Table of Contents
Introduction
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed by gunfire while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
On June 5, 1968, JFK’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, a New York Senator and presidential candidate, was shot multiple times during a campaign event at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He died from his gunshot wounds the next day.
On June 6, 1968, the same day that RFK died, President Lyndon B. Johnson directed the United States Secret Service (USSS) to provide protection to presidential candidates.
On July 27, 2023, JFK’s nephew and RFK’s son Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a candidate for the 2024 presidential election, received a letter from the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, notifying him that his request to receive protection from the United States Secret Service (USSS) had been denied.
The next day, RFK Jr. published a post on the social media site Twitter (now rebranded “X”) informing the public about the Biden administration’s denial of Secret Service protection.
The tweet immediately went viral and at the time of this writing has received over 30 million views, over 111,000 likes, and over 31,000 retweets. The likes and shares were accompanied by an outpouring of expressions of care and concern for a presidential candidate whose father was assassinated on the campaign trail and whose uncle is among the four US presidents who have been assassinated while in office.
But the response from the mainstream media has instead been to criticize RFK Jr. for publishing the post, and in so doing, they have demonstrated extreme prejudice against him by grounding their criticisms in falsehoods.
The media’s misinformation has also been widely spread on social media, including by members of a Twitter feature called “Community Notes”. User-generated “Notes” have been appended to Kennedy’s post ostensibly providing “additional context” but instead deceiving readers about the situation.
By examining the facts and setting the record straight, we can see how major media outlets have responded to Kennedy’s post by engaging in political propaganda instead of journalism.
RFK Jr.’s Post on the Denial of Secret Service Protection
On July 28, on the campaign’s website Kennedy24.com, the Presidential Campaign Committee of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. published the letter from the Biden administration denying him Secret Service protection.
Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, issued the following statement:
The American people, no matter their politics, will find this decision shocking and repugnant. This is obviously a political decision, not a legal one. As such, this is directly on President Biden. It is absolutely implausible that the President would try to claim that he was not consulted by his cabinet secretary on a matter as sensitive as this. President Biden is now to be held personally accountable for denying Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Secret Service Protection. The Biden administration has clearly politicized the once-independent Justice Department and security apparatus.
The same day, at 8:51 a.m., Kennedy posted the following on Twitter:
Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.
Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request. Secretary Mayorkas: “I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr is not warranted at this time.”
Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.
Twitter’s Misinformative “Note” on Kennedy’s Post
At the time of this writing, Kennedy’s post is accompanied with a “Note” ostensibly providing “added context” from other Twitter users, which note thus implies that Kennedy’s post is somehow misinformative. This is a feature of Twitter’s called “Community Notes”.
In fact, there are several of these notes from other Twitter users that accompany the post, apparently randomly, as I observed by visiting the link to the post numerous times as well as by refreshing the page in my web browser. Users who produce these notes remain anonymous by using an alias instead of their real Twitter profile.
While each note contains different wording, they all suggest that Kennedy simply did not meet the criteria to receive Secret Service protection. Specifically, they all falsely claim or imply that the reason for the Biden administration’s denial is that Secret Service protection isn’t legally available to presidential candidates until 120 days before the election.
One note, written by “Astonishing Juniper Puffin” and submitted at 11:39 a.m. on July 28 (Note ID 1684951654347460608), states:
Secret Service protection is only afforded to “major candidates” within a period of 120 days from the general election.
It is, at time of writing, it is 465 days until the general election, putting this request far out of range of the law.
Another note, written by “Brainy Beach Eagle” and submitted at 11:54 a.m. on July 28 (Note ID 1684955453963321344), makes the same claim that Kennedy cannot yet receive Secret Service protection since it is not yet 120 days until the 2024 election:
The Secret Service does not provide protection to non-incumbent Presidential candidates until 120 days before the general election.
The next election is Nov. 5, 2024.
July 8, 2024 is 120 days prior.
A third note by “Blissful Brook Tern” submitted at 1:16 p.m. the same day (Note ID 1684976135694942208) states:
Secret Service protection must be provided to major candidates within 120 days of the general election. Major candidates are determined by a committee consisting of the House Speaker, House Minority Whip, Senate Majority & Minority Leaders, and another member of their choice.
The claim made in the first two of those Twitter “Notes” is categorically false, and the third is highly misleading. It simply is not true that presidential candidates by law do not or cannot receive Secret Service protection until 120 days before the election.
The “120 days” Canard
In each instance, the source provided by the Twitter note is a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on the website of the Secret Service. The page states that the USSS is authorized by law to protect
Major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election. As defined in statute, the term ‘major presidential and vice presidential candidates’ means those individuals identified as such by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee.
