At a Phoenix press conference on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirmed several days of rumors by suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing Donald Trump, lending America’s most famous Democratic name to a man nearly all contemporary Democrats loathe. He will remain on the ballot in “blue states” where, as he made clear, he couldn’t really help Trump. But it appears he will actively campaign for the former president, perhaps beginning with a Trump rally later in the day.
Kennedy’s reasoning was relatively clear, if not necessarily compelling. He said he had broken with Democrats over the “existential issues” of “censorship, war, and chronic disease.” But it’s that first item he dwelled on in talking about his former party, accusing them bitterly of working with big tech to warn people of his anti-vaxx views during and since the COVID pandemic, and rigging the 2024 primaries to keep potentials rivals like Kennedy out while “hiding the cognitive decline” of President Biden. He repeatedly asserted he would have won a fair fight, in both the primaries and the general election. He seemed to equate DNC legal efforts to challenge his ballot petitions with authoritarianism in general and with supposed Democratic “lawfare” against Trump in particular. And yes, he did go on to accuse Democrats of being in the grip of “neocon” warmongers and of Big Ag and Big Pharma and other evil corporate forces who are poisoning the country and particularly its children.
Well over halfway through his presser, Kennedy finally pivoted to the positive case for endorsing Trump, asserting that they were in agreement on the key issues of “free speech, the Ukraine War, and the war on children.” Again, it seems Trump’s free-speech commitment amounts to little more than being the enemy of Kennedy’s enemies, particularly those who have mocked his subscription to an array of conspiracy theories. He made the most sense in accurately describing the 45th president as lukewarm at best toward Ukraine. As for whether Trump will act on the prime concern of the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket — the alleged government-corporate plot to kill, sicken and fatten up kids to make money for Big Pharma and Big Ag — RFK Jr. seems to be relying mostly on blind faith. He said he hoped that Trump would “keep his promises in this case,” recognizing that hadn’t been a very good bet in the past, along with an acknowledgement that they don’t agree on a lot of issues. (That’s an understatement; in April Trump accused Kennedy of being “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat,” and more liberal than Jill Stein or Cornel West.)
And so, this deeply alienated man will form a strange partnership with the Republican candidate for president based mostly on a common sense of grievance with Democrats and other elites, and a common lust for vengeance. As for what his endorsement will be worth, that’s unclear. He’s been dropping like a rock in the polls, especially since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate; the most recent national survey, by RMG Research, put him at three percent of the vote. And it is not at all clear how many of his remaining supporters will follow him over the brink into MAGA-land, which some correctly perceive as a place where environmentalists and those who fret about military spending (a particular preoccupation of Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who wasn’t at the presser but was apparently in on the decision) and childhood health are often treated as hippies and suspected Marxists. The timing of the move was convenient in that many pollsters already in the field to figure out if Harris will get a post-convention “bounce” will also be able to discern whether Kennedy’s move swayed any actual voters.
We’ll also see what, if any, effect RFK Jr.’s support has on Trump, surely the most narcissistic and hard-to-influence presidential candidate ever. At his presser, RFK Jr. said he wanted to introduce a “culture of kindness” into the Trump campaign. Good luck with that, Bobby. Probably should stick to the script of whining and plotting vengeance.
