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July 12, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:48
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BBC Coverage as Another Story 00:14:36
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored in New York City, the face and voice of Britain's national broadcaster Hugh Edwards is dramatically named as a suspended BBC presenter at the center of the scandal of alleged sex images that's gripped the country.
Edwards' wife Vicky Flynn released a statement tonight naming her husband and detailing his serious mental health issues, explaining he's now receiving treatment in hospital.
We'll have all the latest on this huge story.
Plus, he's a Kennedy, a controversialist, now a candidate for President of the United States.
RFK Jr. has rattled the race for the White House by daring to say many things that nobody else will.
And a lot of people are supporting him.
But can he win?
He joins me live.
Live from New York, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, good evening and welcome from New York City to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
It's difficult to overstate how big of a deal it is back in Britain that Hugh Edwards, the face of British news, really, the face of BBC News, has now been named as the presenter at the center of this huge scandal that's been raging in the last week.
In that esteem, he's the face of our state occasions, of royal events.
He's the man who announced the death of the late Queen.
He's wry, he's authoritative, and above all, he's always been trusted.
By all accounts, the audiences love him.
I know him personally.
He's always seemed to be a very stand-up guy.
So today's news that he is the presenter behind the BBC sex picture scandal is a huge shock to everyone that knows him, maybe to his family, certainly to millions of people who are used to watching him on the news each night.
Probably a shock to his colleagues at the BBC.
For the last five days, speculation has raged about the man at the heart of the crisis.
Tonight, his wife, Vicki Flynn, the television producer, with whom he has five children, took the courageous decision to end all that speculation.
In a statement, she said, I'm doing this primarily out of concern for his mental well-being and to protect our children.
Hugh is suffering from serious mental health issues.
As is well documented, he's been treated with severe depression in recent years.
The events of the last few days have greatly worsened matters.
He suffered another serious episode and is now receiving inpatient hospital care where he'll stay for the foreseeable future.
Once well enough to do so, he intends to respond to the stories that have been published.
She goes on to confirm that Edwards didn't know about any of his claims until last week.
She made a call for privacy and she adds that Hugh is deeply sorry that so many colleagues have been impacted by the speculation.
And that's a key point.
The speculation was becoming completely unsustainable.
Many other male BBC presenters were being shamed and vilified on social media for something they had nothing to do with and had to, in some cases, publicly deny their involvement.
Viewers were bound to notice that Hugh Edwards had vanished overnight from the nightly news bulletins.
Now clearly Hugh Edwards is now in a very serious situation.
He probably feels like he's losing everything.
Whatever the outcome of the investigations, it would be inhuman not to think about the impact of all this on him, on his family, his mental health.
All of those are important things to consider now.
But now we can talk freely about who this is.
It should also be clearer why it's been such a big story.
The Met Police says it has no evidence of criminality, but what remains are allegations about a potentially serious abuse of power by a household name paid handsomely from the public purse.
Accused originally of paying tens of thousands of pounds to a teenager with drug problems for indecent images.
More claims about his behaviour have followed from three other people so far, including allegations made not just to the Sun, but directly to the BBC.
And the way the BBC has managed this complaint remains a matter of legitimate public interest and concern.
We shouldn't forget the other people involved in the story because there are a lot.
Well, I'm joined now by my pack, the best-selling author of War of the West and columnist Douglas Murray, former Conservative MP Louise Mensch, and the multi-millionaire investor, one of the sharks on the American reality tank, Kevin O'Leary, the former executive at Channel 5 and also worked at the BBC David Elstein.
But first, let me start by talking to the former BBC political correspondent and current Times radio presenter, Carol Walker.
Carol, thank you so much for joining me.
This is an unbelievably complex and difficult story.
It has been from the start because I'm sure you, like me and most people in the media, very quickly discovered that it was Hugh Edwards.
But that name was not being made public.
And as a result, there was this feeding frenzy of speculation driven by social media about who this could be.
That was, of course, very damaging to all those concerned.
But as somebody who knows Hugh Edwards well, what is your reaction to all this turn of events today?
The police saying that they found no evidence on that initial story of any crime being committed.
And secondly, his wife's decision to go public in naming him and revealing he's having these serious mental health issues in hospital.
Well, I think to be honest, Piers, my first thoughts are for Hugh's family and for Hugh himself.
He's clearly had a very serious mental health problem.
He is being treated in hospital for that.
And it must have been an unbelievably difficult time for his wife and the rest of his family.
She's clearly taken the decision that she had to speak out tonight.