The first two Twitter notes are false because, while the Secret Service is required to offer protection to major candidates within 120 days of the election, this does not mean that candidates cannot receive protection earlier than that.
Another page on the Secret Service website explicitly states that candidates can receive protection earlier.
In fact, a CNN “fact check” of Kennedy’s post failed to find any candidates who didn’t start receiving protection sooner than 120 days.
The third Twitter note is misleading because it is missing that same context: while it is true that protection must be offered within 120 days of the election, this doesn’t mean that Kennedy by law cannot receive Secret Service protection now.
The misinformation provided in these Twitter notes is also being propagated verbatim by other users in response to Kennedy’s post to hypocritically accuse him of spreading misinformation.
Drawing on the list compiled by CNN, following is a timeline of presidential candidates who received secret service protection, from which you can see that not one started receiving this protection within the 120-day period:
- January 11, 1979 – Former California Governor Ronald Reagan, former Texas Governor John B. Connally, former CIA Director George Bush, Illinois Representative Philip M. Crane, and Tennessee Representative Howard H. Baker receive Secret Service protection 298 days before the 1980 election.
- September 20, 1979 – Senator Edward (“Ted”) M. Kennedy receive Secret Service protection on the order of President Jimmy Carter, 441 days before the 1980 presidential election, even though Kennedy hadn’t even formally announced his candidacy yet. The Washington Post reports the next day that Kennedy’s “consideration of a presidential campaign has raised the fear of an assassination attempt such as those that struck down two of his brothers.” Ted Kennedy had also received Secret Service protection twice before: in 1968 after his brother Robert was assassinated while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination and in 1972 after an assassination attempt on Alabama Governor George C. Wallace.
- November 10, 1983 – Jesse Jackson receives Secret Service protection 362 days before the 1984 presidential election.
- January 14, 1984 – Former Vice President Walter Mondale, Senator John Glenn, Florida Governor Reubin Askew, Senator Gary Hart, Senator Ernest Hollings, and former Senator George McGovern are offered Secret Service protection 297 days before the election. UPI reports that McGovern began receiving protection that same day, Mondale and Askew would be under Secret Service protection starting January 16, and Glenn would accept it “very soon”.
- December 1, 1987 – Pat Robertson receives Secret Service protection 343 days before the election.
- November 23, 1987 – Jesse Jackson receives Secret Service protection 351 days before the election.
- May 10, 1988 – The New York Times reports, 182 days before the election, that Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis has accepted Secret Service protection. The Times also notes that most of the other Democratic candidates had been under Secret Service protection since January.
- February 1992 – Bill Clinton receives Secret Service protection at least 249 days before the election.
- February 1996 – Pat Buchanan receives Secret Service protection at least 251 days before the election.
- March 1996 – Bob Dole receives Secret Service protection at least 219 days before the election.
- March 2000 – George W. Bush receives Secret Service protection at least 221 days before the election.
- February 20, 2004 – Senator John Kerry receives Secret Service protection 256 days before the election. The same day, ABC News reports that John Edwards would also “soon” receive Secret Service protection.
- May 3, 2007 – Barack Obama receives Secret Service protection 551 days before the election for having received “hate mail and calls and other ‘threatening materials’” that fell short of “any specific, credible threat” against him, as reported by CNN. Obama receives this protection even though, at the time, he didn’t meet the polling criteria.
- April 23, 2008 – A spokesman for Senator John McCain confirms 195 days before the election that he is receiving Secret Service protection.
- November 17, 2011 – Herman Cain receives Secret Service protection 355 days before the 2012 election, reportedly due to threats made against him.
- March 6, 2012 – CBS News reports 245 days before the election that Newt Gingrich would receive Secret Service protection “in the near future”. On April 19, the Daily Caller criticized that Gingrich was still receiving Secret Service protection despite having “very little prospect of winning the Republican nomination” and at a cost to the US taxpayers of approximately $38,000 per day.
- February 1, 2012 – ABC News reports 279 days before the election that Mitt Romney “will start receiving Secret Service protection this week”.
- February 26, 2012 – Yahoo News reports 254 days before the election that Rick Santorum would begin receiving Secret Service protection within the week.
- November 5, 2015 – Donald Trump and Ben Carson receive Secret Service protection 369 days before the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton at that time was already under Secret Service protection due to her status as a former first lady.
