Louisiana Senator John Kennedy speaks at the 2026 New Orleans Book Festival, contrasting President Trump's reported bombing of Iran's Karg Island with his own legislative critiques. Kennedy attacks DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for undisclosed political ad spending and defends due process against mass immigration enforcement, citing Terry v. Ohio. While acknowledging a tragic missile strike on an Iranian school, he warns that U.S. air power alone cannot stop China, Russia, and Iran from dominating global regions. The discussion concludes with urgent calls for New Orleans flood control, safe water, and restoring civility amidst social media toxicity. [Automatically generated summary]
President Trump announced last night that the U.S. had struck Iran's Karg Island in a Truth Social, which I'll read some of you, some of it for you now.
He said moments ago at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in history of the Middle East and totally obliterated every military target in Iran's crown jewel, Karg Island.
Our weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the world has ever known.
But for reasons of decency, I have chosen not to wipe out the oil infrastructure.
We'll leave this here to take you to the New Orleans Book Festival, where Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is speaking about his book, How to Test Negative for Stupid.
Live coverage on the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University.
I should not have to tell any of these wonderful people in this audience this behave.
You understand what I'm saying?
If you don't behave, Cheryl is going to kill me.
So I just want to make sure everybody, this is a book fest.
All ideas are welcome.
We are thrilled to have a senator with us.
John Kennedy is a friend of mine.
I've been knowing him for 30 years, and I want you to welcome him and some other folks out here.
We're going to formally introduce him and get on with one of the best conversations we can have in Book Fest.
God bless you.
All right, you guys, come on out.
Welcome.
I've been on the board at Tulane for 35 years.
I've never, ever seen such a great thing happen on this campus as the Book Festival.
I've known John Kennedy for at least 35 years, and in the last hundred years, Louisiana has never had anyone in Congress from Huey Long up until today better than John Kennedy.
He is somewhere in between Huey Long and Mark Twain.
He is the best of the best.
And having Walter Isaac here with John Kennedy is a real treat.
Thank you.
Go get him.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I got a question for just as a book festival person.
How in the heck are you on the bestseller list for 22 weeks?
You know, honestly, Walter, you know what it's like.
You write a book, and it's like birthing a child, and you never know how people are going to receive it.
You know, we're going to start a little bit with the boat of the biography, but I want to get to some of the tough current issues.
We can talk about that.
Let's start in Zachary, Louisiana.
How big was Zachary?
How small was it?
When I was in Zachary, it was about 2,000, 3,000 people.
Politics and Passing Bills00:15:43
I would go back to high school in a nanosecond.
I cared about, my life was simple.
I cared about two things.
I cared about basketball and I cared about cheerleaders.
And I wasn't very good at either one.
But I had a lot of fun trying.
What did you learn?
You know, I went to a public school.
I got a great foundation, a great education.
And when I went away to college, I talked about this in the book.
I went to Vanderbilt.
And Zachary, if you went away to school, James can know what I'm talking about.
In Zachary, small town, when you got sent away to school, it meant you were a badass.
You know, you got sent to military school.
So I got, this is how naive it was.
I got to Vanderbilt and I kept meeting all these kids that had gone to Woodbury Forest and to Choke and to Deerfield.
And I asked, honestly, I asked my roommate, I said, you know, what about all these kids?
They must have turned their life around.
And he said, Kennedy, he explained to me what a prep school was.
Well, speaking of everything from Vanderbilt to University of Virginia to Oxford, those are the three most polished places on earth where you really learn to have a veneer of polish.
And you went the other way, this whole sort of corn pone thing.
Is that in, did you think about that?
Was it an intention?
Were you going to say, all right, I ain't going to be polished.
I'm going to pretend not to be a UVA Oxford dude.
Well, in politics today, in government, to some extent today, is about communication.
It's all about communication.
And we have so many different ways to communicate between and among ourselves.
Social media has changed everything.
And so when I, for example, do a television interview, I did one last week with Casey Hunt on CNN.
Casey told me ahead of time the topic she wanted to cover, Iran, no mystery there.
But you've got maybe four or five minutes.
And my staff knows me.
This is how I prepare.
About five minutes before I go on, my staff knows to leave me alone.
And I try to organize my thoughts.
And I try to communicate them in an honest way, but a memorable way.