That can't have been easy.
And I think that really we do have to respect and understand why she's now asking for some time for the rest of the family to try and ensure that he gets the right treatment and to get on with their own lives.
I think the other important thing to say here, Piers, is that, of course, none of the allegations about Hugh has actually been proven or established beyond any doubt.
The police have now said that they are not going to carry out any sort of investigation.
And I think that what we're left with here is, though there are clearly some questions about how the BBC may have handled this, it does underline the complexity of all of this.
You know, I worked alongside Hugh when he was a rising star as a political correspondent, one of a number of very ambitious and talented BBC figures, including some of those like Jeremy Vine, who found themselves unfairly targeted.
And I think that it does also just highlight that issue of how people who are such huge public figures can also then find themselves targets not just perhaps of some justified complaints, but also of such huge amounts of speculation and rumours as we've seen over the past few days swirling around on social media.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't disagree with any of that.
All I would say, though, is there seems to be a sort of growing criticism of the way the Sun has handled this, but to be clear, they didn't name him to start with, and they didn't say that what he'd done was a criminal act.
That was others, actually, that were commenting on this potentially straying into the area of criminality.
Also, significantly, the BBC themselves have also been exposing their own stories and their own investigation into Hugh Edwards' alleged inappropriate conduct.
In fact, today I think there were more revelations from the BBC about his allegedly inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues.
So it's not just a tabloid or a sun-driven scandal in that sense.
You've actually had the BBC themselves having journalists investigating and finding what they believe to be, because they've reported it, to be evidence of inappropriate conduct.
Where does that leave Hugh Edwards, do you think, in terms of his future at the BBC?
And what do you feel about the BBC actually in that situation investigating him in that way?
Well, look, I actually think that the BBC has done a pretty good job on reporting a story which is about one of its own very senior presenters.
I think anyone who has watched the BBC coverage over the past few days must really accept and acknowledge that they've managed to treat this as another story.
I have worked at the BBC when there are stories about the BBC.
I know how difficult it is, but I know that it's also a point of pride for the BBC that its journalists try to set aside the fact that it is one of their own that they're talking about and to treat this as another news story.
Now, you and I both now work for competitors, but we'll know what the challenges are in the journalism of this sort of thing.
So I think Tim Davey himself, the director general, has acknowledged that perhaps they need to look again at their complaints process, at the procedures when a complaint against a senior figure is red-flagged as something that's very serious.
I think there are perhaps some legitimate questions about whether they moved swiftly enough, but you have to balance that against the fact that there are huge numbers of complaints made every week about BBC figures.
Well, there are.
I think just to pick you up on that, there are, but I don't think there would be many complaints of this severity against the face of BBC News would be my countervail.
I still think it's ridiculous.
The BBC, in seven weeks after this was reported to them by the family directly about their concerns about what was happening with their son, that it took seven weeks and just one standard email and one phone call that didn't get connected.
That was their attempt at following up what was obviously on the face of it potentially extremely serious charges, as indeed Tim Davey, the Director General of the BBC, has conceded they were.
So I wouldn't necessarily go along, I think, with your defense of the way the BBC handled it.
I should think it's been a little bit shambolic.
But let me just pick you up on that point, Piers, because you should also bear in mind that the young person at the center of the very first allegation, the allegation that Hugh Edwards, as we now know it is, had paid money to someone for explicit images.
The young person at the center of that said the claims that were made and reported in The Sun about this were rubbish and that there had been nothing illegal or improper that had taken place.
So there are also two sides to that, and neither you nor I nor anyone else knows the truth of that at the moment.
Yeah, I don't have any inside knowledge of what the Sun has in terms of evidence, but what I do know is this young man is clearly pretty damaged.
He's apparently a crack cocaine addict.
So I'm not entirely sure that we should take everything he may be saying after this as you know, I'd love to have him on the programme and talk about it, but I don't think he can.
So I think it's complicated.
Let me go to David Elstein, top media executive, used to work at the BBC.
David, from a corporate position as a television executive, how do you think the BBC have handled this and what do they do now about Hugh Edwards?
Well, I think they've mishandled it, but for a completely different reason.
I'm actually quite shocked to discover that the BBC has an internal investigations unit which might inquire into its employees' private lives.
I think that's wholly inappropriate.
And I hope the first thing that happens is that that unit is shut down.
Look, when the complainant first appeared, they said there has been no, according to the police whom they talked to, there's been no criminality.
So what is the BBC meant to do?