- February 3, 2016 – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders receives Secret Service protection 279 days before the election. On June 7, he suffers a major defeat to Hillary Clinton in the California primary that effectively ends his candidacy. In early July, he concedes that he won’t be the Democratic party’s nominee and he will vote for Hillary Clinton, but he remains under Secret Service protection until July 13 at an estimated cost of $40,000 per day.
- March 4, 2020 – Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, sent a letter to Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf and the Members of the Candidate Protection Advisory Committee (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer). Thompson notes that “the Secretary of Homeland Security has the statutory authority to determine which major Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates should receive USSS protection, after consulting with an advisory committee made up of Congressional leaders.” Thompson requests that candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders receive protection on the grounds that “the absence of a request” from the candidates themselves “would not prevent authorization of protection when warranted”.
- March 4, 2020 – Newsweek notes that it was the assassination of RFK “following his victory in the 1968 California primary” that “Congress authorized Secret Service protection for major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of the presidential election.” This does not mean that candidates can’t receive Secret Service protection earlier, Newsweek explains: “The level of threat to a candidate also plays a role. Barack Obama, for example, was given Secret Service protection almost two years before the election given the historic nature of his campaign.”
- March 5, 2020 – The Secret Service issues a press release in response to “media reporting characterizing the U.S. Secret Service as unprepared for candidate protection”. This characterization is “categorically false”, and the Secret Service is “fully prepared” to protect the candidates. The statement notes that “The Department of Homeland Security in 2017 established a formal process for candidates to request U.S. Secret Service protection”, the first step of which is “for a candidate to meet established criteria”. The second step is for the candidate to request protection. Notably, the Secret Service does not state that it is too early yet for it to protect the candidates. Rather, the simple reason why Biden and Sanders are not yet under Secret Service protection is that, “At this time, no candidates have requested protection.”
- March 7, 2020 — NPR reports that the Secret Service is fully prepared to provide protection to Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. NPR quotes former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow saying that Secret Service protection for both candidates “is absolutely necessary at this point in the game.”
- March 17, 2020 – Biden receives Secret Service protection, 231 days before election day.
The Mainstream Media’s Misinformation about RFK Jr.’s Twitter Post
As already mentioned, many Twitter users are spreading the false claim that presidential candidates are not eligible to receive Secret Service protection until 120 days out from election day.
It is little wonder that so many people are so misinformed given the prejudicial responses from the mainstream media to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s viral tweet informing how the Biden administration has denied him protection.
Following are examples of how major media outlets have been deceiving the public about this matter.
The Hill’s Misinformation
At 11:39 a.m., The Hill responded by falsely implying that it is too soon before the election for Kennedy to be legally eligible for Secret Service protection:
The Secret Service is authorized to protect major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election. The Homeland Security secretary, in consultation with an advisory committee of House and Senate leadership, determines which candidates are in that “major” category.
The 2024 election, in which Kennedy is a candidate, is more than 460 days away.
The link provided by The Hill is to the same FAQ page of the Secret Service website as cited in the Twitter “Notes”. Notably, this article was published at the exact same time that the note by Twitter user “Astonishing Juniper Puffin” was submitted.
NBC News’ Misinformation
At 1:01 p.m., NBC News ran a piece criticizing Kennedy for “casting the decision as an outrage” on the grounds that he “falls short on much of the Secret Service’s public criteria.” A link is provided to another page of the Secret Service’s website stating the criteria for a candidate to receive protection.
Yet, curiously, the NBC News article does not specify which of those criteria it is alleging that Kennedy failed to meet. The closest it comes is to say that the criteria include “polling thresholds” for candidates and that Kennedy is running against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024 “but trails him significantly in the polls”.
However, just because Kennedy is trailing Biden in the polls does not mean he fails to meet the criteria.
The link provided by NBC News with that statement is to the website FiveThirtyEight, which presents a graph of polling data for only two Democratic candidates because “Candidates with insufficient polling data are not displayed in the averages.” The graph “includes all candidates that FiveThirtyEight considers ‘major’”.
The two major candidates with sufficient data are Biden and Kennedy.
At the time of this writing, the graph presented on the page shows Biden averaging at 64.4% and Kennedy averaging at 15.2% as of August 7. Kennedy’s popularity has been hovering around 15% since the earliest date shown on the graph, which is May 1, at which time he polled at 15.5%.
The relevant criterion presented on the Secret Service’s FAQ page is as follows:
Whether, during and within an active and competitive major party primary, the most recent average of established national polls, as reflected by the Real Clear Politics National Average or similar mechanism, the candidate is polling at 15% or more for 30 consecutive days . . . .
While Kennedy’s popularity has dipped slightly below 15% at times, according to these data, it is not unprecedented for a presidential candidate to receive Secret Service protection regardless of polling results.
