look behind the sort of comic book depictions of this war that it's a black and white war, which is the same kind of comic book depictions that they give us to justify every war. And we need to look at the US role in the series of US provocations that without which this war would probably never have happened.
I want to ask you a little bit more.
It doesn't excuse Vladimir Putin, it doesn't exclude vatamt ter Pot, but we, the neocons and the White House, bear a lot of responsibility for this conflict.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about. Okay, so if you're president, you're going to cut back the military aid, You're going to seek a diplomatic solution in Ukraine.
What would you do.
To bolster the economic prospects of the American people? For example, do you support things like federal jobs guarantee, do you support a universal basic income? What would your economic platform be to help working class Americans?
I mean, my primary platform is to cut the costs on the military, you know, to get what we were told was a peace dividenda after the collapse that the Soviet Union in the end of the Cold War in nineteen ninety two, we were going to cut our military budget from about six hundred billion a year to two hundred billion a year, and that instead of making you know, a billion dollar stealth bomber it can't fly in the rain, we were going to take that money and invested in
the schools, in infrastructure, and in rebuilding America. And instead, you know, we've had the military and complex running our foreign policy and the neocons, and instead of going down to two hundred billion, we're now at one point three trillion if you look at all the costs associated with the military, and we need to cut that back to the levels that we were promised somewhere around those levels.
Of course, we need to protect our country. But we can do that by building fortress of America, arming ourselves to the teeth at home, and then spending that money to rebuild the industrial base in this country and rebuild the middle class. I mean, my job is going to rebuild the American middle class. We had a period in this country that I was lucky enough to grow up at the height of beginning at the end of World War two to about nineteen eighty that's called economists called
the Great Great Prosperity. It was the largest economic growth in the history of the world. We had the biggest and most robust middle class. We had. The middle class was an economic engine that generated half the wealth on the face of the earth from the American middle class. And people wanted our products. People, you know, loved our
country by the way we were. We were really worshiped around the globe and looked to for a moral authority and leadership and uh, you know, and I would like to get back to that kind of America where we focus on building our economy at home rather than wars abroad.
And does that just to clarify, do you support either a federal jobs guarantee or a universal basic income as part of that program.
I don't know about that. I need to look at those things, you know, and see, and I need to talk to a lot of economists and talk about the ups and downs of those issues. You know. I can see a lot of problems with those issues, which I think are obvious to anybody. And it's a real departure from American free market capitalism. I'd like to try to give this system a chance to work.
What do you think the minimum WAG should be, sir?
And let me say something about that. I A You know, the reason I wouldn't just say an outright no to the universal basic income and I guarantee his jobs program is because I don't really understand what AI is going to do to our country and what self driving I mean, you know, even with self driving ch cars. And I talked to this to Elon Musk about this a couple of weeks ago. I read an article and I don't know if this is true or not, that over forty
percent of American jobs include driving. So if you cut away all the driving cars, which is what the intention and aspiration of this, you know, of this new technology is, I do not know what that's going to do to the American economy. I mean, we've had big dis locations before, you know, the end of the of slavery, for example, in our country, and we had to do these big
economic readjustments. And then the invention of the automobile around at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds, when you had a you know, if you were a buget buggy whip manufacturer, that job disappeared, or if you or you know, a buggy manufacturer, whatever, a stable. Those jobs disappeared in a couple of years, but they were replaced by new jobs,
and in most cases they were better jobs. They were manufacturing jobs in factories, they were and if those were very high paying, and that's what supported the growth of the American middle class. Oh, I do not know, And you know, I'm talking to people right now about this. I had a long talk with Jack Dorsey this morning, and I'm talking with a lot of people in the tech sector about how we're going to prepare ourselves for a for the AI economy when a lot of human jobs,
even the writers in Hollywood. You know, one of the reasons for this right now is that you know, they have chat g GBT right which which can write a script for you in seconds. And you know a lot of people, even you know, high level white collar jobs maybe on the chopping block and may disappear, and we may have we may face massive, massive unemployment over the next few years. And I think we really need the best minds in the world to come together and figure
out how to protect ourselves against this. And so that's why I wouldn't instantaneously rule out, you know, some kind of universal incomer guaranteed jobs, which normally I would be I would have a lot of antipathy for that because I'm like a free market capitalism guy. But so I don't you know, So that's why I'm edging on that.
Sure, Just a return to the minimum wage question, assuming you know nothing does change. Do you have a specific number that you think the minimum wage should be.
I don't have a specific number, but I think people should have a living wage in this country. You know, people shouldn't be able to feed themselves right now, is that thirty five Americans could not do not are not making enough money to pay for basic human needs. And that means food, transportation, and housing, And that means those Americans are sitting on the precipice of you know, of a cliff that they're inches away from or on top of becoming homeless, and that is you know, that's the
catastrophe for our country. So we have to figure out ways if raising the minimum wage is one of the ways that we insulate them or you know, or or improve those to mitigate those outcomes. We ought to be doing that.
