What He’s Said
On more than one occasion Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has said:

“There was no time in history where the people
who were censoring free speech were the good guys.” [1]

He says this because he believes that he himself has been censored, despite the fact that he’s been free to tell lies for years in all manner of forums, on subjects ranging from COVID to vaccines to autism, including publishing a number of books that are factually wrong and perniciously harmful.

Nonetheless, a statement like this sounds like full-throated support for free speech and the American Constitution’s First Amendment.

And yet, at the very same time, on his presidential campaign website, there’s a video of Kennedy saying that if elected, he would have the Justice Department bring racketeering charges against major scientific publications, essentially for not printing what he believes. [2]

While he’s saying this, the graphic shown below is displayed, listing some of the journals he’d target. There are of course a number of problems with this beyond its general repugnance. First, what he describes does not meet the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) standard [3]. Second, even if it did somehow did meet that standard, three of those four journals are not owned by American entities and the RICO statute can be applied to such firms only in very limited circumstances. [4]

Why It Matters
There’s been a lot of speculation that Kennedy would take a health-related position in the new Trump Administration. In that context he’s made disturbing comments about abolishing “the nutrition departments at FDA” (presumably he means the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition), about removing fluoride from public drinking water, about Wi-Fi causing “leaky brain,” and more. When asked directly about becoming Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy said:  “I don’t know if that’s the post that I want. I may be more effective in the White House as a health czar or something like that.” [5]

Of course, one advantage of becoming “health czar” (whatever that is) as opposed to Secretary of HHS is that the former wouldn’t require Senate approval, a bridge that might be too far even for some Senate Republicans given Kennedy’s erratic behavior (dropping a bear carcass in Central Park, sawing off the head of a whale, etc.) and his character issues (extensive drug use, serial infidelities, etc.) [6]

Another advantage of the health czar position is that it would probably give Kennedy input to, if not leverage over, health policy and legislation, even in departments beyond HHS. This might include everything from the U.S. military to the Bureau of Prisons, not to mention U.S. participation and support (or the lack thereof) to international health programs like those of WHO, GAVI, and others.

And if there were another pandemic (as there inevitably will be) would the U.S. response be coordinated by the health czar, someone with no medical or health education, training, or experience; someone with no governmental experience; someone with no large-scale organizational and coordinating experience; someone whose views on vaccination and disease are at odds with those of the health and medical professions; someone who, without proof, promoted the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during the COVID pandemic? 

Conclusion
If in fact Kennedy is offered a position in the new administration, I hope (I can not say “trust”) that he has the self-awareness to know he’s not qualified, the integrity to simply say “No,” and the humility to understand the overriding importance and value of expertise in all matters of medicine and health care. 

We will see.

You might also be interested in this article about Kennedy, Trump,
and their questioning of vaccine safety and scientific integrity.

Notes

[1]
See at about the 1:20 mark. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=192103493827459  
Interestingly, Aaron Rodgers said something very similar:
"When in the course of human history has the side that's doing the censoring and trying to shut people up and make them show papers and marginalize a part of the community ever been [the correct side]?" Kennedy had considered having Rodgers be his VP running mate. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33088151/the-unfiltered-year-aaron-rodgers 

[2]
Here’s the pertinent text:

“I’m also going to call in all the scientific journals into the Justice Department and I’m going to say to them you are representing yourself as a neutral and reliable source of health information and you have done tremendous damage to public health because you are publishing fake science to promote the mercantile ambitions of the pharmaceutical industry and of the food industry and of the big agricultural interests of the oil and gas and coal and all these other big and powerful industries and you’re lying to the public and you’ve caused tremendous damage to public health and I’m going to hold you responsible. I’m going to litigate against you under the racketeering laws under the general tort laws. I’m going to find a way to sue you unless you come up with a plan right now to show how you’re going to start publishing real science and stop retracting the real science. It will give the attorneys the chance to litigate these issues in court because there’s no good science on these issues.”

See this at about the 43 second mark.  https://rumble.com/v4dv3fl-how-ill-force-medical-authorities-to-do-good-science.html This video was on Kennedy’s presidential campaign website. After his endorsement of Trump, the website was somewhat laughably renamed MAHA, standing for Make America Healthy Again. There is still a place-holder shot of the video on Kennedy’s website home page  ( https://www.mahanow.org/ ) (fourth video under the heading Make American Healthy Again), though for some reason it does not play. 

[3]
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual-109-rico-charges

“A more expansive view holds that in order to be found guilty of violating the RICO statute, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that an enterprise existed; (2) that the enterprise affected interstate commerce; (3) that the defendant was associated with or employed by the enterprise; (4) that the defendant engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity; and (5) that the defendant conducted or participated in the conduct of the enterprise through that pattern of racketeering activity through the commission of at least two acts of racketeering activity as set forth in the indictment.”

[4]
https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2016/06/supreme-court-limits-extraterritorial-application-of-rico Kennedy has two law degrees; he should know better. 

[5]
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/rfk-jr-starts-fleshing-vision-trumps-second-term-rcna179000|
and
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-touts-rfk-jr-suggests-fluoride-ban-sounds-ok-rcna178714

[6]
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/12/robert-f-kennedy-jr-profile-presidential-campaign

Attribution of original photo of Kennedy:
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons