RFK, Jr on Your World 6/6

Yesterday [tag]Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.[/tag] was on Neil Cavuto’s show on FNC. Here follows the transcript of that exchange.

Fox News has video available here.

Ian also has video at Expose the Left.

Cavuto: Well to hear Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tell it, John Kerry should be President of the United States right now but he was robbed in 2004. Robbed nationally and apparently really robbed in the State of [tag]Ohio[/tag], that state that delivered the electoral votes President Bush needed to make him a a second term occupant of the White House. But do Kennedy’s charges hold up, or is RFK, Jr. just worked up about an outcome he did not like? Let’s ask him. Robert, good to have you.

RFK, Jr.: Thanks for having me Neil.

Cavuto: You’re a democrat.

RFK, Jr.: I’m a democrat, but I have worked 22 years – this should not be a democrat issue – it should not be a partisan issue. It’s clear that the, that republican officials in Ohio and other states, have mounted a deliberate, concerted effort to, to fix the 2004 election…

[You make a charge that the republicans have made a deliberate, concerted effort to fix the 2004 election and this is not a partisan issue? – Ed.]

Cavuto: But it’s not clear. Where do you say it’s clear?

RFK, Jr.: Well, you know, there were 22 lawsuits at that time, it was very, very clear that there were 350,000 mainly democratic voters who either refused the opportunity to vote in Ohio or whose votes were never counted. There were 80,000 voters in 12 western counties whose votes were shifted from [tag]Kerry[/tag] to [tag]Bush[/tag].

Cavuto: Well, okay now. Salon – a liberal site one might argue – has looked at all your allegations and said the numbers just don’t jibe. You had a record 5.5 million people, record number of people voted in that state. There are going to be irregularities, but look at this.. The Akron Beacon-Journal, the Columbia Dispatch, the editor of the Columbus Dispatch, the Dayton Daily News, all months, and in one case 18 months after the fact, said the voting was okay, where are you coming from?

RFK, Jr.: Well, there’s other people, there are three books out there, there are many, many other people who have, who have looked at the facts and said obviously the voting was not okay. Republicans tried to – mainly [tag]Kenneth Blackwell[/tag] who was both the Secretary of State and therefore in charge of managing the integrity of the electoral process and at the same time served as the chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign – there’s been a congressional report, a very thorough congressional report, that found that the election indeed was stolen. John Conyers’ committee interviewed thousands of people…

Cavuto: A democrat. And that again was refuted when they looked at the number of provisional ballots – that was a big part of your argument that the election was stolen – 4.2 provisional ballots, in other words file provisional ballots that were ultimately thrown out – 4.2 percent Kerry, 4.1 percent Bush, so it cut both ways.

RFK, Jr.: Well, the data that you’re reading from is from a Salon article that has been completely discredited. If you look online actually at Salon’s website today I haven’t replied to that but dozens of other people do as well. The gentleman who wrote that article…

Cavuto: Okay. 174,000 that you say were put off by long lines, all right, but, it turns out the number was closer to 129,000 and that that vote, this is coming from the state elections commission, that vote was roughly evenly divided between Kerry and Bush.

RFK, Jr.: Again, that is the wrong data. The correct number from the report that he cites is 170,000 voters and they were not all they were not evenly divided between Bush and Kerry, they were principally Kerry voters. You know, and if you look at, I urge you to go to the Salon site, because the data…

Cavuto: Let me ask you, why … The election was almost two years ago why raise this now? Why not weeks after the election? “ah ha! I’ve got this!” Why now?

RFK, Jr.: Because, Neil, our electoral process, if it is being tampered with, if the integrity is at stake, it’s always a timely story. And a lot of this data has come out recently, a lot of the, you know, really important data that indicates that in fact the election was stolen.

Now I want to say this, I never say in this article that the election was stolen. Because there’s no proof that it was stolen. [emphasis mine – Ed.] There never will be the proof because the ballots were never counted.

Cavuto: You’re saying that the secretary of state of that state potentially tried to re-jigger it for the republicans? That’s stealing.

RFK, Jr.: Absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s federal judges that have said the exact same thing. There’s 22 lawsuits against them, most of them are one against Kenneth Blackwell and the judiciary, the judges, republican judges, said the same thing, that Kenneth Blackwell was trying to suppress the …

Cavuto: Why can’t you turn around and say Kerry botched it? He didn’t win?

RFK, Jr.: Well, I know that that’s the, I mean, that that’s the republican talking point…

[The republican talking point is that Bush won the 2004 election and that Kerry lost the 2004 election. Looks like the truth to me. Bush won, Kerry lost. That’s why Bush is currently in the White House. Talking point. Hmph. -Ed.]

Cavuto: No, no, no, no. That’s coming from the democratic party chairman after the election. That’s coming from the state democratic representative, that’s coming from four democratic precinct directors…

RFK, Jr.: I’m not here to defend Senator Kerry or his performance in the campaign. What I saw is clear evidence, and I urge you to read my article Neil…

Cavuto: I did. I read it line by line Bobby.

