Robert Kennedy didn’t make the debate stage but he answered the same questions during a rival event

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wasn’t with his better-known rivals, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, when they debated Thursday in Atlanta.

But Kennedy responded in real time to the same questions — about inflation, the COVID-19 response and abortion — that were posed to Biden and Trump in an unusual livestream on the social platform X. Host John Stossell kept Kennedy’s answers to the same strict time constraints imposed on the other candidates.

Standing alone on a stage in Los Angeles, Kennedy opened his event, dubbed The Real Debate, by accusing CNN, host of the main contest, of colluding with the Republican and Democratic parties to keep him off.

“This is something that’s important for our democracy because Americans feel like the system is rigged,” Kennedy said during his opening remarks. “This is exactly the kind of merger of state and corporate power that I’m running to oppose.”