During an interview with Glenn Greenwald on his System Update show, the Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. unashamedly voiced his initial bias towards former President Donald Trump. But more importantly, he highlighted how his fellow Democrats get locked into their own particular brand of cognitive dissonance. Just one month since the Durham Report dropped, the multi-year investigation was unceremoniously either ignored or downplayed by the collective Fourth Estate. But that doesn’t mean that the American hoi polloi were quite so ready to offer a blanket dismissal. And neither, it seems, was RFK Jr.
“I think there was a period in which you're correct about that I just accepted the mainstream narrative,” RFK Jr. said in his own personal “mea culpa.” “Part of that is just my own fault for not being skeptical about it. And part of it also may have been my natal bias against Donald Trump. I was like most Democrats, I was just happy to hear anything that confirmed my own notion of Donald Trump.”
RFK Jr. on the Road to Damascus
Relating how he began his journey of realization in 2020, Kennedy explained how he started seeing “propaganda tropes that were appearing all the time saying anybody who criticized vaccines is probably a Russian bot, or a stooge of Putin.” But the final switch came with the release of John Durham’s 300-page dénouement.
“I was open to hearing a different story, and then I started seeing the piles of evidence, but I still was neutral on it,” he said. “In my mind, the jury was out on this stuff until I saw the recent disclosures, the Durham report, etc. That makes it look like the entire thing was fake, the entire thing was fabricated from whole cloth.”
And yet RFK Jr. is not the first notable name on the left to have a political awakening, and the Durham report is not the only eye-opener.
Another Damascene Moment?
Former Democrat advisor and author Naomi Wolfe took to the pages of SubStack shortly after Tucker Carlson aired the unedited footage of Congress during the events of Jan. 6. She offered a full-throated apology to “conservatives, Republicans, MAGA,” for believing a “farrago of lies,” and explained how she came to her own realization that the Democrat Party had sought to damage America through media-driven fabrication. She wrote:
“You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate.”
RFK Jr. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Add to the mix Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat lawmaker and 2020 presidential contender, who appears to have made it her personal mission to denounce the recent indictment of Trump as a political witch hunt. It seems that as narrative after poisoned narrative crumbles, there are some who would rather distance themselves from toeing the “company line.”
Genuine Reversal or Electoral Power Play?
It is no secret that the voting public is frankly sick of the bitter partisanship that has enveloped the political process. Polling indicates that the two frontrunners for the 2024 presidential contest – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – are both considered a non-starter by at least half the country. RFK Jr. is presently polling an average of 16 points – a number that could very easily rise, especially if the Democratic National Committee accedes to demands for primary debates.
By positioning himself as one who has seen the light on the numerous hoax scandals that plagued the Trump presidency, he sets himself apart from the Democrat establishment and potentially offers voters a change from the politics of recrimination. The 45th president understood well that being outside of an apathetic establishment pays dividends, and it seems this is a lesson the Democrat hopeful has learned well.