In fact, according to Vice:
In 2007, for example, the agency started protecting then-candidate Barack Obama soon after he hit the campaign trail, even though, at the time, he wasn’t meeting the polling thresholds that would have normally triggered Secret Service protection.
Recall that Obama began receiving Secret Service protection on May 3, 2007, which was 551 days before the 2008 election. The reason for his exception, according to CNN at the time, was that he had received “hate mail and calls and other ‘threatening materials’” that fell short of “any specific, credible threat”.
Another example is Senator Edward Kennedy, who received Secret Service protection in 1972 at a time when he hadn’t even announced his candidacy.
Newsweek’s Misinformation
At 2:58 p.m., Newsweek responded to Kennedy’s Twitter post with an article riddled with inaccuracies.
The first sentence of the article states that Kennedy was “blasting the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security”. However, Kennedy did not in any way criticize the Secret Service.
On the contrary, as made clear in an article Kennedy published on Substack on July 31, titled “Farce Upon Farce: The Aftermath of My Secret Service Request”, the Kennedy campaign considers the Secret Service to have acted with nothing but professionalism since it first began discussions with the agency in April.
Newsweek curiously describes Kennedy as “arguably” Biden’s greatest challenger for the Democratic nomination—as though there were some other Democratic candidate showing popularity equivalent to Kennedy’s in the polls (there aren’t any; Kennedy is clearly the second most popular candidate after Biden, according to all polling data).
In the same sentence, Newsweek falsely claims that Kennedy, in his Twitter post, said “that all candidates have received Secret Service protection since his father was assassinated in 1968.” Not all candidates have, Newsweek rebuts.
But this is the fallacy of strawman argumentation: Kennedy did not make the claim that Newsweek falsely attributes to him. This is a common propaganda tactic.
To be clear, Kennedy said that since his father’s assassination, “candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection”, which is of course true. Kennedy’s statement does not in any way suggest that all candidates have received this protection, and it also does not deny that there are eligibility guidelines.
The Newsweek article goes on to misleadingly state that the Secret Service is “authorized” to protect major presidential candidates “only within 120 days of a general presidential election”. (Emphasis added.) This statement falsely implies that the Secret Service cannot protect presidential candidates until that timeframe.
While misleadingly wording that statement, the very next sentence of the article demonstrates that there is no legal obstacle to the Secret Service protecting candidates well prior to the 120-day period.
“One recent outlier of that provision”, the article states, “was former President Barack Obama, who in May 2007 was granted Secret Service protection at the request of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois due to the number of threats the Democrat faced in the early months of his campaign.” Republican candidate John McCain was offered Secret Service protection at the same time, which he declined.
However, this description of Obama as an “outlier” from the 120-day provision is also misinformative since, on the contrary, it is typical for candidates to begin receiving Secret Service protection well before that provision kicks in. Tellingly, Newsweek doesn’t offer a single example of a candidate whose Secret Service protection didn’t begin sooner.
Indeed, it seems that the true outlier is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on account of his request being denied by the Biden administration. It is that denial that appears to be unprecedented.
Further belying its own misleading statements, Newsweek cites a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report from April 2000 that states, “Secret Service protection for primary candidates generally begins shortly after January 1 of the election year. On occasion, the Secretary of the Treasury has accorded protection to certain candidates earlier than the election year.”
Thus, again, Obama was not an outlier on account of having received protection well prior to the 120-day timeframe.
The immediately preceding paragraph in the CRS report summarizes the criteria while noting:
Notwithstanding this, the Secretary of the Treasury, after consultation with the advisory committee, may provide protection for a candidate even if all of the conditions of the guideline have not been met.
The law has since been changed so that the Secretary of Homeland Security, not the Treasury Secretary, is responsible for determining whether a candidate may receive Secret Service protection. The Secret Service has no role in making this determination.
Near the end of the article, Newsweek again contradicts itself by acknowledging that it is typical for primary candidates to start receiving Secret Service protection at the start of the election year, which in this case would be 310 days before the election scheduled for November 5, 2024.
HuffPost’s Ludicrous Conspiracy Theory
At 3:35 p.m., HuffPost responded to Kennedy’s Twitter post with an article titled “RFK Jr.’s Latest Tweet Is Being Widely Interpreted As A Nazi Dog Whistle”, which propagated the absurd conspiracy theory that the tweet was intended to communicate a coded message expressing solidarity with white supremacists.
The phrase “dog whistle” in this context means “a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others.”