When someone says one of your employees has been sending my child a lot of money, it's not a crime.
Where is the BBC's role in all of this?
So to say, let me pick you up on that.
On that point, though, does it need to be a crime to still be inappropriate behavior by the head of BBC News?
Hang on a minute.
How do we know there's inappropriate behaviour?
And is paying somebody £35,000 inappropriate?
I mean, you can afford to pay someone £35,000, I'm sure.
Would Talk TV then fire you for doing so?
I think there are lots of unanswered questions, I agree.
But to my knowledge so far, there's been no denial of the payment of £35,000 to a young person who we know is apparently addicted to crack cocaine.
That does seem to me to probably stray into the area, if you're running the BBC, of potentially inappropriate conduct by the head of their news division, doesn't it?
Well, he's not the head of the news division.
His daily presentation.
Well, it's the face of it, yeah.
Of course.
But if the story, if the Sun publishes stuff which definitively shows that Hugh Edwards did things which bring the BBC into disrepute, of course the BBC would then be entitled to say, you're in breach of contract, we suspend you, we don't renew your contract, we fire you, all of those things.
But it's not for the BBC to be an arm of the police, to be an arm of the National Health Service, as was being suggested in the last panel discussion, you know, sending help to drug addicts.
How do we know that this young person is a severely damaged crack cocaine addict?
We only hear it through the sun from his mother and stepmother, and he denies everything that they say.
So if I were the BBC, I'd be no further off than the police have been in saying nothing to see here.
So my view of this is the BBC were quite wrong to allow it to be turned into a BBC story.
It was a story about a BBC employee, a big story about a BBC employee.
The chances are that he was going to be resigning or taking sick leave or whatever in due course anyway.
But for the BBC to insert itself into the investigative process was inappropriate and wrong.
Okay.
David, thank you.
Thank you, Carol.
All right.
Let's come to my panel here in New York.
Douglas, you've heard two people there and their views.
What's your view about this story?
My view is that, I mean, essentially, the British public have been watching on in recent months.
It looks like a very bad time to be a television presenter in Britain at the moment, doesn't it?
And there's something sort of baffling, I think, for the general public about this.
There have been these two massive scandals of two of the most prominent faces in television.
Philip Schofield and now.
Brand Image vs Private Life 00:10:51
Schofield and now Hugh Edwards.
I think there are lots of things to take in mind.
I agree with some of what's been said.
I mean, effectively, we're back into the old problem of actually it's a problem at the BBC of oversight, of BBC procedures.
The BBC, of course, always quite understandably comes into the headlights and the firing line of everybody else because, you know, everybody's got criticism of the BBC.
The BBC always tries to please every party and very often it fails to please any party.
So it seems to me it's something to do with BBC governance and oversight that's the issue here.
I'd say two other things.
One is the whole thing of, you know, we have to go to mental health hospitals and all this sort of thing.
You know, men are idiots and men are idiots a lot.
And I do think that the sort of pathologizing of men making mistakes into always having to be a mental health issue is, you know, maybe something to be discussed another day.
But it is a problem that.
And the second thing I'd just add to that is that whenever we look at a case like this, you know, we've just got to remember that there are a lot of different agendas that are going to go on behind this.
There are going to be people who are going to come out with for Team Hugh Edwards.
There are going to be not that many at the moment.
There are going to be others that come out for the young man.
We just heard about the possibility that this young man is a well-adjusted crack cocaine.
Right.
Which I don't think is very likely at all.
But, you know, it's just a difficult, ugly, and complex story.
I don't look to newscasters for moral guidance.
I don't look to them for good behaviour or anything else.
But much of the country just doesn't want to know about the private life of Hugh Edwards.
It's now out there.
And for him, I'd have thought that's just career-wise a terrible place to be in.
Louise, I think there's a lot of feelings you can have about this.
You can feel sorry for Hugh Edwards that he's in this awful condition.
He's in hospital.
He's a well-documented depressive.
He's had problems with this before.
On a human level, I know him a bit.
I feel sorry for the situation he's in.
But I also need to know more about what's been going on before you can, I think, make any broad brushstroke judgments about what he's done wrong and what the BBC should do in response to that, given that he is effectively the face of BBC News.
I don't think we can muddy the waters here.
There are two separate issues.
One is he's depressed and he's been depressed for a long time.
I'm very sorry for him for that.
Genuinely, that's terrible.
What he has done allegedly to these vulnerable young people is something else altogether.
And listening to your other guests, I wonder if we're reading the same story, because I heard absolutely nothing of concern for the alleged victims that have come forward so far.
