This week on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ host Shannon Bream welcomes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to discuss his recent decision to suspend his 2024 presidential run.
This is a rush transcript of ‘Fox News Sunday’ on August 25, 2024. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SHANNON BREAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I’m Shannon Bream.
Israel launches what it calls a preemptive strike on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, sparking fears of an all-out regional war in the Middle East.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BREAM (voice-over): Israel says it eliminated thousands of rockets, but Hezbollah counters it still managed to launch hundreds of warheads and drones to avenge the killing of one of its top commanders last month. We’ll take you live to Israel.
Then, shake up in the final weeks of the race as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspends his long shot campaign and throws his support behind former President Donald Trump after a long conversation with him.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. (I), SUSPENDED 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RUN: We talked about — not about the things that separate us because we don’t agree on everything, but on the values and the issues that bind us together.
BREAM: Could RFK Jr.’s supporters make the key difference for Trump in battleground states where the race is neck and neck against Vice President Kamala Harris? We’ll talk exclusively with Kennedy in his first interview since his big announcements.
Plus, Trump and Harris battle over two of the biggest issues for voters.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every day brings another story about innocent Americans being tortured, raped, murdered and massacred by illegal aliens that Kamala Harris has set free in our country.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He doesn’t actually fight for the middle class. Instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends.
BREAM: And we learned this week that the U.S. economy added nearly a million fewer jobs than previously reported. We’ll get reaction from Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado.
And our Sunday panel is here to give us their take on the next phase in the race for the White House.
All this week on “FOX News Sunday”.
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BREAM (on camera): Hello from FOX News in Washington.
We begin in the Middle East where the Israeli Defense Force says 100 of its fighter jets hit more than 40 Hezbollah launch areas in a pre-dawn strike today, ahead of what it called an extensive attack planned by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Let’s get right to FOX News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst in Tel Aviv.
Hello, Trey.
TREY YINGST, FOX NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Shannon, good morning.
Overnight, Israel launched preemptive strikes against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The Israeli military says Hezbollah was prepared to launch hundreds of rockets and missiles toward central and northern Israel when the decision was made to strike first. A senior Israeli defense official described the strikes as precise and meant to remove imminent threats as large explosions rock southern Lebanon, the Iran back group began attacking northern Israel. Sirens sounded in communities as deep as 20 miles from the border as Israel’s missile defense system worked to intercept the incoming fire.
We are learning more this morning about the preemptive Israeli strikes. The Israel Defense Forces say more than 100 fighter jets took part in the air strikes and eliminated thousands of targets.
Initially, Israel’s international airport was closed but has since reopened. Israel has now entered a special security situation for the next 48 hours. Now, despite the heightened tension along the northern border, today, ceasefire talks are set to resume in Cairo, Egypt. Both parties looking to work out the details of a possible agreement to end the war in Gaza.
Just last hour, a senior Israeli defense official telling FOX News they are hopeful still about the possibility of a deal — Shannon.
BREAM: All right. Trey Yingst, we are going to check in with you later on in the hour. Thank you very much
Joining me now, Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.
General, welcome back. Good to see you.
What do you make of what we’ve seen over the last 24 hours? There’s some say it’s provocative. Others say it’s a real push back to shut down what could have happened.
LT. GEN. KEITH KELLOGG (RET), FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER TO TRUMP, PENCE: Yeah, Shannon. Thanks for having me.
I thought it was a great move. Look, the preemptive strike was very, very important because if they had launched the strike — they the Hezbollah — into — in Israel with thousands of missiles and they were talking thousands, what would have happened with the loss of lives of Israelis and also the facilities?
It would have pushed the Israelis into a doctrine they call Dahiya, and what Dahiya is called disproportionate response.
And you — I think what they did, they prevented and the next or the third Israeli-Lebanese war, and that is smart. And because of that, I think it’s kind of reset the battlefield there.
And it’s — it’s important they did it. I think they did it quite well. The attacks will continue. They’re just diminishing the ability of Hezbollah to attack.
You know I have to go back when you think about what what’s happened there is really the United States hasn’t played a major role there in kind of de- escalating the situation because President Biden hasn’t done a lot in talking to Netanyahu. Vice President Harris hasn’t done very much. I mean she actually stiffed Netanyahu when he came here into the joint session of Congress when he spoke. And you’ve got Blinken going over there on his ninth trip no ceasefire. And you got the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan headed to China instead of going to the Middle East.
Now, I know CQ Brown’s going to be there, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but you kind of got to focus in on what’s going to happen there and prevent something happening in into the future. And they haven’t done it.
But the Israelis have done it. So the Israelis have done actually is reset deterrence in the region and I think it’s smart. And I think it’s put Hezbollah on their — on their back foot, and it’s clearly put the Iranians on the back foot, that they haven’t done anything at all.
