NASHVILLE, TN—AUG. 24, 2023—Eight Republican presidential candidates faced off Wednesday night in Milwaukee for the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had this to say about last night’s debate:

“The Republican debate last night was out of sync with the mood of the country. It began with a request for comment on Oliver Anthony’s song, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond.’

“Now that is an extraordinary song — raw, yet intelligent; defiant, yet compassionate. It’s about working-class hardship. It is about low wages (‘bullshit pay’). It’s about degraded food supply, elite corruption, obesity, homelessness, despair.

“The candidates could have talked about these things. But they said nothing about the desperation and hardship working people face in this country. They said nothing about wages, housing costs, food costs, child care costs, and medical costs, or what we can do about it. They said nothing about the systemic corruption that enriches corporations and the elites as swaths of the former middle class fall into poverty.

“Instead, they recycled Reagan-era cliches about cutting spending, being ‘tough’ on drugs, crime, China, etc., and ending abortion.

“They were obsessed with ‘America’s adversaries’ — but blind to how our policies have been deliberately constructed to CREATE adversaries and enrich the defense industry while bankrupting the nation.

“They were obsessed with closing the border (which I agree with), but have no proposals to expand legal immigration or address the conditions that drive migration (again, in large part that is U.S. policy.)

“They obsess about cutting spending (except defense — they want MORE of that) but offer no innovative proposals to address the decay of our infrastructure, wages, and environment.

“Our nation deserves better than posturing and bickering masquerading as debate. Instead of arguing, we can tap into the swelling popular will to turn this country around.

“Oliver Anthony has tapped into something that can unify our nation. Nearly everyone wants to reverse our decline, to end the corruption, to rebuild from the inside. Let’s talk about how to do that.”

Learn more at Kennedy24.com. Visit our press page here.

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