Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard accused the Democrats of trying to "ignore" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a ploy to discredit him and garner additional support for President Biden in the 2024 race.
Kennedy Jr., who trails Biden by double-digits, has been largely dismissed by Democrats in his bid for the White House despite dwindling support for the incumbent.
Gabbard, who felt "iced out" by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) when she sought the Democratic nomination in 2020, detailed on "Fox News Tonight" how the party has tried to manipulate voters to support their preferred candidates.
"Step one is they try to ignore. This is exactly what I experienced in 2020 when I ran for president in the Democratic primary, and they're doing the same thing to Kennedy," Gabbard told Harris Faulkner Wednesday.
She said the next step will be to "smear and discredit" Kennedy if he starts to gain traction with voters.
"If that doesn't work, they go to step number three, which is pull out all the stops and destroy. And for me, this is when Hillary Clinton went out and started saying that I was a traitor, a Russian asset going against the country that I love," she continued.
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According to recent polls, Biden's support has been dissipating all while he remains absent from the campaign trail. He announced his candidacy back in April and has yet to hold any campaign rallies.
The criticism comes as the DNC has faced scrutiny for foregoing primary debates among his rivals - Kennedy and Marianne Williamson, although it is common for the party in power to avoid primary elections when in control of the White House.
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A Fox News poll in recent weeks revealed that a combined 28% of Democrat primary voters have moved away from Biden to Kennedy and Williamson. Kennedy took 19% of Biden’s supporters while Williamson took 9%.
As Kennedy’s noted, name recognition may be behind some of Kennedy’s double-digit support in the polls during this early part of the 2024 election cycle.
He’s the son of the late senator, attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and the late longtime Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. And part of the support for Kennedy and Williamson may be a type of protest against a president whose approval ratings have remained in negative territory for nearly two years.
And amid the dismal polling, many pundits have suggested the recent temperature checks indicate Biden should be nervous about his re-election chances.
Even so, Gabbard – who has since left the Democratic Party – emphasized the Democrats will continue to push convoluted narratives against candidates they do not favor in order to elevate the contender of their choosing.
"They repeat these baseless lies until voters actually start to believe them, and this is exactly what they're doing against Kennedy," the Fox News contributor said. "I didn't have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to combat this onslaught of a campaign that they waged. Kennedy doesn't either."
"I want to say if there are any wealthy billionaires out there who love this country and want to see the Democratic Party liberated from these woke warmongers, put your money where your values are," she continued.
"Bobby Kennedy could use some help to be able to go out there and share his message with voters because the DNC is not going to allow him to do that."
Despite what many look at as an uphill battle, Gabbard argued Kennedy's success in the upcoming election is possible, despite numerous hurdles posed by the media, the DNC, and Big Tech.
"The powers that he's up against, it is the propaganda media, the DNC, working with them, working with big tech and social media. So it can be done, but it's going to take a lot of resources in order for him to be able to do that."
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser, Brandon Gillespie and Houston Keene contributed to this report.