And some people like it, and some people don't.
And when I'm asked by my friends, you know, how do you sleep at night, knowing that there are people that hate you, I tell them the truth with the fan on.
That's just part of what makes America great.
Except for the fact that we've become so disputatious and hateful, which is not exactly a Louisiana way.
How do you turn that part down?
Well, I'm proud to say that it hasn't happened in the Senate.
And let me tell you what I mean by that.
I've never served in the House.
The House is now regrettably the wild, wild West.
Everybody wears their politics on their sleeves.
They're always throwing each other off committees.
They're always censoring each other.
We don't do that in the Senate.
There are 100 of us.
We're together a lot.
I can honestly say I don't hate anybody.
And when I say my prayers every single time, one of the things I ask God is, don't let me hate.
Now, we've got maybe five or six Republicans and five or six Democrats in the Senate.
They're usually newer members that do wear their politics on their sleeve.
In other words, if you disagree with them, they think you're not just in error, you're in sin.
But the vast majority of senators understand that everybody wants the same thing.
They want a better America.
They want this country to be as good as it can be.
We just disagree sometimes how to get there.
I was surprised how you lavished so much praise on some Democratic senators who are your friends.
Yeah, I've got a lot of friends, a lot of friends.
Chuck Schumer, for example.
I mean, I've traveled with Chuck.
We fight a lot, but I keep asking Chuck to come duck hunting.
I said, come to Louisiana.
I'll take you duck hunting.
I'll show him a shotgun.
We don't have to worry about losing to Chuck.
I'd have to explain to Chuck that the end with the hole in it is the dangerous part.
But I'm good friends with Peter Welch.
He's a new senator from Vermont.
I'm good friends with John Fetterman.
Believe it or not, I'm good friends with Elizabeth Warren.
We just sponsored a big bill together that I think is going to pass.
Which is the housing?
A housing bill.
It has to do with using community development block grant money as both a carrot and a stick to encourage our local governments to increase housing starts.
And that bill is going to get gunked up by people putting a whole lot of amendments on it and whatever.
How are you, and I think Tim Scott and others going to get it through?
Well, here's our problem.
And it's a good bill.
It will help increase housing in America.
We have passed, we passed it through the Senate.
Our problem is going to be in the House.
You have some House members who don't agree with provisions in it.
I had hoped that the President was going to put his muscle behind it.
And I'm still hopeful, but he has backed off a little bit in terms of how enthusiastic he is about the bill.
And I think that's a mistake.
I've told the president that, in my opinion, some guy, I don't remember who it was, said one time, it's the economy stupid.
I don't know who that guy was.
But in this election, I'm not an expert at many things, if any, but I know how to read a poll.
And in this election, the main issue, including here in Louisiana, is cost of living.
You have been breaking in ways that we hadn't, you know, wasn't generally expected.
Let me pick a few of them.
Christy Noam, who ran the Department of Homeland Security, up until then, immigration was an issue that cut in favor of Republicans.
Does it still cut in favor Republicans?
No.
Yeah, yeah.
And then you decided Christy Noam just wasn't being honest about certain things.
And I'm somewhat surprised, but I think you're probably the most responsible for saying she shouldn't be secretary anymore.
Well, look, I'm very fond of the former secretary.
I thanked her in committee for executing the president's policies to secure the southern border.
But we were having a lot of management problems at her department.
And She took a quarter of a billion, not million, a quarter of a billion dollars, more money than most presidents spend on presidential campaigns, and ran television ads all across America of her on a horse in front of Mount Rushmore that were clearly political ads.
She told us in committee that she had bid it out.
bid out the service contract.
She did not.
And the contract, maybe it was just happenstance, went to some of her friends.
And I don't believe she got the name of the names of those people who got the contracts off Zipper Kruger, okay?
And I'm going to call out spending porn every single time, but I had a whole list of, and then she basically blamed it on the White House and the President.
And I didn't know how it would be received.
That night, about 9.30, I got a call from the President.
He was mad as a mama wasp.
He was pissed.
And that's when I was pretty sure that the Secretary's time was going to be limited.
It was, look, we had to make a change.
But was there something larger about the enforcement, the ICE enforcement, DHS, that just seemed to be whatever you may think about immigration, just not American?
Well, everyone has to be, every human being has the right to dignity.