The lead paragraph of the article stated, “A tweet from the account of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday used language that many observers say evokes the known Nazi hate symbol ‘1488.’” The article explains that symbology as follows:
“1488” is a known white supremacist symbol, according to the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The “14” in the symbol is shorthand for the “14 Words” slogan that is popular with racists around the world, while the “88” stands for “Heil Hitler,” since “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
HuffPost then provides numerous examples of Twitter users ridiculously accusing Kennedy of using coded language to express solidary with white supremacists while prejudicially stating as though a matter of fact that his tweet contained “loaded language”—thus dismissing the possibility that Kennedy intended no such meaning.
In fact, the simple alternative explanation for the appearance of these two numbers in Kennedy’s post is explained right within the post. Here again are the two relevant sentences:
Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request.
Kennedy provided additional details about the numbers in his Substack article “Farce Upon Farce: the Aftermath of My Secret Service Request”, which specifies that 14 days is the typical turnaround time, according to the Secret Service, for a candidate to receive an answer to a formal request for protection from the Secretary of Homeland Security. The letter denying Secret Service protection was received by the Kennedy campaign on July 27, which was 88 days since May 1, when the first substantive discussions between the campaign and the Secret Service occurred.
Where the Numbers “14” and “88” Came From
Kennedy provided additional details about the numbers in his Substack article “Farce Upon Farce: the Aftermath of My Secret Service Request”, which he shared on Twitter with the appropriate comment:
Has anyone missed the irony that the very corporate media that has branded me as a “conspiracy theorist” is now promoting a bizarre and convoluted conspiracy theory linking me to white supremacists? Here’s why the media’s numerology doesn’t add up.
Unlike his post to which Twitter has appended the misinformative “Note”, however, that tweet has to date garnered just over 132,000 views, not tens of millions.
For a short time in early April, Twitter blocked users from sharing links to Substack articles or otherwise throttled traffic to Substack.com. On April 8, 2023, Substack Inc. tweeted that “the suppression of Substack publications on Twitter appears to be over”. On April 10, Twitter’s relatively new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, tweeted that the platform was “not excluding other media” while offering the explanation that “Substack was temporarily categorized as ‘unsafe’ when we discovered that they were illegally downloading vast amounts of data to pre-populate their Twitter clone”—an apparent reference to Substack’s feature “Notes”, which is considered a competing platform to Twitter.
Kennedy’s Substack article provided the full text of an internal report from Gavin de Becker, the founder and chairman of the esteemed security firm Gavin de Becker and Associates, which has been managing Kennedy’s security team since he announced his run for president. In the report from de Becker to the Kennedy24 Campaign, he detailed the process of requesting Secret Service protection.
The earliest outreach to the Secret Service by de Becker’s firm occurred on April 18, but the first “substantive and detailed discussions” in which protection was requested for Mr. Kennedy occurred on May 1.
The negative response from Secretary Mayorkas was dated July 21 but not sent out until July 24. The campaign did not receive that letter until July 27, which was 88 days after the request for protection was made on May 1.
The internal report from de Becker also specifies where the number “14” came from.
On May 1, de Becker explained, “USSS provided me with a detailed description of the various criteria that would be considered, all of which were already met by RFK Jr.” A request letter would need to be sent to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and then the Congressional Advisory Committee would weigh in on the request.
The Secret Service advised de Becker that “The Congressional Committee has 10 days to respond after receiving notice of the letter and a risk assessment done by USSS. Then the Secretary of DHS makes the final decision.” The Secret Service further informed that, “From request to USSS being curbside can be as little as 14 days.” (Emphasis added.)
The request from the campaign was first submitted electronically to the Secret Service and then “with a ‘wet signature’ to the Secretary of DHS.”
On May 16, during a conference call regarding the request for protection, the Secret Service notified de Becker that “during the 14 days that the request is likely to be pending, USSS would want to meet with RFK Jr regarding the details of their protection process”. The purpose of the meeting was for the Secret Service to be able “hit the ground running” if the request was approved.
The same day, de Becker “submitted a 63-page internal risk assessment to USSS. (The final submission to Secretary Mayorkas would be 67 pages.)”
On May 18, the Secret Service confirmed that the letter to Secretary Mayorkas and the internal risk assessment had been received.
In mid-June, after de Becker sent an email to follow up on the request, the Secret Service advised that, as paraphrased by de Becker, “the typical 14-day period likely began when the wet signature request actually reached Secretary Mayorkas’ desk”. The Secret Service also said that “they expected to hear from the Congressional Advisory Committee soon.”