To your point about you know, when we had a growing middle class, when we had shared prosperity, part of that picture was much higher union density. And I know you've been a vocal supporter of you know, the writers are on strike right now, vocal supporter of labor unions in general. I wanted to get more specifics for you on what you would do to help rebuild union density
and union membership. As you know, right now, the system is so rigged against workers, are so difficult for them to even exercise their rights to collectively bargain, exercise their rights to form a union. Do you support things like the Proact? Are you at all interested in like the sectoral bargaining that Gavin Newsom has been experimenting with in California that other countries do as well.
What's your what are your views there?
I mean, we need to build rebuild unions in this country because it's one of the key ways we can counterbalance is, you know, the the domination of our government by corporate power. The unions have always when I was a kid, forty five percent of the labor for US was unionized. Today it's less than right and that was a counterbalance to, you know, to corporate power at the national level, and now that is kind of has gone.
Even the unions that are active are not participating in the way that they used to in in politics and the political system, which they need to get it be involved in. I you know, I want, we need to we need to protect collective bargaining. I don't, you know, the right to work well laws are are damaging to that. I oppose those and I support, you know, any way that makes sense of growing the strength of of you know, worker solidarity.
Sir.
I've noticed, though, you've gotten quite a bit of support recently for Tremath Polyhopotilla David Sachs. So you had the Twitter spaces with Elon Musk and they're at least some of these people are supporting your campaign. Given your support amongst them, how are you going to approach technology companies and whether they should be broken up or not.
Well, oddly enough, you know, like the conversation I had with Jack Torrisy this morning was exactly along those lines. And you know, I'm impressed. And I know a lot of people don't feel this way about Elon Mosk and Jack Dorrisy, but I really find them incredibly patriotic and
incredibly committed the democracy. And you know, I didn't a lot of those activities and their behavior was kind of obscure to me while I was on the I've been on the other end of the censorship, but I did take note very early on in the pandemic when the White House and Adam Schiff were asking the tech companies to sensor people like me who were challenging you know, a lot of the orthodoxies, that the one company that
stood up was Twitter. And I also, you know, although Elon Musk is now vilified from the laft by the left, which he shouldn't be, he should be. You know, to me, he's a hero. He's a guy who who came in and restored a free expression on Twitter. And you know that I think the left sees that and they say, well, you're you're letting Donald Trump talk now, but that was not his intention. His intention was to let everybody talk, you know. Because he made that choice, he lost billions
of dollars. And you know, he said to me in our conversation when I asked him about that, he said, It's worth every penny that I lose because we need free speech in America. Because if we don't have free speech in America, we don't have democracy in America. And if we don't have democracy in America, it's the end
of the world. And I feel like he feels that way, and that he's going to be a good ally for me when I'm in office, and that dors He is too, because they have this very, very natal commitment to free speech.
And I think they saw these you know, I mean, you guys, remember, we were all promised that the you know, at the outset of the when the social media was selling itself to us, that it was it was going to become the instrument it was going to democratize communications around the world, and instead they become the instrument for
totalitarian control. And it's very ironic, but I do think that you know, some of these guys, at least the ones that I'm talking to, including David's Acts, are absolutely committed to, you know, to figuring out how to make censorship proof on social media sites, and they're doing that with Noster. You know, Noster, I think is the first one, and I think that's really promising. And some of this blockchain technology that's coming out of Bitcoin will be very,
very useful. And by the way, you know, I understand that some of my fellow liberals unlike Elon Muss because they think he's giving a voice to Donald Trump and to some of the you know, Donald Trump's supporters.
Well let me speak to that a little bit.
I just want to remember to remind you this. In nineteen seventy seven, there was a march by Nazi by the Nazi American Nazi Party in Skoki, Illinois, through a Jewish neighborhood, and the liberal infrastructure, including the ac LU and everybody else turned out to support their right to march right, and nobody is agreeing with what they're saying.
What they're saying is appalling and repulsive and repellent. But you know, we need to be willing to die in our country for their right to say those things, because if somebody can sens to them, they can sensor the rest of us do, and that's just going to end up benefiting the oligarchy and the military industrial complex.
Well it's we actually interviewed Jack Dorsey yesterday, so this is really relevant. And you know, I'm on the left and I support free speech and anti censorship as well. I supported bringing Donald Trump back on to Twitter. What has concerned me about Elon Musk's leadership is the places
where he hasn't met his free speech commitments. And I'll give you a few specific examples when he censored journalists who were critical of him, when he bent to demands from the Turkish government ahead of a critical election there to censor journalists who were digging into you know what the the what Erdawan was up to, also bending to
requests from the Modi government in India as well. So what do you say to those critiques of Elon Musk that he actually hasn't lived up to his commitment and his stated principle that he is in favor of free speech absolutism.
Well, you know, I'm not gonna you know, my job is not defending els. I would bet you this is crystal that if you asked him those questions that he would have a pretty good answer for them, and I can guess that part of it. You know, I don't know why he censored the people who are criticizing him. I know that he did respond to that, but I
don't recall what his response was. But one of the things that Dorisy talked to me about this morning was the difficulty of operating in foreign countries and now all across Europe where they're demanding censorship, right, and so you have to make a choice in some of these countries. And you know, Turkey is is not a freedom of
speech country. You have to make a choice. Am I going to continue to operate this institution in this country and bring some of the benefits that it does and the revenue to you know, my shareholders in my company, or I'm going to you know, make us stand here and die on this hill and and and you know, report the truth and then be shut down the next day. So, I, you know, I don't know what he would say, but I can imagine that those are some of the really difficult choices he was forced to make.