Everybody, and I don't care what your color is or your social class or your economic class or what country you're from, to a bear, we all taste like chicken, okay?
And I'm not, we were having problems with that.
I mean, just speaking politically, one of President Trump's platforms and one of his major successes was securing the southern border.
Most Americans look at the southern border like they look at their front door at night.
Most Americans lock their front door at night.
They don't do that because they hate everybody on the outside.
They do that because they love the people on the inside.
And they want to know who's coming in and out of their house.
And that's why most Americans support properly vetting people at the border.
Now, it's a compliment, I suppose, in a way that everybody across the world wants to come to America.
They do.
And we admit a million people in our country to our country every year, of our world's neighbors, to join us.
But everybody wants to come to America.
I mean, when is, think about this, when is the last time you heard of somebody trying to sneak into China?
No, it doesn't happen.
But it has to be controlled.
And the president did that.
But the way the immigration laws have been administered, frankly, turned under the authority of the Secretary, it turned one of the strongest issues politically for my party into one of the weakest issues.
And was there an obedience amount of truth to that?
In other words, it wasn't just a political problem, it was wrong what they were doing?
Well, look, yes, and let me put it this way.
Illegal immigration is illegal.
Duh.
Our immigration statutes are not some second-tier laws that you can break without consequence.
And President Obama enforced our immigration laws.
President Clinton enforced our immigration laws.
We should enforce our immigration laws.
Now, how you do that matters.
You have to do it in accordance with due process, with equal protection, with there's a very clear precedent called Tierry v. Ohio, Supreme Court precedent, I think it was in the late 60s, which says that under, in America, you have to have reasonable suspicion and objective standard to stop someone.
A cop can't just see somebody driving down the road and say, huh, I think I'm going to pull them over.
You've got to have reasonable suspicion to believe that someone has committed or is about to commit a crime.
And that's an objective standard.
It's not probable cause, but it's law.
And all of those things have to be followed.
Now, you have the right to protest.
You don't have the right to protest violently.
In fact, violence...
We don't have to applaud each.
Violence, if you think about it, violence undermines the integrity of the cause that you're fighting for.
Dr. King understood that.
Mandema understood that.
Gandhi understood that.
Violence undermines the morality, the integrity of the cause you say you're fighting for.
It's also weapons-grade stupid.
I mean, somebody's going to get hurt.
And my experience is that most, not all, but most cops will leave you alone unless you do illegal stuff.
But if you protest violently, it's not going to end.
Yeah, but that was not really the case.
Well, and one of the good things about social media and cell phones is that there were videos, and people can judge for themselves.
That's why we have asked our law enforcement officials, and in some cases mandated, that they wear body caps.
And you're for that?
Yes, absolutely.
In fact, we have offered to my Democratic colleagues to, we put money in our budget for body cameras for all ICE agents.
How come, I mean, speaking of people, TSA, you never quite know at Armstrong, whether it's 15 minutes or three hours.
You got the body cams and everything else.
Couldn't you and 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans or whatever and maybe get Steve Scales and Troy Carter together, Louisiana people, and say, we can solve this whole DHS TSA funding bill with these compromises?
The Missile Retention Cycle00:15:28
Not in the Senate.
And here's why.
The Senate has a rule.
I don't agree with it.
If I were king for a day, this is the first rule I would change.
But the majority leader, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, totally controls the Senate floor.
And if the majority leader doesn't want to bring a bill to the floor, it can't be brought to the floor.
Right.
And Senator John Thune is not bringing a bill that you would want to the floor?
Senator Thune's position is we have passed a budget for DHS, which would open TSA, it would fund the Coast Guard, it would fund the Secret Service, it would fund, it would finish funding DHS.
His position is the Senate has passed that once, and we did.
Most Democrats and Republicans voted for it.
Now, then we had the problems in Minnesota, and Senator Schumer, who's a minority leader, instructed his members, not all of them followed, but most of them did, to basically change their position.
And their position now seems to be they want body cameras for ICE agents, which we're all for, I'm all for.
They want to require a judicial warrant for virtually any interaction between an ICE officer between an ICE officer and someone in our country allegedly illegally.
Now, there is Supreme Court precedent going way back forever saying that you do not have to have a judicial warrant.
You can use an administrative warrant if someone has already been through the court process.
