On the menu today: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should receive U.S. Secret Service protection, immediately. Today’s newsletter lays out how the threat to Kennedy is serious, and how President Biden could make Secret Service protection happen with one phone call to congressional leaders. Meanwhile, Kennedy is now keeping the door open to an independent bid for the presidency, which this newsletter discussed months ago. Also, a point about how to calculate foreign aid to Ukraine, and how U.S. promises about particular weapons systems often take a long while to be kept. Finally, a quick observation about how Biden, “the last politician,” keeps putting himself in situations where he looks particularly bad and petty.
Make the Call, President Biden
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should receive U.S. Secret Service protection, immediately. Maybe the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision not to grant that protection could be justified before last week. But on Friday, an armed man, allegedly impersonating a U.S. Marshal, was arrested at an RFK Jr. campaign event in Los Angeles. The man allegedly claimed he was part of Kennedy’s security detail and told staff that he had to see the candidate “immediately.”
How many more armed men do we want near a presidential candidate named Robert F. Kennedy at a campaign event in Los Angeles? I think two is plenty.
Yesterday, Kennedy’s campaign manager, the former Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich, wrote to President Biden:
This ever-present threat of violence is something you are well aware of given the security requirements for you and members of your family.
It is astonishing that under such circumstances, you would deny Secret Service coverage to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has polled more than 20 percent in the first five primary states, and whose net favorability rating exceeds both yours and Donald Trump’s.
Yes, under the law, Secret Service protection is usually only granted to “major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general presidential election, the spouses of such candidates.” The initial version of this law was signed into place by Lyndon Johnson after the assassination of the elder Robert F. Kennedy. But the law allows DHS to make exceptions as circumstances warrant, including for “explicit threats of bodily harm to the candidate or indications of inappropriate behavior towards the candidate suggesting potential bodily harm.”
Who qualifies as a major presidential candidate? The law also allows the secretary of Homeland Security to determine that after consultation “with an advisory committee consisting of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.”
Hold the meeting and get Kennedy his protection, lawmakers.
The Secret Service began providing protection to then-senator Barack Obama back in May 2007, after DHS determined the potential threat was serious enough to warrant those measures. Herman Cain received Secret Service protection in November 2011 after his campaign requested it.
This issue is entirely separate from what you think of Kennedy as a candidate or potential president. He stands out as a potential target because this country has an ugly tradition of nutjobs assassinating presidents and presidential candidates named Kennedy. Senator Ted Kennedy lived with constant threats.
A 2019 ABC News article estimated the cost of Secret Service protection at about $38,000 per day per candidate. From today until the last day of the Democratic convention, that would cost about $12.8 million. From today until Election Day 2024, the cost would be about $15.7 million. (Candidates can decline or end their protection at any time; once Biden is clearly on his way to winning the Democratic nomination, the attention on Kennedy is likely to subside and, hopefully, the death threats will subside as well.)
Those sums may seem like a hefty chunk of change, but if you could guarantee that Robert F. Kennedy — either one! — would not get shot and killed, how much would you pay?
President Biden could get Kennedy the protection he’s asking for with one phone call to congressional leaders, just one declaration of, “Let’s get this done.” It’s hard to imagine any congressional leader objecting.
If, God forbid, Kennedy gets shot in the coming weeks or months, it will have occurred after his campaign manager publicly begged President Biden to provide Secret Service protection, and after Biden rejected the Kennedy campaign’s concerns despite the fact that an armed man showed up at his rally, impersonating law enforcement. An incumbent president refusing to grant official protection to one of his primary rivals — a man with an infamous history of assassinations in his family — after a credible threat is a terrible look.*
Above, I listed the time up until Election Day, because Kennedy does not sound quite as determined to run as a Democrat as he did earlier this year.
This newsletter, back on June 26:
Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. want to be a footnote in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary? Or does he want to win millions of votes and be a major player in the outcome of the upcoming presidential election? If it’s the latter, he ought to seriously consider withdrawing from a race in which he will never overtake the incumbent Joe Biden, and running as an independent instead.
Man, did Kennedy’s fanbase not like that. They contended that my assessment just had to be the secret expression of a panicking establishment that feared Biden would lose.
Well, here we are in September, and now Kennedy is singing a slightly different tune on this issue:
Kennedy — the nephew and son of party stalwarts President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, respectively — refused to close the door last week on leaving his party’s primary amid a bitter fight with the Democratic National Committee over its rules governing the nomination process, even after saying he would only run as a Democrat.
Speaking during a town hall in North Charleston, South Carolina, last week, Kennedy said he was keeping all options open when asked by an attendee if he was prepared to run an independent campaign amid perceived hurdles erected by the DNC, which the campaign claims were built to foil his candidacy.
“They’re trying to make sure that I can’t participate at all in the political process, and so I’m going to keep all my options open,” Kennedy said of the DNC. A day later, he told another crowd in New Hampshire that he “would have to make a call before Oct. 15” if he were to decide to run independently. [Emphasis added.]
Oh, suddenly an independent bid isn’t quite so unthinkable anymore, huh? Some days you’re not wrong, you’re just ahead of the curve.
Those Slow Deliveries to Ukraine
Some folks objected to yesterday’s newsletter using figures that measured aid to Ukraine by including aid that is committed or promised but not yet delivered. But because considerable amounts of aid are always in transit, there’s the question of when you move it from the “committed” or promised list to the delivered list. Does it change to delivered when it arrives at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, which is the NATO logistics and transport hub for moving equipment over the Ukrainian border? When it is formally transferred and the Ukrainians get the car keys, so to speak? When it crosses the border? When it gets deployed into the field?
Because if we’re only counting equipment and ammunition delivered and not promised or in the process of being delivered, it’s not just Europe’s contribution that looks smaller; the numbers for the United States decline as well.
Remember, in January, President Biden announced that the U.S. would provide the Ukrainians with 31 M1 Abrams tanks. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in Germany this week that he was “pleased to announce that the M1 Abrams tanks that the United States had previously committed to will be entering Ukraine soon.”
Soon. It’s been nine months! Now, do those tanks — about $10 million or so each — count as U.S. aid delivered, or U.S. aid promised? The Pentagon also said that it is aiming to have the depleted-uranium rounds arrive around the same time as the tanks. (Those rounds are not cheap, either.) Again, when calculating U.S. aid to Ukraine, does that count as promised or delivered?
All around, you can see signs that the U.S. effort to help Ukraine is . . . taking longer than the announcements might have led you to believe. President Biden endorsed the training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in May. At the most recent Pentagon press briefing on September 14, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh offered an update on the training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas:
Q: And then a — a quick question on Ukraine. On Monday, I had asked and the — the question, I think, was taken. Has the language training started at Lackland? And was just wondering if there was a — an answer on that yet.
SINGH: The language training has not started yet. We expect language training to hopefully start later this month but I don’t have a — a specific date or more specifics when it comes to that.
“The language training has not started yet.” And these pilots must complete the language training before they can start the flight training.
*Have you noticed how often Joe Biden — allegedly “the last politician,” the last back-slapping old pol with a natural instinct for what it takes to succeed in politics — does things that are a terrible look? Denying the existence of his granddaughter for a long stretch, insisting his son has never done anything wrong, joking that any African American who doesn’t vote for him isn’t black, his random on-and-off attitudes toward wearing masks, bristling while meeting with families of those killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan — all of these are self-inflicted wounds. Biden’s holding off on approving Secret Service protection for Kennedy for . . . what? What’s the upside here?
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Chicago’s city government wants to get into the grocery-store business, and the Washington Post editorial board praises Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s plan to try to overcome the learning loss of Virginia students during the pandemic.