Name: Robert Kennedy, Jr. on His Uncle JFK and the Military Industrial Complex
Uploaded: 2023-06-15T17:08:27.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert Kennedy, Jr. on His Uncle JFK and the Military Industrial Complex' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert Kennedy, Jr. on His Uncle JFK and the Military Industrial Complex' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-06-15. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- My uncle, John Kennedy, you know, did that.
He refused to go to war.
So he was surrounded by military industrial complex
and he learned very early and an intelligence apparatus
that he realized early on that the purpose of the CIA
and the intelligence apparatus was to create
a constant pipeline of new wars
for the military industrial complex
the day, three days before he took the oath of office.
Eisenhower, who is the outgoing president
gave what is probably the most important speech
in American history, which was, you know,
where he warned against the military industrial complex.
I was at my uncle's inauguration.
I was in Washington that day.
It was a, you know, a six year old boy.
And I was sitting on the stands behind him
in front of him during his inauguration.
And he understood that.
Two months later, the military and intelligence came to him
and said, "We gotta invade Cuba."
And he was like, "I'm not going to Cuba
and I'm not going to let the military."
And they said, "Well, we got all these Cubans trained
and they're going to go attack Castro."
And he said, "Well, we can't, the US government can't be doing that.
We can't be attacking it.
I don't like what Castro's doing down there, but it's not the United States job
to dictate
what kind of governments other countries have."
And they said, "Well, as soon as they land, there's going to be a big
revolution.
Everybody's going to rise up and they're going to overthrow Castro."
And he said, "Well, you can't use the US military."
And they ended up bringing those guys over with United Fruit boats.
And in the middle of it, in the night, they came to him and said, "They're
getting wiped
out on the beach and you need to send into the military and invade."
And he said, "We're not going to do it."
And he, he stepped out of that meeting and he realized they had been lying to
him and trying
to trick him.
And he said, "I want to take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and
scatter
it to the winds."
And then, you know, for the next 1,000 days of his presidency, he was at war
with his military
and intelligence apparatus.
They tried to get him to go into Laos.
He said, "No."
They tried to get him to go into Vietnam with the combat troops.
They said that we need 250,000 combat troops.
He refused.
Everybody around him wanted him to go into Vietnam.
He sent 16,000 military advisors.
That's fewer people than he sent to get James Meredith into Ole Miss in Jackson,
Mississippi,
to get one black man into school.
He sent fewer in Vietnam.
They weren't allowed to fight.
Many of them did.
They violated the rules of engagement.
In October of 1963, he heard that some of his Green Berets had been killed over
there,
and he said, "I want a total casualty, Liz, from Vietnam."
His aide came to him and said, "75 Americans have died."
He said, "That's too many."
And he signed that day a national security order ordering all troops out of
Vietnam, US troops.
The first 1,000 over the next month and then the rest by the beginning of 1965.
And then a month later, he was killed.
But what his view was is that he believed that the view of Americans abroad
should not be a soldier with a gun.
It should be a Peace Corps volunteer building wells and it should be USAID
helping poor people.
And it should be Alliance for Progress building middle class.
And that's what he did and he just started the Kennedy Milk Program to give
nutrition to poor kids all over the world.
As a result of that, in Africa today, there are more statues to John Kennedy,
more boulevards named after him, more hospitals, schools, universities, avenues,
and all the major cities named after him than any other president.
And that is the Chinese have taken that template and done the same thing now.
And they are, you know, all these countries that were supposedly allied with us
are now realigned with the Chinese and they're switching to their currency.
Because the Chinese are not there to kill people, they're there, you know, to
build roads, to build universities, to build colleges.
And it turns out that people like that a lot more.
And, you know, we should be projecting economic power around the globe and not
military power.
It will make us much stronger.
But what do you think happens when you get into office?
Like, if you're talking about your uncle who's assassinated and you believe the
intelligence agencies were a part of that, what happens to you?
Well, I've got to be careful.
You know, I'm aware of that and I'm not, you know, I'm aware of that danger and,
you know, I don't live in fear of it, you know, at all, but I'm not stupid
about it and I take precautions.
Thank you.