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companies. 45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> next, 2024 indepeent presidential candidate robert f. kennedy jr. and his vice president ale running mate campaigning in austin, texas. they focus on several topics cluding putting an end to chronic diseases, reduci the national debt and protecting constitutional rights. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next vice president of the united states, nicole shanahan. >> hi, everyone. thank you. to you all, thank you to the brave and innovative minds here today.

thank you to all of those who are healing this country and healing america's soil. i want to talk about soil. soil isn't much of a political issue these days. when they surveyed the public and asked what do you care about most, you can get things like immigration, abortion, inflation, guns, the deficit, the wars. but there's never a check box for soil. i love soil, too. for me, soil is an important issue, but it is part of something much bigger. i would like to talk about that bigger thing today. healing the soil says we are

going to heal this country from the ground up. yes. the foundation of a nation's health is its soil. it is also the air and water, it is the economic infrastructure that supports life itself. and it has to be treated and respected as a public good. thus, a most basic responsibility of our government. moms, you all get this. you know that health comes first and then we can do other things. for too long our nation has neglected its foundation. we have spent trillions of dollars on foreign wars while our domestic infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. we have propped up wall street

white main street businesses have shuttered their windows. we have funneled unimaginable wealth to billionaires -- i know them all -- and i can tell you most of them don't care that millions of americans have fallen into poverty while they have fallen into wealth we have never seen. it isn't just that our soils are depleted. our people are, too. american finances are depleted and they are drowning in debt. americans boss -- whose health is depleted,

what i have seen through my life is that every one of those conditions can absolutely be healed. the healing starts when you get experience. it starts when you make it a priority. the healing starts when you start deceiving yourself that everything is fine. the healing starts when you are willing to look at the root of the problem and get to work. that is what we are going to do. our politicians have been more concerned with slandering each other's personal lives, they have ignored these warning signs and turned their gaze away from the foundation of national health instead they dilute themselves with faint ambitions and lose themselves to the temptations of power and money. i am sick of it.

it is not just soil that is absent from the checkboxes. you will not see chronic disease even though it affects over half of americans. you don't see decaying infrastructure on that list. you will not see corporate capture, you might see climate change but you will not see them addressing the root causes of forever chemicals in our water supply and in our food. where is that? you will rarely see fentanyl mentioned even though their kids are dying from it or skyrocketing depression act for the childcare affordability crisis. we have to talk about these things and open our hearts to

them. robert f and i will look where all of the other politicians have failed to go. we are going to do something about it. this incredible movement of people have already started to make a difference. has anybody noticed the new talking points coming out from the democrats and republicans? i heard trump talking about block chains and bind in talking about the epa taking drinking water seriously. and you know what? i'm counting each and every one of these is a when -- win. the pressure we are putting on them

to put this together seriously is already working. let's keep it going. we care about what the political establishment has neglected. that is one of the big reasons i have entered politics. up until last year, i was a heavy democratic donor because i believed if i could get the ear of party leaders, they would implement common sense policies. when i did get there ear, they would smile and nod but somehow nothing ever seems to get done. our efforts become laden with all kinds of distortions. in my more cynical moments, i

wonder if they were just after my money. i am not a cynical person. i supported them because i trusted they were sincere in wanting to make positive change. i think many of them want to. they can't. they can't because they are beholden to party politics in the insider games of washington dc. they can't actually do anything because they are tangled in these corporate interests. they are stuck in a locked congress and federal agencies. most politicians are trapped there and as a result, we are all trapped there. or, we were trapped there until now.

because robert f. kennedy, jr. is here and he is taking charge for all of us. that's all about to change. two years ago, i wanted to change and i looked outside of the party. i started two years ago looking outside of the party for someone who has the experience, the wisdom and wherewithal to leave this kind of transformation. i could not find anybody until i looked into robert f. kennedy, jr.. since listening to those early interviews and seeing him out day after day and that selfie line. there is something special for

him to get out hitting the pavement day after day. he is in a class all of his own. i met hundreds of these politicians. i never met a candidate like this. this transcends politics. he is willing to look at images from the perspective of solving them with long-term strategies and understands the need for healing on a national level. you want to know why he knows how to do this? the last 40 years of his life that is what he has been doing with this life. each and every day he is doing it. healing is not only about policies but getting to work and getting it done and doing it without worrying hissing off your corporate donors.

