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2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a stark warning against Trump’s guilty conviction, arguing the verdict will “backfire” on the Democratic Party as many voters see the trial outcome as a weaponization of America’s judicial system.
Kennedy reacted to the news that former President Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts during “Jesse Watters Primetime,” where he explained how the conviction is harmful to the nation’s democratic process.
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“This conviction is going to backfire on the Democrats,” Kennedy told Watters on Thursday. “I think every time that President Trump has been indicted, that his approval ratings actually increase, his popularity increases. I think there’s a large number of Americans who are going to see this as the politicization… the weaponization of the enforcement agencies, and I think it’s going to hurt. It’s bad for our democracy.”
“The DNC feels like it’s like it has a candidate that cannot win fair and square in the polls, and so they have to win in the courts,” he continued. “They have to win by clearing the deck and getting their other opponents out of the race. I’m not a fan of President Trump’s, but I want to win. I want to beat him in a campaign on a level playing field.”
Trump was found guilty on all counts in his historic and unprecedented criminal trial, making him the first former president of the United States to be convicted of a crime on Thursday. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.
Donald Trump arrives to Trump Tower, Thursday, May 30, 2024 after being found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. (Felipe Ramales for Fox News Digital)
Jurors found him guilty of every charge. The former president pleaded not guilty.
Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of four years. In total, Trump faces a maximum sentence of 136 years.
Trump will be sentenced on July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention where he is expected to be named the 2024 Republican nominee ahead of November.
The landmark conviction has spurred outrage among critics who have argued the case is symbolic of the political weaponization of America’s justice system and can ultimately impact the former president’s ability to get elected again in November.
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Kennedy noted that his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., was the attorney general in 1961 and warned against the politicization of the justice system, fearing it would turn the nation into a “banana republic.”
“He said, ‘Rule number one, whenever politics is out the window. We never prosecute based upon politics. We never ask whether somebody is Democrat or Republican.’ The reason he did that was because he understood how important it is for our country, the American people, to have faith that the judicial system is neutral, that all of us need to respect, that if we start believing that it’s politicized, it’s terrible for our country,” he said.
“And that’s one of the reasons prosecutors, even when there’s a case against a former president like there was with President Nixon and many, many others, that they usually air on the side of caution, of not bringing it because it’s we risk making ourselves look like a Third World country, like a banana republic, where nobody really actually runs the election,” he continued. “If there’s somebody who’s going to run against you, you get rid of him one way or another.”
VideoKennedy argued the media has been complicit in the far-left’s push to oust political rivals in unconventional ways, warning there is a lack of “integrity” in journalism overall nowadays.
“I think there’s tribalism in the media and a lot of them have forgotten what journalism is,” Kennedy said. “A lot of them have forgotten about what integrity is, and we see this across the board, but… what I would say to people… in the Democratic Party is even if you won this way… what is it going to do to our country if half the people in this country have the anger and the rage and feel like that they’re the person, they’re a champion, that the candidate that they wanted to vote for, it has been taken off the table?”
“When I was growing up, the Democratic Party was the party of getting everybody to vote, of making sure nobody got disenfranchized. The modern Democratic Party is just trying to get rid of as many possibilities for voters as possible.”
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
VideoBailee Hill is an associate editor with Fox News Digital. Story ideas can be sent to bailee.hill@fox.com
