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When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced his intention to run as a presidential candidate, many Americans assumed that he would run as a Democrat. But some of his political positions, including his opposition to vaccines and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, aligned him more with Donald Trump’s MAGA camp. In the end, Kennedy chose to run unaffiliated with either party.
Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman fears that RFK Jr.’s true intention – as recently stated by some of his own campaign staff – is to elect Donald Trump and prevent a second Joe Biden term. Far from being a Democrat or a true independent, Pakman argues that Kennedy is deliberately running as a spoiler candidate as a favor to Trump, and urges Democrats to vote for Biden in November.
During a recent meeting with supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his New York state director, Rita Palmer, made some stunning comments in which she said, “Hey, if you want to support Trump, you should go and door knock in Pennsylvania,” like she did in previous elections, where she says the goal here is to work together with Trump supporters to deny Joe Biden the presidency and 270 electoral votes.
This is so remarkable for a number of different ways that are worthy of discussion. And I believe, and I believe we’re already seeing it, that as this information gets out, fewer and fewer Democrats are going to be considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a real alternative to Joe Biden.
From the beginning, we went back and forth: Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy help Joe Biden or help Donald Trump? On the one hand, RFK Jr.’s candidacy started as a Democratic challenge to Joe Biden within the Democratic primary and, of course, the Kennedy is a longtime Democratic family. At that point, the assumption and the belief was, “Oh, this is definitely better for Trump, because Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is going to take voters from Joe Biden more than he will from Donald Trump.”
However, then the focus of the campaign became foreign policy comments, including about Russia and Ukraine, that were certainly more sympathetic to Russia than to Ukraine, and aligned much more with the sort of stuff you hear going around in Trump’s circles. The anti-vax stuff, which Kennedy denies is anti-vax, but upon close examination, it is effectively anti-vax, anti-vax appealing much more to Trump supporters than the Biden supporters. And then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “Hey, you know what, I’m actually going to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat.“