Also, let me just say right now, it's not true that these allegations, all of the allegations, are unproven.
The second accuser didn't go to the sun.
They went directly to the BBC and they said, I didn't want to meet up offline.
He bullied me.
He threatened me.
And the BBC themselves reported that they had checked Hugh Edwards, as we now know, phone, and that yes, indeed, those threatening messages came from him.
So if everybody, I think, should stop feeling sorry for Mr. Edwards in terms of what he allegedly did to these people.
That's not okay.
And I also do think that we have to draw a distinction between conduct that's illegal, which the police say there's no evidence of, and conduct that's unethical and that's immoral.
The BBC is funded by everybody in Britain through the licensed fee.
If you pay TB, you have to pay the BBC.
We do have a right to ask its highest paid employees that maybe they should have some care for young people, not threaten them, not bully them that we know factually did actually happen.
Is that okay?
Would it be okay in any other organisation?
No, and it's interesting to me to see this sort of sunbashing that's going on against the sort of beastly tabloids doing all this.
The BBC have now done two separate exposés of Hugh Edwards in the last 48 hours about his alleged inappropriate behavior, including today reportedly towards colleagues at the BBC.
That's nothing to do with the sun.
That's to do with the BBC themselves unearthing stuff that they believe is worthy of reporting.
So it's much more nuanced, I think, than people are trying to make out this is just the sun invading his privacy.
I don't think it's as simple as that at all.
Kevin, you've been sitting very patiently listening to all this.
I guess your perspective to be interesting to me is from a purely business point of view, you've got a guy here.
The BBC is a global brand.
It's a global brand that really requires trust.
It's paid for by the British taxpayer and that carries with it the brand of the BBC total trust.
You know, that's its great sort of calling card, if you like.
When the face of BBC News, the person chosen to announce the death of the monarch, for example, when that person is seen to have behaved in this alleged way in his private life, even if it doesn't stray into criminality, and we still don't know that yet over all these allegations, would the behaviour itself be inappropriate enough to justify the BBC firing him?
And should they have handled this differently from the moment they first had the allegations come to them?
It's the question because I look at it from several verticals.
The BBC as an institution and a brand in the financial markets worldwide is one of the three outlets that all of us listen to every day.
Because we look for five major stories to make financial decisions on daily.
It starts in North America here at about five in the morning.
And the BBC has a different spin on all of them that North American outlets have, or even Canadian.
There's an equivalent organization called the CBC in Canada, which is often listened to by New York financial managers as well for the North American continent.
But this volatility in presenters and columnists on all sides of the pond has been extreme in the last 12 months because we're trying to figure out how do you maintain the brand, as you've just spoken to the CBC.
Will this change in any way my viewership, which has now been 50 years?
I've been watching the BBC almost daily for 50 years.
Have you really?
50 years.
I lived in Cyprus for a while, Tunisia, Cambodia, Ethiopia.
The BBC is where we got our news.
I was globe hopping for decades.
And so in two weeks, will this make any difference?
And the answer is no.
This narrative in the next 24 hours is going to shift away from Hugh.
And I feel sorry, as we all do, the pressure he must be under.
But I'd add this to it.
When you dedicate your life to be a presenter or a newsreader, as we call them here in America, you have to give up certain things.
And there's no question about this.
If you have flaws in your personality, you're dealing with your own demon because there is no question 100% that one day they will cause your demise as a presenter or columnist because there is zero tolerance at the institutional level, whether it's BBC or any American network or streaming service.
Today, zero tolerance.
And the way you can measure this is look at the morality clauses that have made their way into every presenter.
That's true.
Absolutely.
That's changed.
In the last 36 months, every network that puts a presenter on as a contributor, whether they're a columnist or a newsreader, has a morality clause in it so that you can pull that ripcord and to the extent that you can, save the institution.
Because Hugh, there is no coming back from this, even if half of these allegations are true.
But he unfortunately will not be part of the narrative in 24 hours.
Right.
Douglas, let me just ask you about the aspect of his sexuality.
Here's a guy who's married with five kids.
He's talked about being a regular churchgoer and so on.
And he appears to have been having some kind of relationship with young men.
We don't know the exact nature of what that is, but apparently he was exchanging for money for sexually explicit pictures and so on.
That's one of the reasons why he wasn't named originally was because you can't out people in this day and age, the media, and they would get into big trouble if they did.
So in a way, he was sort of oddly protected in that sense for...
As was Philip Schofield.
