Levin: Flashback to 1984 Ted Kennedy: 'This was a major effort to get the Soviet Union to interfere in our election'

Friday night on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin spoke with presidential historian Paul Kengor about a grossly overlooked incident in which a prominent politician sought election help from a dangerous foreign enemy.

The U.S. politician was Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, the foreign power was the Soviet Union, and the election was the 1984 presidential race.

According to a 1983 KGB document, which wasn't reported until years later in 1992, a friend of Kennedy's reached out to the Kremlin to help the Soviets deal with Ronald Reagan in exchange for assistance undermining the president in the upcoming 1984 election.

The memo lists a number of ways that Reagan's chances for re-election might have been weakened and outlines a number of proposals such as Kennedy meeting with Soviet officials in Moscow, those officials meeting with Kennedy in the United States, and others.

Naturally, the document's discovery was largely ignored by the American media.

"This was a major effort to get the Soviet Union to interfere in our election," Levin said.

"Yeah, I think it's fair to characterize it that way," Kengor responded.

Kengor then went on to compare the Kennedy-KGB memo to the current debate over President Trump, the Ukrainian government, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter:

"Imagine if Ronald Reagan knew about this memo, Mark, right, in 1984, right? After Ted Kennedy's shenanigans. And he knows that Kennedy is considering a challenge to Reagan in 1984. And imagine Reagan's frustration if he would have known that no one in the media cared to even ask Kennedy about this, right? Imagine what Reagan's frustration would be like. Imagine the temptation of Reagan to try to do what he would be able to do or his staff could do to try to expose what Kennedy did, knowing that no one in the liberal media was going to expose it or even bother to ever report on it.

"And then if Reagan would have done so, or someone in his staff would have tried to call attention to it, Reagan would have been accused by the liberal media of abusing his power, because he'd be facing a possible presidential campaign challenge by Ted Kennedy in 1984. And I think that's what Donald Trump is facing with Joe Biden.

"Trump wants the liberal media to do its job and expose how Biden abused power, knowing that the liberal media won't do it, so Trump knows that he has to try to expose it himself."

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