this is the objective leadership we have all been craving. words are weak. how nice would it be to put the trust that our leadership is putting the health of the nation first? to put resources from the war machine into the peace economy? we so desperately need a department of transportation that is competent at fixing roads not led by a career politician. we need actual, objective on conflicted people running our agencies. we need to clean up our polluted water supply and broken railways and we can't do it when our agencies are corrupted.

so, robert f. kennedy, jr. will help us restore the integrity of our food supply because our sta will be run by a farmer. our educational system, qualified teachers and not the government will run the classroom. we are going to tackle the mental health crisis with guidance from doctors who put health above pharmaceutical bonuses. it is only going to be that kind of set up that will help us not to feel trapped in government. natural healing is not about policy but how we communicate with each other.

it's about love, trust and respect and a lot of people have been turned off by politics not only by the failure of government but because the way these political conversations are are happening. you can barely call them conversations in fact. it's more like a shouting match and each side agrees the other side is horrible. if we will heal as a nation we have to stop seeing each other that way. we have to respect each other enough to actually listen otherwise how will we restore any semblance of coherent conversation? how will we remember how lucky we are to be protected by the constitution of the united

states. we are so lucky. we will remember how lucky we are once we stopped taking each other out and realizing the essence of our relationship is what makes us capable of appreciating this beautiful country. when you actually have a conversation with someone on the others. you realize there is a lot more in common than you think. even when you take on one of those wedge issues you discover people in this country are not monsters. i'm talking about things like guns, abortion and immigration. most of us are caring human beings but our political culture tries to convince us otherwise.

it defies us into warring opinion tribes and how are we going to heal when we talk to each other like that? how do we attack chronic health for not speaking coherently to one another? i have allied myself with robert f. kennedy, jr.. because nothing i have ever heard him say is designed to make you hate his opponent. there is no meanness. there is no mockery. this is his nature. he gives people the benefit of the doubt and listens carefully and that is the quality of leadership that our country needs the most right now. our independent candidacy is not separate from the left or right

it draws from both and reaches outside of the left and right to. a lot of our innovative solutions come from outside convention politics in the round of alternatives. i know that sounds so radical but it should not. i have seen the power of these alternative ways of thinking in my own life. i have used alternative healing practices and learned that these practices have been used for centuries. i have seen alternative agricultural practices reinvigorate land and invent innovators of criminal justice restore lives. i know it is possible to step

outside frozen habits and what is possible when we become independent. i am really happy to welcome right now this wonderful man on stage. let's welcome him now. please welcome our next president, robert f kennedy junior. ♪ 0 this is a day of affirmation, a celebration of liberty. we stand here in the name of freedom. we are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change. we recognize full human equality of all of our people. not those of a particular bridge -- race religion but to all

people. we must do it for the simple and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do. ♪ >> we are told that our nation is hopelessly divided but i found something different as i traveled this country. i have noticed in the upwelling

of optimism i have before. something is stirring in us saying it does not have to be this way. and so, i come here today to declare independence from the tyranny of corruption. to do that, i must first declare my own independence. independence from the democratic party. and from all other political parties. i have not made this decision lightly. it is painful for me to let go of the party of my uncles, father, grandfather and great grandfather. my sacrifice is nothing compared to the risk our founding fathers

took. they knew if the revolution failed every last one of them would be hanged and they chose to place everything on the line. jefferson turned to the president and said live or die, survivor parish from this day on i am with my country. i am going to make that same pledge to you today so i can stand before you as every leader should stand before you free from partisan elite, backroom deals, serving only my conscience, my creator in you. every president enters office wants to work with people across the aisle but none of them ever

does that. they can't, they have already chosen aside. i am going to build coalition from both sides of the aisle. except for the small minority of public officials that are actually corrupt i'll tell you a secret. isn't that ultimately what we want? liberation from a system that robs us of our health, wealth and hope, our patriotism and our sense of ourselves as a good and capable people. his healing our divided nation possible? let's go take back our country.