On July 8, campaign chairman Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to Mayorkas stating that, while presidential candidates “traditionally hear back within 14 days” of a formal request for protection, it had been over a month since the Department of Homeland Security had received the request, and still the campaign had received no answer.
Addressing the matter of eligibility, Kucinich’s letter stated:
Many weeks ago, RFK Jr met the criteria for a presidential candidate to receive Secret Service coverage, pursuant to Title 18 U.S.C. 3056(a)(7). He polled above the threshold, has been actively campaigning on a national basis, operates a national campaign apparatus, has appeared before thousands of audience members at events in many states, regularly appears as a candidate on national network news programs, town halls, podcasts, interviews, is producing campaign materials, advertisements, and websites, is successfully fundraising, and has assembled a large campaign staff.
Four days later, de Becker’s notified the Secret Service that
A mentally ill intruder entered the candidate’s home while the candidate was out of the city (no security personnel were present). The intruder was subsequently arrested, after which it was confirmed that he had a history of delusional ideation regarding the candidate, having been arrested a year earlier in a similar approach.
On July 13, de Becker’s firm provided the Secret Service with “new information on four other mentally ill pursuers who had made physical approaches in the past. (These four were in addition to the examples in my declaration and risk assessment.)”
On July 27, as already noted, the campaign received Secretary Mayorkas’s negative response. As de Becker summarized:
Nearly three months [88 days] had passed since commencement of this process, and nearly two months since the pro forma letter to Secretary Mayorkas—this for a process we were told typically takes around two weeks [14 days]. (In this paragraph, I intentionally used months and weeks rather than days in order to avoid the reappearance of any fraught numbers.)
It’s ironic that legacy media organizations are drawing attention to disturbing ideas, and then linking those ideas to unrelated matters, thus giving energy to claims and beliefs in exactly the bizarre way they accuse others of doing—an actual conspiracy theory elevated by those who so often accuse others of this king of thinking and linking.
Excuse the number pun when I point out that the many inaccurate media reports just don’t add up to anything other than distraction from the administration’s decision to withhold protection for RFK, Jr.—a matter that’s clearly of interest to the tens of millions of people who have followed the topic via Twitter and other social media. The numbers mean nothing; the disturbing break with protection precedent means a lot.
Responding to the false claims “that Secret Service protection is only available 120 days prior to the general election”, de Becker further noted that the Secret Service told him that “there is no set timeline for receiving protection” and “cited candidate Barack Obama receiving protection very early in the process, 551 days before Election Day.”
After naming numerous other candidates who had received Secret Security protection from past administrations well in advance of the 120 days before Election Day, de Becker added:
Among past administrations, the Biden Administration is the sole outlier, acting in a highly unusual way.
USSS advised me: “In my years with Secret Service, I haven’t seen a request declined to date.”
Business Insider’s Misinformation
At 5:22 p.m., Business Insider published a response criticizing Kennedy for having “complained about not getting Secret Service protection” when “The truth is very few candidates do.”
The article falsely claimed that Kennedy’s Twitter post “ignores the reality that many presidential candidates are not granted protection”—a repetition of the same strawman argument employed by Newsweek.
Instructively, like both CNN and Newsweek, Business Insider does not provide even a single example of a candidate who was not granted Secret Service protection after requesting it.
According to both Kennedy’s head of security, Gavin de Becker, and his campaign chairman, Dennis Kucinich, Kennedy met the criteria for Secret Service protection at the time the campaign submitted its request.
Business Insider tries to deny this by mischaracterizing the criteria presented on the website of the Secret Service.
“While the listed criteria are not intended to be exhausted,” Business Insider states, “they include steps that Kennedy has not reached.”
The first ostensible example of a criterion Kennedy had not met was that “He is not the de facto nominee of a major presidential party.”
But that is a lie because the criteria do not require the candidate to be “the de facto nominee of a major political party”. Being such a nominee entitles a candidate to protection, but that criterion does not exclude other candidates from receiving protection. Given how patently obvious it is that Secret Service protection is routinely afforded to candidates who are not the de facto nominee, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was the intent of Business Insider to deceive its readers.
Next, Business Insider states that Kennedy “has polled in the double digits, but he has not averaged 15% or more in the Real Clear Politics Average over the last 30 days. (He’s at 13.7%).”
This is also deceptive, however, because at the time Secretary Mayorkas received the Kennedy campaign’s letter requesting protection on May 18, Kennedy was polling at 19.7%. It wasn’t until June 22 that his polling average dropped below 15%. That was 53 days after Kennedy’s campaign first discussed protection with the Secret Service on May 1 and 36 days after the government received the request.