Yeah, well, that is actually what he did say in response, is that his commitment to free speech goes as far as the laws of a certain country provide, which raises a lot of questions. Is actually what Jack Dorsey brought up with us yesterday is that when Dorsey was head of Twitter, he tried to take a more global approach. This is in his words, So he received requests from the Indian government. They either threatened or actually did rate
his offices. According to him, they pulled staff from the country and were concerned about operating there, but they didn't accede to the demands. So what is your view of the way that those things should be handled, Because you know, if you look at any sort of totalitarian government, they're going to have egregious anti free speech laws on the books.
Is the responsibility of someone who claims to be a free speech advocate to stand up to those governments or just to abide by whatever the law is and whatever that authoritarian government.
Demands, Ystal. I think that's a really good, good question, and it's a really troubling issue. And I think the you know, right now, it's becoming more and more difficult because there are competitors within those countries that have the ability to completely replace you know, institutionals like Twitter, where we're the Twitter, and you know, some of these other social media companies are now no longer all powerful. If you go to China there they got each one of
them has competitors there. And if you drive the American companies out, you know, is the country going to be and is free speech I'm more likely to be protected or not? I don't know. I think all of the I don't think at this point there's probably any hard
and fast answer. And I suspect, although I'm not an expert on this, that Jack Dorsey it was an easier decision when he made it than it probably is for ELI today because of the change landscapes of social media and in the growth of indigenous cut companies within those within those, you know, i'd say tyrannical systems, sir.
Just to last questions for you, I'm curious what your view is of corporations like bud Light getting involved in Pride Month and in trans issues.
I would say those are those are strategy choices for them, And my understanding of bud Light is that they probably regret having made that choice because there was such a strong consumer reaction, and that's probably the best way to work things, rather than you know, for them to make, you know, their own decisions about about how to operate
and you know, how to keep their consumers going. I mean, listen, I would love companies to do the right thing on the environment, even if it's against their economic interests, you know, And I'd love it if we had laws. But it's not it's not a reliable Uh, it's it's not a reliable way to change policy is to you know, you need you need laws that are actually enforceable, that that do what you know what laws and the democracy are supposed to do, which is to encourage support and reward
good behavior and then to punish bad behavior. Sure, and then if we want to do it in a reliable way, we needed to do it through legislation rather than to rely on on you know, corporate goodwill. If corporations act in ways that are sociable, you know, I commend them, but.
I can't rely on that, certainly, Tagan.
Last question on my pet issue that I know a lot of people want to know, will you declassify all UFO related documents as.
Pres Yeah, let me ask you something. Oh please, did you see this article last week about the guy about Yes.
We've covered it extensively here.
Yeah, And do you think that that was a psyop or do you think that that was real?
I believe it was real based upon a lot of credible people who I know, who have spoken with him and have vetted him.
Why don't you tell people what we're talking about?
Sure? Sure, yeah. For those who don't know.
Dave Grush, who's an intel whistleblower, came forward through the intelligence community process. He says that multiple alien spacecraft are in the possession of the United States government. The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community says that he is highly
credible and as bringing forward urgent information. And actually several representatives in Congress were asked about it just thirty minutes or so before you and I spoke, and many of them, including Senator Jill Brand, Senator Holly Bipartisanship, if you will, all said that they were credible in that they had asked the they had asked the intelligence community about that, and were quote unquote rang true at least in some cases.
Yeah.
Well, I can't wait to be bresident of the United States and and dig into that one. That's really that is fascinating.
And what is your what is your view of the UFO phenomena just your personal.
I don't really, I mean, I don't know anything about it other than I'm very very good friends with with dan Ackroight, who's kind of devoted his life to studying that phenomenon. Is you know, very very convincedive. But I've never seen a UFO. And but you know, I also the stuff that I've read, you know of people, you know, the particularly the navy pilots who have you know, who have recorded these encounters seem you know, I'm not I'm
certainly not going to dismiss it. It seems like it's real, but I don't have I don't have a good, uh a good grasp on it. But I mean, and that article you were talking about was fascinating because it was just exactly what men in blacks that is actually happening. That you know, they gave us a velcrow and all of this.
That.
Yeah, well, I always say, I mean, I try to keep the skeptic hat on and say, it's hard for me imagine that they'd be able to have this cover up across multiple governments, across multiple decades, administrations, all these years. But I have a feeling you might dispute the possibility of such a cover up occurring.
Exactly, especially what happened to your own family.
Sir. I know your staff says you got to get out of here, so I just want to say thank you very much for joining us. It was really a pleasure to speak with you again, and you were welcome back on the show anytime.
Love talking to you. Thank you, y I love coming.
On the show, So thank you very much for having me.
Thank you for our pleasure.