♪ " i am a real american, i know what is right, fight for your life. " welcome the next president of the united states robert f. kennedy, jr.. robert f kennedy: thank you everyone and thank you austin. i wanted think some of the people here today. my brother who was one of the

few people who remain funny during the pandemic. thank you for coming in from houston and riley englehart and our three texas volunteers. they were a part of the team and signature gatherers. we have a historic data in texas. just under 250,000 signatures. [applause] >> more than any other presidential candidacy in the history of texas. and in the history of our country.

the texas legislature says, they change the rules that double the number of signatures needed to be collected because they thought no one would be able to do it. but you heard them from the beginning of this campaign saying it would be impossible for us to get on the ballot and we got on the ballot in texas and if we can get on in texas we can get on everywhere. [applause]\ robert r kennedy: i was just upstairs talking to the team as i was completing the signature

and they said we are on the way to new york because that is the next one for us we are 10 days out we have 45 days between new york and texas. we already have more than we need a new york. [applause] the dnc has done everything in their power to stop us and will continue to do that but we will get on the ballot in every single state. i want to thank all of you. i want to say a couple of words about nicole. when we chose nicole, we have seen throughout our history

presidential candidates who chose unknown candidates as their vice presidents and have historically run into problems because those people who are inexperienced and national politics, when they are exposed to it, they collapse. any issues they have are amplified and they end up looking bad. i have watched nicole since the day of our announcement and what she has been through is extraordinary. she did not spend her lifetime taking on vice president of the united states and i called her on the telephone and asked her do you want to be the president -- vice president of the united states? she got back three days later

and said i'm gonna do it. i'm worried about it and other people are because you don't know how people are going to hold up where you are vilified, defamed. i've been going through this for all of my adult life. but to land on you in a two week, four week. period and come up and give a speech like that. [cheering] robert f kennedy junior: most candidates today feel like they

are doing a satire of veep. it's vanity and decay and bumper sticker slogans. that is not what you hear from nicole. you get a lecture about soil. there is no political scientist in the world that would tell you you have to do a lecture on soil, they will love it. no one would tell her to do that or advise her and yet, we all love her because we see the authenticity, the integrity, the compassion for other people, the creatures with whom we share this land and you don't hear that from our political leaders.

we are all part of a giant family. the micros are part of it, the soil, the plants are a part of it. that's what we need to start healing this country. two days ago i did a podcast with a young podcaster, he is a young, amish farmer and he can't have the camera on him because the camera can only use technology for certain purposes. i was able to see him through the camera but he can't use it and i had to promise him i would not show the film anywhere. he is an extraordinary guy a handsome, young guy with the

long beard. i asked him about his life and he has an eighth grade education. he had this encyclopedic knowledge of the soil, plants and agricultural systems and agricultural immunology. he said i spent a lot of time because of my career talking to scientists and physicians and people who have a lot of the letters behind their name. i love listening to them talk because they have an expertise in the grasp of an area of knowledge where you understand you are listening to existential truths that they have devoted their lives to understanding.

that is how i felt, i felt like a kid listening to a professor at harvard. he knew so much about it in about 15 years ago he was a pesticide dealer. his father was one of the biggest pesticide dealer's and fertilizer dealer in ohio and the amish country. a few years ago after having pest problems they found the more pesticide they applied after consulting with professors about how to kill this past in the next pest the more pesticide they applied the sicker their plans got and they rented a piece of land that was exactly parallel to the peace they had been treated but it had not been treated and they grew melons on

parallel tracks and tried it with no pesticides to see what would be happening in the area that had been saturated for years the plants were overwhelmed with pests but on the untreated track not a single pest appeared. he said it was like knifes lying between the crops. it prompted him and his father to go to a seminar on pesticides and listen to a speaker talk about it. his father took the two boys out to lunch and he said we are done, we will never use it again and they have become into a study of plant immunology. he did not even know plants had immune systems.