Consequently, Business Insider’s claim that Kennedy did not meet this criterion is false.
Tacitly acknowledging that there is nothing preventing the Biden administration from providing protection to Mr. Kennedy at this time, Business Insider notes that both Donald Trump and Ben Carson received Secret Service protection in the fall of 2015 (on November 5, to be precise, which was 370 days before the 2016 election).
The Business Insider article concludes by opining that there are “two fairly obvious reasons why Kennedy wants protection”. The first was that “Secret Service protection is covered by taxpayers”, and the second was that “the presence of Secret Service agents gives any hopeful the aura of being the leader of the free world.”
In attempting to divine the reasons why Kennedy requested protection, Business Insider unimaginatively failed to consider either the fact that both his father and his uncle were assassinated or the 67-page threat assessment submitted to the Department of Homeland Security—both “fairly obvious” reasons for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to make the request.
Politico’s Misinformation
At 6:50 p.m., Politico deemed it sufficient to respond to Kennedy’s Twitter post by suggesting that he wasn’t eligible for it.
“The Secret Service states on its website”, Politico misleads, “that ‘major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general election’ are protected by the Secret Service.”
Demonstrating that there was nothing prohibiting the Secret Service from providing protection to Mr. Kennedy at this time, the final paragraph of Politico’s brief article observed that “Former President Barack Obama received Secret Service protection in May 2007, an ‘unusually early step,’ The New York Times noted at the time.”
That New York Times article noted that Obama came under Secret Service protection “nearly nine months before voting begins in the Democratic primaries for president”, which was “the earliest the Secret Service has ever issued a security detail to a candidate.” Obama was, however, “not the first candidate to receive security in early stages of a race.”
Politico added that “Former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul rejected Secret Service protection in 2012, calling it a ‘form of welfare.’”
CNN’s Misinformation
To provide a final example of the mainstream media’s hypocritically misinformative responses to RFK Jr.’s Twitter post, at 8:12 p.m., CNN responded to the tweet with a “Fact check” article titled “RFK’s misleading viral claim about Secret Service protection”.
According to CNN, Kennedy “baselessly” suggested that the Biden administration’s denial of his request for protection was “singling him out for rare treatment”. Kennedy’s tweet was, according to CNN, “highly misleading.”
But that is an entirely hypocritical accusation given how CNN then attempts to support that narrative by highly misleading its own readers.
CNN argues that “Kennedy’s suggestion that he is being treated differently than every other presidential candidate since 1968 is baseless.”
However, to support that conclusion, CNN relied on the same strawman argument as Newsweek and Business Insider by asserting that Kennedy’s tweet ignored the fact that most candidates “never receive Secret Service protection because they are not deemed ‘major’ candidates”.
Once again, Kennedy never claimed that most candidates receive Secret Service protection, and his tweet in no way denied that there are eligibility guidelines.
CNN adds that “it would be nearly unprecedented for even a major candidate to receive protection this early in a campaign”—which is a tacit acknowledgement that it would not be unprecedented for Kennedy to receive Secret Service protection at this time.
The precedent cited by CNN was the Secret Service protection granted to Senator Barack Obama, which was, by CNN’s account, because of the “unique threats” he faced “as a Black Man”.
CNN disregards the fact that Kennedy also faces unique threats both as a prominent critic of government policies and as a Kennedy whose father and uncle were both assassinated.
To support its narrative, CNN also presents the opinion of former Secret Service agent and current CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Wackrow that RFK Jr. is “not a major presidential candidate.”
That is an opinion disputed by FiveThirtyEight, which, as already noted, regards Kennedy as the only major candidate contesting Biden for the Democratic nomination, as determined by his polling data, among other factors. Citing the data from FiveThirtyEight, the New York Times on August 6, the New York Times noted that Kennedy has been polling “at around 15 percent against Mr. Biden”.
Wackrow is the same individual quoted by NPR in March 2020 as saying that Secret Service protection for Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders was “absolutely necessary at this point in the game.”
CNN accepts Wackrow’s evident quibbling about the polling criterion as though his statement that Kennedy is not a “major” candidate were a fact and not an opinion. On the back of that opinion, CNN then condescendingly asserts that “Kennedy is entitled to argue that he should be given special treatment because of his family’s history.”
But this is yet another strawman argument since Mr. Kennedy did not request “special treatment”; he rather requested Secret Service protection under the established guidelines for which such protection is routinely provided to presidential candidates.
CNN disclosed that Kennedy’s campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich, commented that its analysis was “pretty ignorant”, which is pretty accurate. But CNN persisted with its ignorant analysis by arguing that, as of July 28, according to the RealClearPolitics average, Kennedy was polling at 13.7%, which was below the criterion that a candidate be polling at 15% or higher.