For a while, yeah, and that is a concern.
Should it matter?
I mean, if you're Hugh Edwards and you're presenting the news, should it matter if you have a confused sexuality, if you're leading a double life, whatever?
Does that actually matter to your ability to read the news and be trusted to do so?
Well, I don't think so.
I mean, as I said, I think there's a problem, always a problem in the BBC about oversight.
The BBC always gets into trouble because it tries to cover things over.
You know, that's been the case historically.
And it is a taxpayer-funded institution.
It's different from other media.
And so perhaps it's right to have a different set of expectations.
But as for the sort of, as it were, morality thing, as I said before, and I don't look to newsreaders for morality, but there's something very strange that is going on in Britain at the moment.
I've actually read my column about this in The Spectator this week, is the public behave in a different way to the expectations we have of a lot of public figures.
I mean, a lot of the public are on dating apps, for instance.
If it's true that Hugh Edwards was on a dating app and nothing illegal happened.
Do we expect, isn't he, Louise, to his wife and family?
Exactly.
Isn't he accountable to him?
Ultimately, I mean.
Absolutely, but here's where I object to people saying this is about Hugh Edwards' private life.
No, it isn't.
If Hugh Edwards had just had a boyfriend, a male lover, and everything was free and equal between them, then it's none of RB's works, absolutely, and the BBC shouldn't be looking into it.
Those aren't the allegations.
It's not an allegation about Hugh Edwards' private life.
It's an allegation of causing harm to others, bullying, threatening, and so forth.
That's where it steps out of your private life, whatever you're saying.
And again, just to repeat, all those allegations are coming from the BBC themselves and their own independent investigations into their star presenter.
And I think when the media trial starts, as it already is, yeah, fine if you want to try and criticise the sun who never named him.
But the BBC have been doing their own reporting and unearthing material they believe is worthy of reporting of his alleged inappropriate behaviour.
The BBC.
Including to BBC colleagues.
The BBC should thank the Sun for doing the job that they themselves so woefully failed to do.
The second accuser who came directly to the BBC wouldn't have come forward if the first story hadn't broken from the sun.
Thank you to my panel.
Great to see you, Kevin.
Thank you very much indeed for coming on.
I appreciate you pivoting to this big story coming out of our pond.
But as you say, you've been a BBC viewer for 50 years, so probably nobody more expert to talk about it.
So I appreciate you joining us today and thank you to Douglas and to Louise.
I appreciate it.
Ron Censored next.
Shaking Up the White House Race 00:02:27
RFK Jr. has to be called the black sheep of America's most famous political dynasty.
He's also, though, shaking up the race for the White House.
And he joins me live.
Can he be the next president of the United States?
We'll find out after the break.
Welcome back to PS Welcome Uncensored, live from New York City.
You'll see the Statue of Liberty there.
And of course, that is the symbol of freedom and democracy in the United States.
And nothing symbolizes that more than the presidential race.
My next guest is shaking up the race for the White House.
He's come from pretty well nowhere to be an insurgent challenger to President Biden.
And when he speaks, people are listening.
He's a Kennedy, a controversialist, and now a candidate for President of the United States.
RFK Jr. is seen by some as the black sheep of America's most famous political dynasty.
Both his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated.
Robert Jr. blames the CIA.
Congress found that, yeah, it was a plot.
It was a conspiracy.
Just as he blames vaccines for autism and Wi-Fi for cancer.
Wi-Fi radiation is does all kinds of bad things, including causing cancer.
But while some cry conspiracy, many simply see a leader is ready to rock the establishment and it's paying off.
49% of respondents say Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is viewed favourably by voters, higher than President Biden.
The wannabe podcast president is winning over liberals tired of Biden and Republicans tired of Trump.
But is this ripped renegade really ready to be president?
Well, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joins me now.
Great to see you.
Great to meet you.
Great to meet you.
I interviewed you a few weeks ago at the very start of all this.
I've got to say, you're having a great race.
I mean, this is really for you, I would say of all the candidates on either side, you're the one getting most attention.
Yeah, I mean, it's been so far so good.
I think me and my whole team are very happy with how things will be going.
We're getting tremendous traction all over the country.
Vaccine Censorship and Public Voice 00:05:29
Our polling data shows, you know, me surging.
So we're happy.
Let me ask you, because viewers were asking me last time, what's up with his voice?
They didn't know.
They didn't know you.
They hadn't heard you speak before.
Let's talk about that.
What is the issue with your voice?
I had a very, very strong voice until I was 42 years old.