Well, I don't want to get to technically it couldn't, how come we can't work around the system in the Senate to say this is pretty simple?
I mean, couldn't you all do it if you didn't have these arcane rules?
Well, the Senate only works when everybody's not crazy at the same time.
And right now, there are other issues that people are pretty worked up on on Iran.
But the point I'm trying to make is if you require a judicial warrant for every interaction between an ICE agent and a private citizen, you can't get 10 Democrats to vote.
No, I wouldn't vote for it because you will shut down immigration.
But you couldn't get 10 Democrats to vote to do it with administrative warrants.
No, that's the law now.
President Obama used administrative warrants and not judicial warrants.
Well, okay, let's drill down to technically.
Let me ask you: when George W. Bush once came to Tulane, one of the things he said on stage was his biggest regret was that he didn't do comprehensive immigration for me.
Almost got it to the lot.
First of all, would we be in such a politically mess of a country if there had been a comprehensive immigration reform compromise?
And is that even conceivable in the current?
Well, it's conceivable, and I hope someday it will happen.
The immigration laws are broken, not just for illegal immigration, but for legal immigration.
It is just, you would not believe how many agencies are involved, how difficult it is to come into our country illegally.
There's a lot we could do to make it to improve both sides, legal and illegal.
I don't see the political appetite right now, Walter.
I wish I could say otherwise, but the sides are just too divided right now.
On Iran, let's put aside, you have the classified intelligence, we don't.
Let's put aside, it maybe made sense that they were having too many ballistic missiles being built too quickly and whatever, and we had to at least slow down that.
Do you think, though, it's possible to achieve regime change by an air war?
No.
And here's what I think about Iran in general.
And if you saw the classified information, and unclassified information that I have, I think you might agree with me.
35,000-foot view.
President Xi in China is working with President Putin in Russia, who's working with the Ayatoma, the Supreme Leader, in Iran.
President Xi is the quarterback.
He's much more involved in all of this than it might appear.
Their goal is to have Russia dominate Central and Eastern Europe, to have Iran dominate the Middle East, to have China dominate the Indo-Pacific with freedom to roam in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and both Russia and China want to dominate the Arctic and space.
Now, that's not a world that's safe for America.
Let me speak about Iran in particular.
Here's what our intelligence showed: Iran had restarted its effort to develop a nuclear warhead.
We know they have uranium, most of it's buried, but they have uranium for 10 bombs.
But they had restarted their effort.
But more to the point, they had ramped up their missile and drone production.
Iran was developed, they're very smart, Iranians are very smart people.
They had revved up missile production, for example, to between 200 and 600 missiles a month.
And they were improving their technology so that their missiles could not only destroy the Middle East, but they could reach Berlin.
They could reach London.
And what our intelligence showed was that the Supreme Leader's game plan was to develop this stockpile of missiles, huge, and then turn to the United States and Israel and the world and say, I'm restarting my nuclear program.
You can come in and bomb me again, but I'm going to destroy the entire Middle East, and I'm going to attack Turkey, and I'm going to mob missiles at Berlin.
And I mean, our intelligence guys don't get it wrong very often.
And President Trump had to make a decision.
Do you do it now or you just wait until it becomes more expensive?
And he decided to move in.
Right now, we are really, we have destroyed their Navy, destroyed their Air Force.
We will ultimately destroy all of their launchers, missile launchers, all of their missile production plants, all of their drone production plants.
We're bombing all of the infrastructure for the Revolutionary Guard.
And then I hope the plan, I think the plan is to get out.
If he wants to put boots on the ground, how would you vote?
Well, I would have a lot of questions about that.
And I think you'd see pushback from Congress.
But I do not believe the President will do that.
In fact, I said the other day that if, I mean, I can't guarantee things, but if he puts boots on the ground, the thud you hear will be me face planning because I fainted.
I just, I think he understands that regime change, it's easy to talk about.
The Iranian people were very...
Wait, I'm sorry, regime change is what?
It's very, it's something easy to talk about.
Meaning hard to accomplish.
But it's very hard to accomplish.
Does it help or hurt regime change when we're bombing desalinization plants and our missiles are hitting girls' schools?
That's okay.
The department is doing an investigation, but we all know what it's going to show.
We made a mistake.
Why did President Trump just say, no, it wasn't our missile?
