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RFK Jr. previously compared Trump to Hitler

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and disparaged his supporters on his podcast in 2016.

Kennedy, who ultimately backed Trump in the 2024 election after dropping his own independent bid, is now a newly selected cabinet member to lead Trump’s Health and Human Services Department — but the old comments reflect the fact that Kennedy was a lifelong Democrat before joining forces with the Republican president-elect.

In the now-eight-year-old radio show broadcasts, first reported by CNN, Kennedy said Trump was stoking fear on the campaign trail with his rhetoric and compared him to Hitler, the former-segregationist Gov. George Wallace and other divisive leaders. On another episode from 2016, Kennedy also said that Trump was unlike Hitler because “Hitler had like a plan, you know, Hitler was interested in policy.” And Trump did not, he said.

Kennedy also praised then-Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s description of Trump supporters on the show, reading from an article of his: “We may not have that many outright Nazis in America but we have plenty of cowards and bootlickers.” (Taibbi, who now writes for his own Substack, has since made more sympathetic statements about Trump, including that he has been the victim of Democrats’ use of “lawfare.”)

Kennedy recently said that such inflammatory rhetoric, including comparing Trump to Hitler, “divides our nation and inspires assassins,” in a post on X this October.

Kennedy’s old comments echo similar statements from now Vice President-elect JD Vance, who also compared Trump to the Nazi leader but reversed his viewpoint. Kennedy is now distancing himself from the past comments, with a similar rationale also used by Vance.

“Like many Americans, I allowed myself to believe the mainstream media’s distorted, dystopian portrait of President Trump. I no longer hold this belief and now regret having made those statements,” he said in a statement to BLN. His spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

But throughout Kennedy’s longshot independent bid for the White House this year, Kennedy blasted Trump over his first-term cabinet picks, his divisiveness and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

“President Trump said he was going to drain the swamp, then he brings John Bolton in to run the NSA. That is like putting a swamp creature in charge of draining the swamp,” Kennedy said in an interview with Ben Shapiro.

“Why do you give him a second term if he’s messed it up so badly the first time?” Kennedy said to Shapiro. “He said he was going to do that the first time.”

Kennedy also attacked Trump’s other cabinet members in interviews and in his stump speech, as well as laying out a list of Trump’s first-term personnel picks that he took issue with in a post on X in June, about two months before his endorsement of Trump.

During an April interview on CNN, the political scion also called Trump a “threat to democracy” because of his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Now, Kennedy is poised to hold a potentially powerful role in the next Trump administration, pending his confirmation to his cabinet post.

While on the campaign trail as an independent, Kennedy said that he wouldn’t take any cabinet position in a potential Trump second term in August during a local CBS interview. Less than two weeks later he’d dropped out and endorsed Trump.

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Congress

White House revises its DHS offer as talks to end shutdown pick up

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The White House offered additional immigration enforcement concessions to Democrats Friday evening as border czar Tom Homan met a second time with a bipartisan group of senators seeking to end the Homeland Security shutdown, according to lawmakers who attended.

Leaving the private meeting, Republican senators said they hope Democrats respond over the weekend to the Trump administration’s bolstered proposal of immigration enforcement changes meant to address Democratic demands for funding DHS.

“We need to get the government back open,” Homan said as he left the meeting. “It was a good discussion. That is all I’m going to say.”

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, was in attendance, along with Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Those senators declined to comment as they left the confab. But a Democratic aide familiar with the meeting said there is “a ways to go” in the ongoing negotiations “to secure the significant reforms that Democrats have laid out for weeks and that are necessary to earn the support of the Democratic caucus.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who also attended, said afterward he thinks the group “made some more progress” toward a deal as the DHS shutdown approaches five weeks. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the White House had made “a very fair, reasonable offer.”

“I think Democrats need to come back to us now and talk to us about what they’re willing to do,” Hoeven added. “We’ve put so many things on the table and put them out.”

An ongoing complaint about the negotiations from Democrats has been that Republicans and the White House have offered their proposals in recent weeks without legislative text. But Republicans offered fresh draft legislation Friday, put together by the White House, according to Hoeven.

He characterized the latest GOP offer as “building” on a letter the White House sent earlier this week and “providing more detail on it and providing legislative text on it.”

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), chair of the Homeland Security funding panel, said as she left the meeting that a deal to reopen DHS needs to be clinched by next week “one way or the other.”

“There has to be a pathway forward,” she said

The group of lawmakers is hoping to meet again over the weekend, with the Senate planning to be in session both Saturday and Sunday working on other legislative priorities. But Republicans said timing will be up to Democrats, who are now expected to respond with a counteroffer.

Democrats have insisted on requiring judicial warrants for immigration raids, and that remains unsettled, but Hoeven said there was room for agreement over creating “serious” criminal penalties for “doxxing” and harassing law enforcement.

That could help ease concerns about requiring DHS officers to identify themselves and their agency when conducting immigration enforcement operations, though Hoeven said the masking ban Democrats want remains a nonstarter.

“ICE is going to have to be able to wear masks the same way other law enforcement does,” he said.

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Congress

Another DHS meeting

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A meeting is now underway seeking potential paths for ending the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, is meeting with top Senate appropriators and other key senators. It’s the second meeting of the same group in as many days.

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Another DHS funding vote coming to House floor

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Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to put a stalled Homeland Security funding bill on the House floor a third time next week, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private plans, as the GOP moves to further pressure Democrats to end the five-week closure.

Two versions of the bill have already passed the House, each time with just a few House Democrats breaking from party lines to back it. But the bill is still held up in the Senate, where Democrats have refused to approve DHS funding without adding new restrictions on immigration enforcement.

The House will also vote on a resolution next week in support of DHS workers, including TSA officers who have gone without pay as the spring break travel crush stresses U.S. airports.

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