BREAM: Well — so we do have assets in the region. We beefed up our presence.
This administration keeps publicly saying Israel has every right to defend itself and we will back them in that, but where do we go from here? Because as you mentioned, we’ve still got the threat out there looming from Iran saying we’re going to take action when we decide. You’ve got Hezbollah.
And never mind what’s going on in Gaza — I mean, Israel is stretched in a lot of different positions.
KELLOGG: Yeah, the problem you get is if something like this extends which it’s done, it makes it harder to put back in the box to make it go — put it in into a situation which is sustainable and peace in the region. And that is because technically (ph) we kind of backed away and we said, well, there’s pox on both sides of the house.
Wrong. The way you handle that is you tell the entire region, you tell the world, we are behind the Israelis, full stop. There’s a good side and a bad side and we need to do it.
Because we haven’t done it, we’ve created a seam, a gap, and adversaries look for seams and gaps and they’ve basically done that.
And so, they say, okay, we can attack because the United States is not going to come back hard. And I think how you have to reset the fight, you have to tell everybody in the region who we’re for and who we’re not for and we really haven’t done that.
So it’s going to take a bit to put it back in the box because Hezbollah is going to keep attacking, Iran’s going to keep supporting the attackers in Hezbollah.
I think the Hamas fight is virtually over. I think Israelis has kind of solved that problem. Look, when the leader of Hamas has said, I want — if we have peace discussions and we have a ceasefire, I want to make sure that I’m not a target — Sinwar.
Nope, you started that fight. You’re — you know, you’re at the risk — at risk right now, but I think that fight is virtually over now. They — Israelis can pivot to Hezbollah.
BREAM: Well, and we know those ceasefire negotiations will continue in the coming days in Egypt, primarily.
General, thank you. Always great to see you.
KELLOGG: Thanks, Shannon.
BREAM: All right. Let’s get reaction to all of this from the White House where we find FOX News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson.
Hello, Lucas.
LUCAS TOMLINSON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Shannon.
Officials say national security adviser Jake Sullivan kept President Biden updated throughout the night during the attack and Lloyd Austin, President Biden’s defense secretary, spoke to his Israeli counterpart, offering continued support of those two aircraft carrier strike groups now on station in the region.
Here at home, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says this is not the Democratic Party of his uncle and father.
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KENNEDY: It have become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag and big money.
TOMLINSON (voice-over): After endorsing Donald Trump for president, the DNC responded: Like RFK Jr. Donald Trump is at a low point and acting out of desperation, embracing RFK Jr. now when he has nothing to offer but months of disqualifying revelations is not a decision a campaign makes when they’re acting from a position of strength.
President Biden says the economy is strong.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Record 16 million new jobs.
TOMLINSON: Turns out that’s about 1 million jobs too many, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in a revised report that says there were $818,000 fewer jobs than previously estimated.
One number not in dispute, grocery prices up 20 percent since Biden and Harris came into office.
NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS HOST: Should she accept any blame for that?
GENE SPERLING, HARRIS-WALZ CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: I — no — I think overwhelmingly what people are seeing is that the United States got through the recovery with greater jobs, greater growth.
TOMLINSON: With the Democrats gathered in Chicago, former President Donald Trump made another visit to the border, in the swing state of Arizona, flanked by members of the border patrol and families who have lost loved ones to illegal aliens, including the mother of a -year-old girl strangled to death in Houston.
TRUMP: We had a border czar who was — the border czar, she loved the title but she didn’t want to do the work.
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TOMLINSON: RFK Jr. also said if the system was honest, he would have won this election — Shannon.
BREAM: All right. Lucas Tomlinson reporting from the White House — Lucas, thank you.
And joining us now is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Welcome to “FOX News Sunday”.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. (I), SUSPENDED 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RUN: Shannon, thanks for having me.
BREAM: Okay. So let’s get this out of the way up front. You and President Trump not always fans of each other. He posted on social media earlier this year: He’s one of the most liberal lunatics ever to run for office. A phony radical left fool whose poll numbers are terrible and getting worse.
“The New Yorker” said just a couple of weeks ago this: In a recent text exchange, Kennedy told one person that Trump was a terrible human being, the worst president ever and barely human. He is probably a sociopath.
And I haven’t read your text so you can speak to that
But how did you get from that position to Friday night?
KENNEDY: Well, you know, I — it became clear to me that I did not have a path to victory. Sixteen months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network really except for FOX, and I had — in fact, when — when Ross Perot ran in the 10 months that he ran, he had 34 appearances on the networks. I had two appearances in months.
I was blocked out the networks. I was blocked out from the debate. I had no path to victory.
President Trump had been reaching out to me and I talked to him a few hours after the assassination attempt and we had a long conversation by phone. I then had two extensive meetings and there were issues — the broad issues that were most important to me the ones that brought me into the campaign which was ending the Ukraine war, ending the censorship and protecting children’s health. We’re all into reforming our food supply, all the things that we need to do to make our children healthy again.
