Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes Most Dangerous Comment on January 6 Yet

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy said Friday that a fundraising email issued earlier in the week that described January 6 rioters as “activists” was an error—but he still believes the events didn’t amount to a “true insurrection.”

“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protestors broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection,” Kennedy wrote in a statement. “I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.’”

But that’s not true, even from a cursory review of footage from the day. The rioters who ransacked their way through the halls of Congress did indeed wield weapons, including baseball bats, hockey sticks, fence rebar, flagpoles, pepper spray, and bear spray, U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell told CNN in 2021. The rioters also used more deadly force, by way of firearms, knives, stolen police shields, stun guns, fire extinguishers, and even hand-to-hand combat, which sent more than a dozen Capitol Police officers to the hospital.

And despite Kennedy’s insistence that Trump “urged” peace, the former president also ignored pleas from his children and aides to call off the mob, even as thousands of his supporters chanted “Kill them all” while hunting down former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence.

But those details are, apparently, inconsequential to Kennedy, who suggested that prosecuting those who broke the law was tantamount to “harsh treatment” that he would be willing to investigate by way of special counsel if elected president.

“Both establishment parties are using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions,” Kennedy wrote. “Each side claims that a victory by their opponents means the end of democracy. Then, anything is justified to stop them. We run the risk of destroying democracy in order to save it.”

But conservative strategists say this kind of rhetoric is exactly where Democrats should double down. On Thursday, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush attacked Trump’s own language on the issue, suggesting that the GOP presidential nominee’s staunch defense of the “sons a bitches” should disqualify him from the presidency.

“If [Democrats] were smart, they’d take the January 6 and go hard at it,” Karl Rove told MSNBC. “And they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol.’ I worked in that building as a young man. To me, the Congress of the United States is one of the great examples of the strength of our democracy and a jewel of the Constitution.”