In 1996, I had an injury that caused a neurological disorder called spasmodic dystonia.
And it makes my voice like this.
And I cannot listen to my voice.
When I go home, I will not listen to this program.
I can't do it.
And I feel sorry for the people in your audience who have to listen to me, but this is the best I've got right now.
But I am, you know, I went over with my wife, Cheryl Hines, to do surgery in Kyoto in Japan about eight months ago, and it made my voice a lot more reliable.
And now I'm doing a bunch of alternative sort of therapies that make it, I think are there making it a lot stronger.
So we'll see what happens.
Because you must be when you're on the trail like this, you're doing so many interviews and stumpings and so on.
I mean, you use your voice all the time.
Does it worry you that it may just sort of pack up?
No, because my voice actually doesn't get weaker when I use it.
It gets stronger.
Really?
Yeah, because it's not tissue injury.
So my vocal cords are very, very strong.
It's just the neurological signals that are being sent to them are telling them to tighten up all the time.
And it makes my voice gravelly.
But I can talk 20 hours a day and my voice won't wear out.
So I'm not worried about that.
I don't like the way it sounds.
And I apologize to everybody.
I don't think any apology is necessary.
I think people are just curious.
And actually, it's what comes out of your voice that's more interesting and more relevant to the fact that you want to be president.
You come from American royalty, the Kennedy family.
Obviously, they've had a president.
They've had others who were running for president.
Why do you want to be president?
What's your burning focus here as to why?
Well, you know, I did not spend my lifetime thinking about someday I'm going to run for president.
A bunch of things happened, particularly since COVID.
However, the last 18 years, I've been subject to a lot of censorship on the issue of vaccines.
So most people, you know, call me, people call me anti-vaccine, but I'm not anti-vaccine.
And I'm called that in order to silence me.
And I've been silenced in many, many ways for the last 18 years, but particularly since COVID, when there was blanket censorship around the country and in the UK and everywhere, people, doctors who were reporting injuries and their patients from the vaccines or reporting success from early treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were all silenced because that was not part of the political narrative.
And the frustration, that censorship.
And now, you know, there was a case that 155-page opinion that was issued earlier this week by a judge in Missouri about injoining the White House from censoring people anymore.
And a large part of that decision is about the censorship of me by the Biden White House.
I was the first person censored.
So Biden came into office on January 21st, 2021.
on January 23rd, Twitter and the other social media sites refused or received orders from the White House to deplatform me.
Oh, and I certainly think that a lot of the censorship that went on during COVID on many fronts was completely wrong looking back over it and shouldn't have been happening.
Let me just ask you, have you ever had a vaccine for anything?
Have I had vaccines?
I was fully compliant.
What have you had in your life?
I mean, vaccines.
Well, I had all the vaccines.
You know, when I was a kid, I took the three vaccines that were then required.
Now, my kids' generation, there are 72 vaccines required in this country, 72 doses of 16 vaccines.
But I was traveling a lot as a kid.
I went to Africa, Latin America, and everything.
So I received that entire battery that you used to receive.
So I probably received more vaccines than most people in my generation.
And your kids, by the way, my kids were all fully vaccinated now.
So you're not intrinsically anti-vaccine.
Oh, I was never anti-vaccine.
All I want is the safety science.
I think that we should have placebo-controlled trials, which are required for every other medical product, prior to licensing vaccines.
And unfortunately, vaccines are exempt from those.
They're the only medicine or medical product that are exempt from pre-licensing safety trials.
And, you know, and therefore, we do not know what the risk profile for any of these products are.
And we do not know for any particular of those 72 doses whether they are averting more problems than they're causing.
And I just think we ought to know that.
I also don't believe that we should have mandates.
I think, you know, the government should not be mandated.
Well, I certainly think once it was established that you could transmit the virus, COVID, whether you've been vaccinated or not, then it becomes a personal choice.
I think that once that was established, to me, that argument about mandated was nonsensical.
Government Mandates and Values 00:06:15
Let's take a short break.
I don't want to spend the whole interview talking about vaccines.
You tend to do that a lot, probably not through choice.
Not through choice.
Well, through choice.
So we've done that.
Let's come back and talk about you.
I know you're a falconer.
You like whitewater rafting.
You like a thrill and a danger in your life.
I want to get into that after the break.
More from Robert Kennedy Jr. about his hawks and his whitewater rafting.
Welcome back to Facebook Nonsense, live from New York City.
I'm with my guest, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What's the best and worst thing about being a Kennedy?
