RFK Jr. courts Las Vegas voters as alternative to Trump vs. Biden

Independent presidential candidate and former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a wide-ranging campaign speech to Las Vegas Valley supporters Sunday at Area 15.

Kennedy, who is trying to position himself as a viable alternative to a Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden rematch, focused the first part of his speech on America’s health crisis and the purported link between Big Pharma and many of the government’s federal institutions.

He claims Americans have been lied to by corporate interests and lobbyists who are intent on treating medical conditions for profit rather than promoting health and wellness.

‘Nobody is asking about this’

“Why are we not asking the next question,” he said to around 500 supporters about why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is allegedly not focusing its efforts on Americans’ health, which has been declining at an exponential rate for decades. “Why are we the sickest people on Earth?”

Kennedy touched on the “chronic disease crisis” facing America as a nation amid a rise of various illnesses and diseases such as diabetes, autism, ADHD and others. He also talked about the American medical system’s propensity to treat through prescription medication, and how he believes it is acutely damaging young people who have grown up in the shadow of the COVID pandemic and who were “robbed” of three years of their lives.

“Nobody is asking about this, and nobody is asking what happened to our children,” Kennedy said. “I can fix this country. All of these agencies that have intimidated normal politicians, I have sued every single one of them. I’ve sued the NIH (the National Institutes of Health), the CDC, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency) and we just sued the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission) and won in the federal Court of Appeals.”

Kennedy, a former environmental and human rights lawyer, called out a large number of American government institutions, primarily the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration for being “captive” to big-money corporate interests and vowed to take them on if he is elected president.

A Quinnipiac poll in December showed that in a three-person “hypothetical” presidential election matchup, Biden receives 38 percent support, Trump receives 36 percent support and Kennedy receives 22 percent support.

However, Kennedy said that a big hurdle for his presidency aspirations are ballot access laws for independent and third-party candidates as a form of voter suppression in the U.S. At the end of his speech, he noted that he needs 11,000 signatures to get on the presidential ballot for Nevada.

Kristen Riffle, a Summerlin resident who waited in line after Kennedy’s 30-minute speech to have her photo taken with Kennedy — who flew in from San Francisco late Sunday because of weather complications — said she first started supporting him during the onset of the pandemic back in 2020.

“I’ve followed him since the whole COVID lockdown situation, and just his stance on freedom of speech and how they’ve tried to silence him,” she said. “It intrigued me, and everything he stands for is kind of in alignment of where I think America is going and what needs to be fixed.”

‘Talking about things that nobody wants to talk about’

Las Vegas residents for 27 years, Heather and Elizabeth French, who also waited in line for a selfie with Kennedy, said they support him because of his lack of aversion to talking about real issues affecting regular Americans.

“He’s talking about things that nobody wants to talk about,” Elizabeth French said. “He points out the division in America and how they’ve got us all fighting each other, and why they want us fighting each other, and what they are doing is pulling the wool over our eyes.”

North Las Vegas resident Dave Coens said he hopes Kennedy can get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states so voters can be given a clear alternative to a Biden vs. Trump rematch that Americans seem apathetic to, and generally don’t want.

“The big corporations have taken over everything that we do, from farmland to owning all of the homes here in Las Vegas, just across the board. And we need to take our land back from those corporate entities.”

Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.