Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat who days ago announced his 2024 candidacy for the White House, effectively challenging President Biden presumptive re-election bid, argued that the American middle class was “systematically” wiped out during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“More than anything, we have to rebuild the American middle class. And part of that is getting away from the warfare economy. And doing what China originally did which is to build its power and project power by building its economy at home,” Kennedy Jr. told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. “The strength of a nation comes from a strong economy and a vibrant middle class. And we have wiped out the middle class in this country systematically.”
“Worst of all is what it did to the economy,” Kennedy Jr., a vocal advocate against vaccinating against COVID-19, said, referring to lockdown measures introduced in 2020. “It caused $16 trillion, according to Larry Summers, the IMF report, the Harvard report. We shifted $4 trillion in wealth from the American middle class to this new aristocracy of billionaires. We created 500 new billionaires. The Oxfam report, which came out this week, shows that the billionaires that existed at the beginning of the pandemic, the people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Bezos, Bloomberg, etc., increased their wealth by 30% during the pandemic. From the lockdowns. And Amazon got to shut down all of its competitors.”