CNN did not tell its audience that Kennedy’s polling average was above 15% for months, including at the time that the request was made for Secret Service protection.
Furthermore, as CNN acknowledges, the Secretary of Homeland Security “is allowed to offer a candidate Secret Service protection even if they fail to meet any of the specific criteria.”
Instructively, as already detailed in the bulleted list above, among the many examples subsequently compiled in the CNN article of prior presidential candidates who received Secret Service protection, every single one of them began receiving protection much earlier than 120 days before Election Day.
Conclusion
The mainstream media’s responses to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Twitter post serve as a useful case study of how propaganda works.
The real story is how the Biden administration has acted unusually both by taking so long to answer the Kennedy campaign’s request for protection and by ultimately denying the request. This suggests that the denial of protection was politically motivated.
To obfuscate the real issue and deflect attention from this unusual move, the media have created a false narrative in which the reason for the denial of protection is that Kennedy didn’t meet certain criteria. But these criteria are not hard and fast rules; they are rather guidelines that the government can take into consideration along with other factors.
According to the false media narrative, the protection was denied because it isn’t yet 120 days until the next presidential election. “Community Notes” are being appended to Kennedy’s post on Twitter falsely claiming that candidates cannot receive protection outside of that timeframe.
Numerous major media outlets resorted disingenuous strawman argumentation by falsely claiming that Kennedy’s post made the false claim that “all” presidential candidates since 1968 have received Secret Service protection or otherwise that the tweet “ignored” the fact that there are eligibility guidelines. In truth, Kennedy never made such a claim, and his campaign issued the request for protection precisely because he did meet the stated criteria.
HuffPo went even further in its disgraceful attempt to deflect from the real issue by propagating the ludicrous conspiracy theory that the aim of Kennedy’s Twitter post was to deliver a coded message to white supremacists, even though there is already a perfectly logical explanation for the appearance of the numbers “14” and “88” in the tweet.
According to the media narrative, Obama was an “outlier” for having received Secret Service protection so early, but that, too, is simply incorrect. On the contrary, it is typical for candidates to begin receiving protection well in advance of the 120-day period.
Instructively, not one of the media reports cited above produced even a single example of a candidate who requested but was denied Secret Service protection. The truth is that it is the Biden administration’s denial of the Kennedy campaign’s request that is the outlier—and it is to obfuscate and deny that truth that the media have constructed their deceitful propaganda narrative.
[Correction appended, August 28, 2023: As originally published, this article incorrectly stated that several candidates started receiving Secret Service protection on January 11, 1979, which was 663 days before the 1980 election. The candidates received protection starting on January 11, 1980, which was 298 days before the election on November 4, 1980.]
Robert F Kennedy Jr.is my favorite human being. He recognizes that the pharmaceutical industry is a parasite on the back of humanity. Woe betide them for what they are doing to the children of the world.
This excellent, extremely detailed and troubling article deserves widespread distribution and attention.
It was recently mentioned in this interview with RFK Jr by Tucker Carlson. The scandalous and unprecedented denial of Secret Service coverage is a scandal and deserves full scale investigation and Congressional hearings.
RFK Jr. additionally discusses issues central to the presidential campaign. He explains Ukraine bio-labs, who killed his uncle, the border, how Russia can shoot down our nukes but we can’t shoot down theirs, who owns the top U.S. defense contractors (Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard), the anthrax attacks , Iraq, the Patriot Act, and other issues.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1691228480556429312?s=20
Joe,
Yes, I was honored that Bobby Kennedy mentioned me and this article in his interview with Tucker Carlson. I published this short write-up about the interview yesterday:
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2023/08/15/rfk-jr-on-tucker-carlson/
I noticed Tucker seemed skeptical about what Kennedy was saying about the anthrax attacks. My write-up includes a link to an article I wrote way back when documenting pretty much everything he was saying.
Please help us to find a petition to sign that would demand secret service protection for Mr. Kennedy.
Thank you!
Secret Service should protected his uncle also, but somebody told them to stand down from his car just minutes before assassination:
https://youtu.be/hEX2VqBe3xE
It does seem that way to me from video I’ve seen.
Reagan and the other 4 candidates only received protection in January 1980, not 1979. The NY Times article you’ve linked to is from Oct 1979, stating that the candidates’ protection would start in January. So it was not over 660 days as you state but less than 300 days in fact.
Hi Thera,
Thank you so much for pointing out this error! I have corrected it.