he is now one of the world's experts on it. he has 4 million farmers that follow him and developed a way of agriculture and rowing prance -- growing plants without pesticide. they treat the plants with nutrients instead because the nutrients will boost the immune system and i told him about a study that i read years ago in the name of the study is from gu yr. published at the end of the 20th century and it was a cdc funded study. in scientist from johns hopkins

looking at the decline in infectious disease between 1900-2001 the diseases did not disappear. people were still getting measles and cholera but they were no longer killing people. the infection mortality of measles was 10,000 a year in 1900 but by 1963 it was 400 a year and almost all the people infected were malnourished. what this study found was that all medical interventions, vaccines, antibiotics and surgeries had almost nothing to do, a less than 3% in plot -- impact on the decline of mortality is. the decline they contributed to

the bolstering of immune systems and the constructions of roads allowed oranges to be brought from the south during the wintertime so people could eat them. refrigerators that allowed good and fresh food to be in people's kitchens. the sewage treatment plants and the water plants. clean water, nutrition, sanitation, the things that would give us good immune systems. it was the same lesson that we need to start bolstering our immune systems. bolstering the things that god gave us, the soil -- [cheering] and good food does not come from chemical agriculture. and good health does not come in a syringe. [cheering]

and, we are a sick country today. when my uncle was president, 6% of american kids had chronic disease. today, 60% do. it is the biggest issue. $4.3 trillion, five times our defense budget. we are spending two or three times more than european spend and yet we have the worst health outcomes in the world. the more we spend on medicine the unhealthier we get. but, but what is it that is causing us not to see that? what is it that is causing us to constantly feed the beast that is making us more and more sick all the time. it is a corrupt political system. it is the subversion of our democracy. and, don't you want a healthy country? [cheering]

we have two presidents who are running, two ex-presidents. they both had two years in office. they could not be more different than each other if you look at their personalities. they are dispositions, how they relate to the world. the ideology that drives all of them. that they articulate all the time, they could not be more different. the issues that they are actually disputing are a very narrow window. it is what nicole was saying. it is guns, abortion, the border, trans rights, these issues are all important, but none of them are existential, none of them are the issues that really matter to you, to me and to our children. the issues that they really matter -- that really matter

they never talk about. they are starting a little bit to talk about it because our campaign is forcing them to. [cheering] we have a $34 trillion debt, a service that is costing us more than our defense budget. within five years, $.50 out of every dollar will go to servicing the debt. within 10 years 100% of every dollar we collect from taxes will service the debt. have you ever heard about president trump talking about how he will end the debt crisis? or president biden talking about it? >> no. robert: they are the ones who ran up the debt. half of that came from them. president trump spent $8

trillion and ran up a trillion dollars during his term. it was more of that time and -- then every president in the united states from george washington to george w. bush, 200 380 -- 238 years of history. president trump said that he was going to run it like a business, i am a businessman, trust me, we need a businessman to run it like a business. exactly. and then he closed down all of our business is, three .3 million businesses, who would do that? who would do that, you want a president who will close down all of our businesses? >> no. robert: we have two presidents that have shown they are ready to do that. and he shifted $4 trillion on the american middle class to this new oligarchy of billionaires. and the other issue, this is an

existential issue for our country. we cannot keep running on this debt. we need to figure out a way and investing in things that will actually grow the economy, rather than more wars. president trump and president biden -- president trump did say that he was going to end the war machine but then he brought john bolton into run the nsa. [booing] he put a swamp preacher in talk -- inch -- creature in charge of draining the swamp. and then two weeks ago he give a -- he gave a big bear hug to speaker johnson and president johnson and they agreed to send more money over to ukraine. [booing] wouldn't you rather that $64 billion he spent here in the united states? [cheering]

don't we need that money here in our country to improve our schools? to improve our health care system? to figure out ways to end this mental health epidemic that is destroying our children, last year with the highest suicide rate in our history? the highest cancer rate in our history? the highest heart disease rate? it is not just chronic disease or neurological disorders, the autism has gone from one to 10,000 in my generation and 70-year-old man today, one in every 22 boys. one in every 34 kids. it is not just the obesity epidemic or the allergy is, the food allergies, the autoimmune diseases.