It was them doing it.
I don't know.
I have enough trouble running my own life.
President Trump, I've known President Trump for 10 years.
Some people like him.
Some people hate him.
There doesn't seem to be much middle ground.
He and I agree on many things.
We disagree on some.
We have two very different personalities.
President Trump, I think he has demonstrated this.
President Trump grows anxious when he has an unexpressed thought.
He has no filter.
I told him one time that it made him a little mad.
I said, Mr. President, tweeting a little bit less, you know, would not cause brain damage.
But it is what it is.
Walter, I don't spend a lot of time.
People elected him, and they can unelect him.
Yeah, but I'm not talking about a tweet.
I'm talking about saying, okay, that missile hit a girls' school, and I'm not going to tell you.
Well, I can't dictate policy for the president.
But I will tell you what I think.
I'm very sorry it happened.
It was a mistake.
It was a terrible mistake.
And I think the investigation will find that.
It won't help in the sense that the kids are still dead.
But when you make a mistake like that, you need to admit it.
And I'm just very, very sorry it happened.
But we can't undo it.
But we ought to admit it.
A quick theory of mine.
The biggest winner so far in this war is Russia.
Well, Russia is winning in the sense that the president has removed some sanctions on Russian oil.
Is that a right thing?
I wouldn't have done it.
But the only way, President Putin is a pirate.
President Putin has blood under his fingernails.
He's very clever.
The only way to stop Putin and get him to the bargaining table is to cut off his cash flow.
And the only way to cut off his cash flow is to stop him from selling his oil.
Now, there's another way that will help.
I asked the president to support this.
He chose not to.
But the EU is borrowing about $105 billion against seized Russian assets in Europe, and they're giving that money to Ukraine and telling Ukraine, look, however many Tomahawk missiles you want.
Now, Victor Orban, who runs Hungary, he's got an election in a few months, he's holding up the deal.
And I'm hoping they're going to get that worked out.
That's the other thing that Putin understands.
Russia has changed dramatically.
You wouldn't recognize it.
There's no freedom.
They're spying on people.
They use their social media now in a way the Chinese do.
It's a totally different country.
They've lost a lot of their smart people.
Their economy is in shambles.
Putin's fighting for his life.
But this guy is, I wouldn't turn my back on him if he were three days dead.
He's just an evil.
And to get him to the table, you've got to make the cost greater than the benefits.
And I've argued with the president about this.
I mean, I would slap him to Pluto.
That's all he understands.
But so far, the president chose not to do it.
There's a cycle of retribution.
And I hope we all finger point back and say, well, it started with, I don't know, who was the guy who was nominated to the Supreme Court 20 years ago.
And it gets ratcheted up with lawfare, people prosecuting it.
It seemed to me that you were trying to get Kash Patel, you know, and was it Pam Bondi, to say, to promise to stop this cycle of retribution, stop prosecuting your predecessors, et cetera.
Is that what you were trying to do, and how can we do that, if so?
Here's the way I see it.
In America, we believe in the rule of law.
We don't prosecute our political opponents or our enemies just because they're our political opponents.
That's the sort of thing that happens in countries whose powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat.
We don't do that in America.
Now, I'm biased, but I watched this happen under President Biden.
His Justice Department decided when they decided to prosecute President Trump.
They prosecuted not only a former president, but a former president who had defeated, or said he defeated, I should say, Merrick Garland's boss.
And Trump also was a current opponent of Merrick Garland's boss.
When you prosecute a case, prosecutor ought to ask, is the person guilty?
Can I prove it?
And is it in the interest of justice?
But do you worry that that's now happening the other way by Pam Bond?
That's why I cross-examined the FBI director and the new Attorney General and some of the others' appointments.
Two wrong, the attitude now in Washington is two wrongs don't make it right, but they do make it even.
And we have unleashed spirits that we can't control.
And it is a huge mistake.
A huge mistake.
And both sides need to back off.
I heard Ms. Susan Rice, former advisor to President Obama, give a speech the other day.
Brilliant, brilliant woman.
I'm sure James knows.
Just brilliant.
But she got angry and she gave a long speech and said, just you wait.
When Democrats are back in power, all you companies that are kneeling before Trump, we're going to punish every single one of you.
Healing New Orleans Relations00:03:08
And that's just, that's not America.
