Robert F. Kennedy was condemning the US military-industrial complex as the alarm went off
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a campaign event in Boston, Massachusetts, April 19, 2023 © AP / Josh Reynolds
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first presidential campaign speech was interrupted on Wednesday when a fire alarm was triggered. Immediately before the alarm, Kennedy spoke out against the CIA and the US military-industrial complex.
Kennedy, a Democrat, officially launched his 2024 campaign in Boston, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. Announcing that he would challenge President Joe Biden on a platform of “clean government, civil liberties, peace, and economic revitalization,” Kennedy also took aim at the past two decades of US military interventions, arguing that as the US was “spending $8 trillion bombing bridges, ports, roads and hospitals,” China was “spending $8 trillion building bridges, roads, ports and hospitals.”
Just as Kennedy was arguing that China’s approach had seen it replace the US as the preferred trading partner for much of the third world, a fire alarm rang out, halting his speech.
“Nice try,” Kennedy quipped, telling his supporters that “there is no emergency.” It is unclear who set off the alarm.
Someone Pulled the Fire Alarm as @RobertKennedyJr Started to Expose the Failures of the Military Industrial Complex"Nice try!!" 🤣 pic.twitter.com/styQP23Ns0
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) April 19, 2023
“This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,” he told the crowd, adding that he has “a lot to talk about.”
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Kennedy’s uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, promised before his assassination to “take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind,” a remark that Kennedy quoted before the alarm was triggered. Kennedy said that JFK had correctly concluded that “the function of the intelligence agencies had become to provide the military industrial complex with a constant pipeline of war.”
“You need a president at this time in history who can stand up to his bureaucracy,” Kennedy said, citing his father’s opposition to military strikes on Cuba when he served as JFK’s confidant during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such a move could have brought the US into open war with the Soviet Union.
Kennedy was nine when his uncle was assassinated in Texas. Five years later, his father Robert – JFK’s attorney general and later a US senator – was fatally shot during the 1968 presidential primaries. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, is now 78 and still in prison. Kennedy has met with Sirhan Sirhan and believes that a second gunman was responsible for his father’s death.