diabetes that are devastating this generation. it is all of these other entries that are making our kids and people sicker and sicker. have you ever heard president trump talk about how he is going to end these epidemics? don't you want a president who will be thinking about those things? [cheering] when i get into office, i am going to end the chronic disease epidemic. [cheering] one of the reasons that i asked nicole to be my vice president is because she spent her life thinking about it. she understands it. we need a government that is making this our priority in this country to give us a generation

now of healthy children, don't you want that for our country? [cheering] and, don't we want to end the lying by our governments? don't you want to government that is going to tell you eight -- tell you the truth? now, when i was a kid everybody trusted the government. it might seem hard to believe now, but what my uncle was president 85% of americans said they trusted the government. people actually were proud of the fact that they paid their taxes. they considered it a civic duty because they trusted their government to spend it well and tell them the truth about it. that is almost unimaginable today. and you know, the first time people understood that the government actually lies to us

was five months before my uncle's election. a cia spy plane was shot down over russia. and it flew at 60,000 feet and was invisible to the eye and radar. it was a top-secret program and nobody in the world knew about it. and so the pilot was under orders to commit suicide. he had a cyanide shot that he was supposed to give himself if he ever got shot down. it -- there was a russian spy at langley that told them how to showed it down. they exploded and allen dulles told dwight eisenhower lie about it and deny it because the russians were saying we shut down a u.s. spy plane in the world was shocked. it was illegal for us to be flying over russia. and eisenhower went out there and he lied and then the

russians produced gary francis powers and it was exposed for the first time americans said our government lies to us and then when my uncle was killed in 1963, the investigation and the warren commission said it was a loan gunman. 60% of the americans thought the government was lying. and in 1973 the pentagon papers released that hundreds of government officials have been systematically lying to us and americans suddenly said oh my god, the american government, a democracy lies to its people and we said we all know that every time we see a government official on tv, president, vice president or anyone else the assumption is that they are lying to us. and if that is not your

assumption that you are not paying attention. [applause] a lot of times, reporters will say to me you know, you are telling americans not to trust your government. if you get to the presidency and no americans trust you, how are you going to do anything. i said because i will make the government trustworthy. [cheering] the day that nicole and i get into office, we are going to issue on day one and executive order saying that any government official who lies to the american public in conjunction with their official duties will immediately be fired. [cheering]

don't you want a president who is not going to lie to you no matter what? and that is the first thing we need to do to start healing the divide. the reason we all hate each other is because none of us trust any of the institutions that are supposed to be telling us the truth. we all think they have an agenda and it is either democratic or republican agenda. we do not trust enforcement agencies anymore because they are lying to us and taking sides. we do not trust the president anymore. when i was a kid, the job of the press was to maintain a fierce -- my father said when i was a little boy, people in authority lie, and our job in a democracy is not to trust the experts, that is not a feature of democracy.

our job is to respect people in power who are leading us, but to always question what they say to us. that is the job of a -- [cheering] that is the job of a citizen in a democracy. and, i am going to give you -- nicole and i are going to give you a government that will not under any conditions lied to the american people. [cheering] we are going to tell americans things i do not want to hear. we are going to tell you -- we are going to operate transparently because that is what we need in a democracy. we are going to put all of our budget on block chain so every american can read it 24 hours a

day. [cheering] and if somebody is paying $4000 for a hammer or $6,000 for a toilet seat you are going to be able to find that out right away. [cheering] because, it is your money, isn't it your money? yes. they forgot it was your money. they are treating it like it is their own and they can keep secrets from us. that is not what happens in a democracy. we are going to restore the faith in government, not by telling people you need to have faith. but by earning that faith. by earning that trust. by telling people the truth from day one. we are going to heal a divide. president trump cannot heal the divide and president biden cannot heal the divide. acknowledge that the country is