You know, I think the good vastly outweighs the bad.
I don't see anything to complain about, honestly.
You know, I think there's been so many, I feel so blessed.
I feel a privilege to be a member of this family.
And, you know, not only because of sort of the cash and prize of the connections that you have and the access and the education.
And then it's, you know, I have 11 brothers and sisters and 29 cousins and we all love each other.
And you argue a lot, right?
I mean, you.
Oh, yeah.
We were trained to argue.
And my grandfather did that with his nine kids.
He would make them, you know, every night at the dinner table take opposite positions.
I do that with my kids.
I think it's healthy.
Yeah, I think it is too.
And I, you know, I think you need to, we narrow, we need to learn to talk with each other, dispute, have conversation and discourse without hating each other.
I totally agree.
I came from an era when I was young.
You'd go down the pub and you'd have an argument and you'd buy each other a pint.
And that was it.
You didn't fall out with people because you disagreed with them.
Well, you know, my uncle, Teddy Kennedy, who was in the Senate for 50 years, and he has more legislation attached to his name than any senator in United States history.
And the reason for that is he had so many friends on the Republican side of the aisle.
He'd come home on weekends to the Cape where we all live in kind of a communal group.
And he'd bring Oren Hatch, who is, you know, to us kind of a right-wing Darth Vader.
And we'd spend the weekend on a boat with him and, you know, to see Teddy laughing with him and really just enjoying and loving.
That's how it should be.
That's how it should be.
And he never compromises values.
Right.
You don't have to.
You can certainly have your views challenged by people that don't agree without losing your mind.
Let me ask you, I mean, you, Robert, you were nine when your uncle John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
You were 14 when your father was assassinated.
They're very formative years.
I've got three sons who both, you know, all three of them came through those ages.
Very formative years for such cataclysmic things to happen.
What impact do you think those two huge events had on your life?
Well, you know, I think they were national traumas and they were part of the national traumas.
You know, there were basically kind of five or six traumas, Martin Luther King's death, my uncle, my father, the Vietnam War, and 9-11 and COVID that pushed our country in a bad direction down the road to be, you know, the military-industrial complex and to becoming kind of a surveillance state at home.
But from my own personal point of view, you know, my mom told us something when we were really young, told me something on one of my brothers died.
And I said to her, does the hole that they leave in you when they die, does that ever get any smaller?
And she said, no, it never gets any smaller.
But our job is to grow ourselves bigger around the hole by taking the best parts of that, the best virtues of that person who died and trying to incorporate them into your own life, into your own character, as part of the mourning process.
And that builds you bigger as a person.
So the hole proportionally gets smaller.
And I think all of us in my family tried to do that.
We were also schooled from when we were very little to never complain.
You know, that my mother would say to us, there are kids in Harlem and in Watts and in Compton who lose their mother and their father.
And they don't have the family we have and they don't have the educational opportunities.
And, you know, everybody takes their licks in life.
And, you know, you have to have a mission and you have to keep moving.
Take the best parts of that person.
Let me ask you about your father then.
I mean, he was, for many people, the greatest president America sadly never had.
My uncle.
Oh, my father.
Your father, your father.
What do you think you've gained from him?
And do you feel his spirit guiding you now as you run for president?
Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of time.
I think unlike other members of my family who were many of them are so shattered even to this day that they can't really think about my dad's death or my uncle Jack.
But I've spent a lot of time kind of reading all the literature and studying their lives.
And I'm constantly delighted and surprised by how much of their values have stood, have withstood the tests of time.
And I think my campaign right now is about recalling America to those values.
And what are they?
Summarize them.
Well, you know, all of the kind of traditional values of the Democratic Party, which are free speech, you know, a love for the Constitution, protecting the environment, the Purple Mountains Majesty for our children, protecting that government has a role, protecting the rights of minorities and for people who are underrepresented in the political process.
Falconry, Wolves, and Traditional Arts 00:03:59
Women's right, bodily autonomy, you know, that smaller government and more freedom is always better.
The word liberal means freedom.
And this idea that democracy and that freedom from a totalitarian system fosters human growth and human creativity.
So a love of the arts, which is the highest aspiration of democracy.
My uncle used to say that, that nobody really remembers the names of the generals in the Peloponnesian Wars and the battles, but everybody remembers the poems of Aeschylus and the plays of Sophocles and the art and the sculpture and the literature, the beauty of the architecture of ancient Greece.
And that that really is the ultimate aspiration of a democratic society to create things that are enduring and that elevate the human spirit.
