During a live stream of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech endorsing Republican contender Donald J. Trump, CTV cut off the audio and began talking over the independent presidential candidate, calling him a conspiracy theorist.
Though True North was unable to find the full video of CTV’s broadcast, clips shared on X show CTV cutting Kennedy’s speech short, saying they would not allow conspiracy theories to be broadcast on their network.
Kennedy held a live-streamed press conference, during which he delivered a 48-minute speech on why he’s supporting the former president.
In his speech, Kennedy outlined several priorities facing the U.S., that he was convinced Trump could work with him to address: ending the “forever wars,” the childhood disease epidemic, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, and preventing U.S. intelligence agencies from “propagandizing, censoring, surveilling” and interfering with (U.S.) elections.”
He accused federal agencies of conspiring to re-elect Democrats.
“The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing, no policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus,” Kennedy said, referring to the Democratic National Convention. “How did the Democratic party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? You know the answers. They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.”
When Kennedy discussed American media companies conspiring to elect the Democratic party to office, CTV anchor Todd Vanderheyden interrupted.
“What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of federal agencies,” he said. “When a US president colludes with, or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right, free expression, and that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest.”
Government officials pressured social media companies in 2020 to suppress information that the feds said was misleading, including Hunter Biden’s laptop, which a 2022 poll suggests could have swayed the 2020 election. The case landed in the US Supreme Court which by a 6-3 vote voted in favor of Biden saying the government’s actions were permissible.
Vanderheyden spoke over the CTV version of the broadcast, censoring the broadcast and calling Kennedy a conspiracy theorist.
“I’m going to have to jump in here. This is Robert F Kennedy, Jr. He was a so-called ‘third-party candidate,” Vanderheyden said. “I’m jumping in because he’s espousing conspiracy theories about why Joe Biden left the race and Kamala Harris – and then this is a sort of standard operating procedure for Kennedy. It’s one of the reasons why his candidacy really went nowhere.”
According to a November 2023 poll conducted by Ipsos and Reuters, Kennedy was polling as high as 20% support in a three-way presidential race against Biden and Trump. In contrast, Ross Perot received 19% support in 1992, the highest any third-party candidate has had in over 30 years.
“President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot, but here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot, and our television networks exposed themselves as Democratic party organs,” Kennedy said in the speech which continued to air on most other outlets that broadcasted it.
He said despite polling high at times, the “mainstream media networks” maintained a “near perfect embargo” on interviews with him.
“During the 16 months since I declared, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN combined gave only two live interviews from me. Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile pejoratives and defamatory smears. Some of those same networks colluded with the DNC to keep me off the debate stage,” he said.
Kennedy addressed the media executives who he said were in attendance.
“I’ll just take a moment to ask you to consider the many ways that your institutions have abdicated this really sacred responsibility, the duty of a free press to safeguard democracy and to always challenge the party in power,” he said. “Instead of maintaining that posture of fierce skepticism toward authority, your institutions have made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”
Kennedy has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming the two major parties and CNN colluded to keep him from the June 27 debate.
CTV did not respond to True North’s request for comment. The organization isn’t immune to spreading misinformation. In 2022, it retracted a story from 2018 based on unverified sexual assault allegations against now-Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.