I have a theory about Louisiana in this city, is that we could lead our way out.
We could be the ones to lead the way out, which is strong disagreements from you and Mitch Landrew, for example, you and Mary Landrew, Helena Marino, who just spoke on the stage an hour or two ago.
And yet we do it in a, we all go to the neutral ground, catch the same beads, and worry that we don't have a quarterback or something.
We do it with more civility and we don't let the cycle of poison keep turning.
Is there a way that that can happen in America?
Do you think in Louisiana and New Orleans, where Wilson?
Let me talk about New Orleans.
Look, I love New Orleans.
I lived here.
I practiced law here.
I raised my son here the first few years of his life.
I've never met another or been in another city quite like New Orleans.
I love New Orleans.
The first thing we have to do in New Orleans is get our finances straight.
When Mayor Lander was mayor, he left the city in good shape financially.
His successor was a disaster financially.
And we have got to get the city on proper footing.
We've got to get our city so that your car doesn't flood three times a year.
We've got to have safe drinking water.
Just the basics.
I get concerned when I we've got to improve relations between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the state government.
I don't like to see bills introduced in the legislature that targets a particular city or a particular area.
I don't think that's healthy.
We've got a lot of work to do, but you also have to celebrate the victories.
I mean, I think I remember when the book festival started when you and Cheryl started it.
This thing is just extraordinarily successful.
Thank you.
It's just, and government didn't do this, just people.
It happened organically.
Were a lot of smart people who were committed to their community.
We need more than that.
I don't know how to do it, Walter, but we also got to just, you know, if you believe in God, pray to God or pray to yourself.
Just don't let me hate.
It's just, it's not worth it.
And there's too much of that.
And you can blame it on social media.
And social media has become a cesspool of snark.
But just don't look at it and certainly don't believe it.
And I try to do that, sometimes not successfully.
Now, I know how to fight, and I'm going to stand my ground.
Avoiding Social Media Snark00:03:28
And some days in the Senate, we're in a knife fight because the issues are important.
But that's the fundamental problem in America today.
We've just taken it too far in terms of our politics.
Senator John Kennedy, thank you for joining us.
Thank you very much.
Books from the authors you hear today and throughout the New Orleans Book Festival are available for purchase in the Festival Tent presented by the Hyatt Regency New Orleans.
This weekend on C-SPAN 2's Book TV, watch our live coverage of book festivals all weekend long.
On Sunday, Book TV heads to the University of Arizona for the Tucson Festival of Books.
At 1 p.m. Eastern, Julia Ioff, former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul, and Candace Rondeau discuss Russian history, national security, and life under President Vladimir Putin.
At 2.30 p.m. Eastern, Edward Larson, Jacob Silverman, and Reality Winner examine the past, present, and future of the American Experiment.
And at 4 p.m. Eastern, Kenneth Rosen, Anthony Vincy, and Tim Weiner discuss the history of the Central Intelligence Agency and how climate change and technology are shaping national security and espionage.
Watch Book TV live in the Tucson Festival of Books on Sunday on C-SPAN 2.
For the full weekend festival schedule, visit booktv.org.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy.
From Washington, D.C. to across the country, coming up Sunday morning, Democratic strategist Joe Cayazzo and Republican strategist John Feary cover Campaign 2026 and political news of the week.
And retired Brigadier General Leslie A. Beavers, former Pentagon Acting Chief Information Officer, discusses how the United States is using technology in the Iran conflict.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our Free Mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
We've got more Campaign 2026 coverage on Sunday when U.S. Representative Robin Kelly speaks to voters in Chicago ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary election to succeed Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who's retiring.
Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton and fellow U.S. Representative Rajah Krishnamurthy are also seeking the Democratic nomination.
Watch Representative Kelly's remarks live starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our Free Mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
President Trump this week traveled to the district of one of his fiercest Republican critics, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massey.
As noted by the state's Daily Independent newspaper, he took aim at Representative Massey for his opposition to the president's agenda, calling him, quote, a disaster of a congressman and human being, while endorsing his primary challenger, Ed Gowrine.
Finishing the Iran Job00:00:41
The president also remarked that the U.S. had already won the war with Iran, but that the job still needed to be finished.
From Hebron, Kentucky, this is just over 90 minutes.
From the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Texas.