divided in a way that is more toxins and dangerous than any time since the american civil war. but they are not able to do anything about it because they feed that division. they are telling you to hate the other people. you cannot do that and end the divide. we have to find common ground. [cheering] president trump and president biden are the products of that division and toxicity and hatred. and, if we want to have more of the same, you should vote for president biden or president trump because you know what you will get. you will get more of the same. they have already showed you what they are going to do in four years. if you want another four years for that -- of that you should

vote for them. if nicole and i get into office everything is going to change. everything. [cheerings] >> when you get to office. robert: when we get into office. and don't you want everything to change? is there anything that you wants to keep the same? >> no. robert: that is why we need to go out and get signatures and all of these other states and we will get our country back. we will get the country that you deserve, the country that is, once again a moral authority around the world and it exemplifies democracy around the world and it is raising children that are healthy and showing the rest of the world. a lot of people say we cannot overcome this stuff because we are already too far down the

road. do you believe that? >> no. robert: that is why you are here because you do not believe that. i will tell you something. we have terrible problems. we have economic crisis, but, we also have the greatest class of entrepreneurs of any country in the world. [cheering] and politicians always say that kind of thing about their country. we are the greatest and nobody has seen everything -- anything like us. if you talk to people in europe or africa or asia and they will say despite all of america's problems we still have this entrepreneurial spirit and class, like no other in the world and people really believe that they can achieve new things and they are not locked into systems. we have that and we are seeing that today. we have the capacity to rebuild the economy.

we have the sickest country in the world. we have the highest disease burden. during covid we had 60% of the covid deaths. we only have 4.2% of the population. so, i do not know why people are getting awards for this. we literally had the worst record of any nation in the world. in the cd says it is not our fault. it is because americans are so sick. [laughter] so, we have the highest neurological disorders. the cdc said the african-american who died from -- the average american who died from covid and other diseases, they had obesity, asthma, give me another one, diabetes. and what other things?

so that is why they died. so, nobody has chronic disease like us, and we are the sickest country in the world. but we also have the best positions. these new alternative medicine physicians. functional medicine physicians. [cheering] and holistic medicine and all of these different people who are doing things that nobody on earth is dealing. we have the capacity and we have a terrible illness problem but also a greater capacity to heal. and so, all of these problems are solvable problems. but, we need someone, we need a leader who will be able to summon the best and the brightest of americans and put us on a new direction, entirely new direction. if we vote for trump or biden we

will get the same thing. if you vote for shanahan and kennedy you will get something different. [applause] we need to wind down the war machine and bring that money home and reinvested here. [applause] and we have the corporations against us and all of the institutions that they now control the press. the regulatory agencies, congress, they are all against us that we have the people on our side. and we are going to go and take back our country. i want to thank all of you. [cheering] i want to thank you all for the commitment to this country and the campaign. god bless you and god bless

america. thank you all. [cheering] >> congress returns later today for legislative business and votes. the houses back at noon eastern and lawmakers will vote on legislation to reauthorize the faa programs were five years and current programs are set to expire friday at midnight. members will consider a bill requiring event ticket sellers to disclose prices including fees, and support of law enforcement during national police week. the senate is back at 3:00 p.m. eastern, discussing the nomination of courtney o'donnell to the united nations educational foundation known as unesco, she currently serves as

acting chief of staff for the second gentleman. about will take place at 5:30 p.m. eastern. watch live coverage of the house on c-span and see the senate on c-span2 and a quick reminder that you can watch all of our coverage with the free video app c-span now or online at c-span.org. coming up this afternoon, president biden will talk about jobs, infrastructure investment in the u.s. economy. you can see that live at 12:15 eastern from the white house blows -- rose garden from our mobile app, c-span now. >> they wrecked our country and collect our welfare instead. so, no asylum changes. >> most people come here to make a better life if not for them than for their kids. my italian grandparents never spoke english. i never had a conversation with them and then made that. >> and coulter debate reason

magazine's nick gillespie and cenk uygur over whether the u.s. should shot the borders. you can watch online on c-span.org and see it live on c-span at 9:00 p.m. eastern on friday. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including sparklight. >> the greatest town on earth is a place you come -- you call home. it is our home to an home is facing our greatest challenge and that is why sparklife is keeping you connected. >> sparklight supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. is @cspanwj