RFK, Jr.: Clear evidence that the whether the election was stolen or not, there was a deliberate, concerted effort by republican officials to steal the election. Not just in Ohio, but ….

[… by democrats in, oh say, Wisconsin Mr. Kennedy? – Ed.]

Cavuto: Do you think it serves any purpose, Bob, with the President in the White House right now, in a time of war, to say that he is an illegal occupant of that … Essentially, that’s what you’re saying… He shouldn’t be in there.

RFK, Jr.: What I’m saying in this article is that our electoral process is broken and that people can no longer go to the polls and expect that their franchise is going to be recognized there.

{crosstalk}

Cavuto: But republicans were disenfranchised too in that state, right?

RFK, Jr.: Sure and they should, you know, whether it’s a republican or a democrat it doesn’t matter. And you should be as indignent now as I am.

Cavuto: Well, let me ask you this. I want to preface this by I think you are an honorable and a decent American. You have done a great deal for this country. On this day, 38 years ago, you had to deal with the loss of your dad, this very day. I say this with the highest of respect, should a Kennedy, whose uncle had a very controversial win that some say was stacked by dead people voting in the city of Chicago, be the one to talk about fixing elections?

RFK, Jr.: Well, I’m going to talk about this issue no matter what. If it’s, I believe it’s the right thing to talk about, I believe that our electoral system is broken…

Cavuto: Do you think …

RFK, Jr.:: Now let me …

{crosstalk}

Cavuto: Do you think your uncle won that election in 1960 fairly?

RFK, Jr.: Absolutely. And you know there was a republican… First of all, if there were shenanigans during that election, it’s as wrong if the democrats did it as if a republican and I would stand up and say that. Second of all, the, this argument that the 1960 election was stolen because Mayor Daley jiggered, had dead people voting in Cook County, has been proven wrong. First of all, even if Illinois, even if Kennedy lost Illinois, he would have still won the election.

Cavuto: But actually there are a lot of arguments about that. I don’t want to get into that. You’re right to raise this Kerry issue…

RFK, Jr.: Just count up the electoral votes. Second of all…

Cavuto: Let’s raise this Kerry issue…

RFK, Jr.: Second of all, there was [sic] as many, according to the commission, there was [sic] as many or more, votes stolen downstate during that election as there were stolen – by republicans – as there were in Cook County. But, whoever stole votes was wrong.

Cavuto: I just want to ask you this…

RFK, Jr.: Absolutely.

Cavuto: But you’re saying that republicans did all the vote stealing when the state electoral board was saying there were disenfranchised voters on the left and the right. But when all was said and done, the margin of victory was so comfortable for the President, even allowing for some of the chicanery you said, he still won.

RFK, Jr.: Okay, the margin of victory in Ohio was 118,000 votes. What I show in this piece is that there were 350,000 mainly democratic voters who weren’t allowed to vote, or whose votes weren’t counted. Second of all, there were 80,000 votes stolen, shifted….

Cavuto: You just said “stolen”.

RFK, Jr.: Shifted. Yeah, they’re the same. Shifted…

Cavuto: No, no, no. They’re very different.

RFK, Jr.: Well, stolen from Kerry and shifted to Bush. Okay?

Cavuto: So you think Kerry won Ohio and had that victory gone on, he’d be President right now?

RFK, Jr.: I think, listen…

Cavuto: How much of this is just you’re bitter at the outcome?

RFK, Jr.: This has nothing to do with my bitterness at the outcome.

Cavuto: Then why raise it now?

RFK, Jr.: Raised because if the, our, if the integrity of our electoral system is at stake, there is no good time, there’s no bad time to raise it. The same thing is going to happen in the next election. What we need to do is fix the electoral process. There is a bill on Capitol Hill, There’s a bill on Capitol Hill right now that is designed to fix…

Cavuto: If John Kerry had won in Ohio and you had evidence that John Kerry had won by nefarious means, would you come on my show and be ranting about this right now?

RFK, Jr.: Absolutely Neil, and I think you know that’s true.

Cavuto: Really.

RFK, Jr.: Absolutely. I have been disciplined over 22 years about being non-partisan and
bi-partisan in my approach to all of these issues. I don’t think, and my father used to say this to me, it doesn’t matter if somebody is republican or democrat, you judge them on their character. There are plenty of democrats out there and I would say many of the ones that are serving in congress right now who don’t meet up the standards of character that we should expect from political leaders in this country.

[Any guesses as to who he’s referencing? – Ed.]

Cavuto: Are you going to run for office, Bobby?

RFK, Jr.: I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Cavuto: If Hillary Clinton became President, the senate seat opens up in New York, you?

RFK, Jr.: It’s something I’d look at.

Cavuto: Really?

RFK, Jr.: Yeah.

Cavuto: All right. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Seriously, it is a real pleasure having you on. We just disagree on this one little issue.

mm-5