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  • 2017-08-23 (xsd:date)
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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Said That Trump Could Be the Greatest President in History? (en)
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  • On 14 December 2016, President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, appeared on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon to discuss the appointment of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (a move Kennedy, an environmental activist, was strongly opposed to). In an earlier segment on that night’s show, Lemon and his guests had drawn comparisons between the Trumps and the Kennedys, referencing remarks made by former Microsoft head Bill Gates a day earlier, with Lemon's asking Kennedy Jr. how he felt about this comparison: Kennedy’s answer, essentially, was not that Donald Trump had already done and achieved things that would fairly rank him as the greatest President in history, but that the comparison of Trump to the Kennedy family could turn out to be fair, because Donald Trump is less bound by ideology than any president probably that we've had this century. His statement was one of optimism for the future and was not rooted in anything Donald Trump (who had yet to assume office) had actually done as President: Since that exchange, numerous pro-Trump websites have run with Kennedy's statement that I think [Trump] could be the greatest president in history without offering the any of the context that led to up to it. Numerous YouTube videos excerpt this brief segment, posted under the title Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Drops Bombshell: 'Trump Could Be Greatest President In History!' Other sites have added their own slanted commentary to Kennedy's remark, frequently suggesting the conversation happened more recently. In a May 2017 post frequently reshared on Facebook, ConservativeFighters.com gleefully and rhetorically asked: Can you hear the sobs coming from liberal protesters when a left-wing icon like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally admits the truth? While Kennedy is certainly a Democrat, he has expressed willingness to work with Trump in the past, especially during the timeframe when the Don Lemon interview took place. Trump allegedly offered Kennedy (though Trump later disputed this) the chance to head a controversial commission on vaccine safety that had been widely panned by the medical community back in January 2017. However, because Kennedy's words, in full context, were not offered as complimentary of Trump’s actions as a president (which he wasn’t at that point) but as a general hopefulness for the future, we rate this claim as a mixture. (en)
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