Those are all things that President Trump also wanted to work on, and he invited me to form a unity government. We agreed that we’d be able to continue to criticize each other on issues on which we don’t agree. But these issues are so important and their way of unifying our country.
We need in this country to reach a point where we love our children more than we hate each other.
BREAM: It’s a good, unifying theme that I think a lot of people could get around. It’s how we get there that’s always the devil is in the details.
Have you all negotiated over or talked about a cabinet position, another position within a Trump government in exchange for your endorsement?
KENNEDY: No, there was — there’s no commitments but I — you know, I met with President Trump, with his family, with his closest advisors and we just made a general commitment that we were going to work together.
BREAM: What about the states where you’re trying to get off of a number of swing state ballots to say, I’m going to stay on a number of state ballots but in these swing states, I’m going to try to withdraw myself and ask my supporters — or at least you’re telling them think about supporting President Trump.
Did you negotiate over which states you would try to withdraw from?
KENNEDY: Yeah, I mean, we all knew which states they were. There basically is 10 swing states where my presence in the race would have helped Vice President Harris and would have harmed President Trump.
So I’m going to get off the ballot in those states and then we’re going to stay on the ballot in 30 states and, you know, I’m encouraging people to vote for me in those states. Those are states with the votes — they’re either all red or all blue states where their votes are not going to change the outcome of the race.
And — but in the — in the red — in the states where I would have been spoiler, I’m going to get out. It’s about 10 states.
BREAM: Okay. So there were reports a couple weeks ago citing an official from your camp and also a Democratic official saying that there had been outreach to the Harris camp as well to possibly discuss you working within the Harris administration in exchange for an endorsement of her.
Is that true? And what happened with that?
KENNEDY: It — you know, I reached out to them on the same basis that I reached out to President Trump and I — we actually talked to other presidential candidates, including Chase Oliver in the Libertarian Party about figuring out ways that we could end the polarization and the hatred and the vitriol, start talking about issues.
And you know, I — and I would have — I was welcome to listen to anything from the Democrats that they were going to do something about the war — about the Ukraine war, about the censorship, about the child health crisis, this epidemic of chronic disease that is now disabled about 60 percent of our kids.
And you know, when my uncle is President Shannon, only 6 percent of Americans had chronic disease. Today, over 60 percent.
And, you know, it’s hard to find a kid today that’s not been damaged by it, and it’s coming from our food supply, from contain — from pollution in our environment, from toxics in our environment, and mainly from corruption in our government that allows that to happen.
BREAM: You’ve talked about or there’s been discussion that if you were to join the Trump administration in some health related position, that you have real interest in dismantling things like the FDA, the CDC, NIH. You would like to see focus away from infectious diseases to what you’re talking about more chronic diseases.
Is it fair to say that you would try to dismantle some of those organizations?
KENNEDY: No, I wouldn’t dismantle them. I would change the focus and I would end the corruption. I would — right now, 75 percent of FDA’s budget is coming from pharmaceutical companies. That is a perverse incentive.
In NIH, the — if you — scientists and officials in NIH who work on drug development, who incubate drugs for the pharmaceutical company, get to collect lifetime royalties from those products. These are regulators. They’re supposed to be looking for problems in those products. We have these agencies that have become sock puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate. They’re not really interested in public health.
Everybody, the most profitable thing today in America is a sick child. Everybody is making money. The hospitals are making money. The pharmaceutical companies are making money. Even the insurance companies make money.
And we need to end those perverse incentives. We need to get the corruption out of FDA, out of NIH, out of the CDC and make them function as they’re supposed to function, which is to protect public health and particularly children’s health.
BREAM: Let me go back to your decision from Friday. Both you and Nicole Shanahan, your running mate, have talked about how you feel like the Democrats completely mistreated you, excluded you from the process. How much of your decision Friday is about revenge or motivated by punishing Democrats in some way?
KENNEDY: Zero. I really — I don’t act in anything in my life. I don’t act out of anger or revenge or resentment. It’s a — it’s a bad motivation. It’s like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. And so I don’t do it.
I’m — you know, I am very pragmatic and practical and I am focused on one thing, which is how do we restore health for our children? And that touches many, many other issues. How do we regenerate our soils in this country? How do we protect small family farmers? The incentives are all going to commodity agriculture and that’s what is feeding this chronic disease epidemic. The processed foods that are created by commodity agriculture.
So we need to do all of these things at once. Protect small farmers, restore our soils, regenerative agriculture and to get the corruption out of the federal government and — and make these agencies do what they were created to do, which is to protect our health and not serve the mercantile interests of the pharmaceutical companies in the processed food industry.
BREAM: This decision is not without personal cost for you. Your own family went to the White House on St.