Let's take a short break, come back and talk about what arts you're good at then, because I know it involves white wolf kayaking and falconry.
What else do you do, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
We'll find out after the break.
Welcome back to Pitwalk and I Censored, looking at the Empire State Building here in Manhattan in New York.
And I'm still with the presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, we left the viewers on a cliffhanger.
What are your artistic bents?
Where do you find your cultural solace?
Well, what do you mean?
I mean, I'm not particularly talented as an artist.
Let me put that out there.
That's not a big disappointment for people.
But, you know, I love, like, I have eclectic tastes in music and I love art and art history and going to museums.
And, you know, so, but I admire it, but I'm not very good at it.
But falconry is a big thing in your life.
Yeah.
What do you get from falconry?
I have always had an affinity for the outdoors and for nature.
And for me, you know, I read when my uncle was in the White House, there's a lot of people talking about Camelot.
And I read T.H. White's book, The Sword or The Once and Future King.
He's a British falconer and an incredible writer.
And it's about the story of young King Arthur.
And there was a chapter there on falconry, on training a hawks, which was very popular, you know, in the Middle Ages.
It was the most popular sport.
And when I read that chapter, I fell in love with it.
I became obsessed with it.
And as it turned out, there was a guy who lived about a mile from my house who was one of the great pioneers of American falconry.
His name was Alvin I, and my father knew about him.
He was designing jets for the Pentagon, but my father knew about him because the State Department, whenever they were visiting Arab dignitaries, they would send them to this guy's house because the Arabs are crazy for falconry.
And so I was able, because of my father's contact with them, I was able to apprentice under him.
And I learned falconry beginning when I was nine years old.
What's it giving you, falconry?
It's, you know, it's like being, you're with a predatory bird and you're hunting in the wild.
Usually I hunt with two birds at a time.
And it's like being allowed.
They don't change their behavior any they're doing nothing that they wouldn't do in the wild.
But you're observing them close up, so it's like being allowed to hunt with a wolf pack, you know, where, and who wouldn't want to do that?
Primaries and Physical Condition 00:03:07
Do you see an analogy to what you're doing now to the other Democratic candidates?
Not really.
Are you hunting Joe Biden down like a wolf?
But, you know, preserving the environment and giving other kids the opportunity to enjoy the richness of those kind of experiences of the outdoors is one of the, I'd say, the spirit of my campaign that we need to, you know.
Well, the other spirit of your campaign is your youthful vigor.
And we've seen some tremendous videos of you here in action working out here, which have got everyone going.
I mean, obviously, we look at this and we see a man in peak physical condition.
Congratulations.
But we also are reminded of President Biden's, let's put it kindly, lack of comparative physical condition.
How concerned are you?
Never mind the race, but how concerned are you when you see President Biden now in public?
The sheer volume of missteps, both verbal and physical.
Does it concern you as an American that the president seems to be additional wisdom to contribute to that debate?
I think that I haven't seen President Biden in a couple of years.
And I don't know.
You know, I see, I saw him trip on the stage, but anybody, as you know, anybody can trip on a stage.
And so I don't really know what his condition is.
There are worrying, you know, videos and stuff.
But do you sense that he may not actually run in 2024 when it comes to it?
And is that why you think you actually have a real chance of potentially becoming the Democrat nominee?
I think I have a chance of becoming the Democratic nominee because my numbers are better at beating Republicans than him.
And I think that's what the Democrats are.
Should the party make him stand aside for you?
Well, I, you know, that's, first of all, that's not going to happen.
But doesn't that have to happen to let you?
No, no.
I mean, I have to win some primaries.
And you think you can actually beat him in the primaries?
I think I can beat him in the primaries.
I mean, it'd be incredible.
I mean, pretty much unprecedented if you do that, right, to an incumbent president.
I think Reagan did that against Gerald Ford.
Right.
Oh, but yeah, I mean, it's unusual.
But, you know, my father ran against incumbent president, and he would have won.
And, you know, my uncle Teddy ran against incumbent President Carter and lost.
And do you actually believe?
He won something like 37 states.
Do you actually believe that in 2024, when we get to December, January, you will be the person on Inauguration Day addressing the American people.
Okay, I'm going to be very objective about this, but I'm telling you that if I had to put money and bet on any candidate, I would put it on me.
That's good enough.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a great pleasure to meet you.
If I was a gambling man.
Well, I'm a gambling man.
I'm a pot myself.
Good to see you.
Whatever you're up to.
Keep it uncensored.
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