Democrats plan to ask Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to disinvite presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from this Thursday’s hearing on censorship at the Weaponization Committee over recent controversial remarks.
Kennedy was accused — inaccurately — over the weekend of claiming that the coronavirus was “‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.” He did not, in fact, say that, but said bioweapons targeting ethnicities were a threat, citing differential responses to the coronavirus among different population groups as evidence it could be done.
Kennedy denied the story and demanded a retraction from the New York Post, noting his support for Israel and for the Jewish community in general.
Democrats, who are said to be worried about Kennedy’s challenge to President Joe Biden, seized on the story. House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries (D-NY), who has a history of supporting antisemitism, accused Kennedy of using a “vile antisemitic trope.”
My statement on the use of a vile antisemitic trope and xenophobic conspiracy theory by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pic.twitter.com/muLLDvfD5H
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) July 16, 2023
On Monday, according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News, Democrats began drafting a letter demanding that Kennedy be removed from an upcoming hearing about censorship — demanding, in effect, that he be censored.
NEWS in @PunchbowlNews : House Democrats are prepping a letter to push JIM JORDAN to uninvite RFK JR from a weaponization hearing this week.
The letter draws comparison between RFK Jr and Hitler.
w @MicaSoellnerDC https://t.co/QmPieCDId6
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 17, 2023
Sherman is to testify alongside Breitbart News Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris, who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story at the Post in 2020. Louisiana Department of Justice Special Assistant Attorney General D. John Sauer is also set to testify. The topic of the hearing is “the federal government’s role in censoring Americans.”
Kennedy’s name came up at an earlier hearing of the committee, when Democrats denied that the government had ever asked Twitter to take down lawful content, and Republicans showed that the government had, in fact, asked Twitter to remove a tweet by Kennedy.
The irony of asking a hearing about censorship to censor one of the witnesses, especially on dubious grounds, has apparently missed the Democratic drafters of the letter.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Correction: The hearing is to be held Thursday, July 20, not on Wednesday, July 19.
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