The roller coaster ride continues: RFK Jr. endorses Donald Trump
This has been quite a campaign season so far, hasn’t it?
Now we have this:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign said in a Pennsylvania court filing Friday that he’s endorsing Donald Trump for president.
The campaign also requested that he be removed from the Pennsylvania ballot, though it wasn’t immediately clear that he was officially dropping out of the race. It came a day after he sought to be removed from Arizona’s ballot. He is running as an independent.
Kennedy is set to speak in Arizona shortly “about the present historical moment and his path forward,” according to his campaign. Hours later, Trump will hold a rally in neighboring Glendale. Trump’s campaign has teased that he’ll be joined by “a special guest,” though neither campaign responded to messages about whether Kennedy would be that guest.
The art of the deal, indeed.
More:
Speaking at a news conference, Mr Kennedy said Democrats were no longer “champions of the constitution” and had departed “dramatically” from the “core values” he grew up with. …
He criticised the Democratic Party, saying it had waged “legal warfare” against him and Mr Trump.
I can’t argue with that. It seems self-evident.
Democrats treated RFK Jr. so badly that he has allied with Trump. I’m not saying it’s the only reason he’s on the Trump train – promises were almost certainly made – but the Democrats’ behavior towards both men has made for a natural bonding experience.
And this statement by Kennedy was a perfect description of the Democrats’ campaign tactics/strategy: “Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate?”
NOTE: RFK Jr. was fourteen years old when his father was assassinated during a presidential campaign. This year, the Biden administration wouldn’t assign Secret Service protection to him until after the Trump assassination attempt. It all might have been stirring some pretty intense memories – and anger – for RFK Jr.
https://x.com/_johnnymaga/status/1827057049533821271?t=NoCI2tbwIQicg76VEd33Jw&s=19
Video of msnbc at link
constitution ‘thats over a hundred years old’
comcast has really become garbage platform
He’s right to say that the Democratic Party of his father and uncle is gone.
I’m a little skeptical that this’ll get the people who would’ve voted for RFK Jr. to now vote for Trump. But who knows? Maybe? RFK Jr. seems to attract a sort of oddball, pseudo-intellectual sort who fancy themselves rebellious and independently minded. Not exactly the natural Trump voter.
Not that I believe polls at this point, but I did see some indicating that the largest number of RFK Jr. votes would migrate to Trump. Might make a difference in swing states.
The democrats are going full scorched earth on any that oppose them, using any means available. The sheer nastiness and spitefulness surprises me. It’s frankly terrifying.
If RFK’s endorsement of DJT includes actually pushing the endorsement at speaking engagements, even advertisements, then maybe some voters will be persuaded to vote Trump.
Like Nonapod, I had been skeptical about how many people who would have voted for RFK Jr. would now vote for Trump. However after watching his speech I’m going to say almost all of them will. It was excellent, and he gave compelling reasons for supporting Trump. I may be overly optimistic, but I think this will have a big effect on the election. Please watch the whole thing.
Ray+Socal,
Yes.
Sdferr,
I had a bit of hope that RFKs move might break through the media castle walls a bit. I guess I was wrong. His message is very important for the swing voters to hear. Which is why, I guess, they will do everything they can to prevent it coming out. Joe Lieberman, part 2.
Nothing is surprising anymore!
Perhaps people will see RFKjr’s speech on X physicsguy. I don’t follow the usage measurements, yet I do get the sense that the app is making inroads into replacing old media as folks’ source of news and info. It’s certainly easy to access with the ubiquity of smartphones etc. Hope so, anyhow.
Sounds like he’s expecting to drain the pharma swamp in a Trump administration.
https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1827073324478034419
That should prove to be interesting.
RFK Jr endorsing Trump made sense to me and now it’s happened.
Change is bustin’ out all over! The feeling is getting so intense.
“Sounds like he’s expecting to drain the pharma swamp in a Trump administration.” – crasey
Yes, this could be an interesting move. Lord knows, after what we’ve learned from the Covid experience, change is needed in those agencies. It won’t be easy. Those bureaucrats will fight to maintain their
cushy, profitable jobs.
There’s the Democrat Party, there’s the MSM, and there’s the weaponized justice system – but we repeat ourselves.
CNN funnily makes a point about Ukraine by talking over and cutting away from RFK Jr at exactly that juncture in his announcement. The funniest aspect of the panicked interjection is how they not only validate what he was trying to say, but self-incriminate as authoritarian censors. Are they still smarting from Trump’s “stop dying” answer to the Ukraine question at a CNN town hall? The passive aggression is a cry for help. CNN as a whole needs psychological counseling.
If Trump is elected, does RFK get a job in the administration? He could be a Counselor to the President, at least until Bobby and Don realize that they don’t agree about a lot of things. Then maybe an ambassadorship. Maybe to one of the countries Caroline was sent to, just to rub it in.
Or is he up for a more substantive position? A Venn diagram might help, with one circle representing Trump’s positions, the other representing Kennedy’s and the area in the middle showing the overlap. Don’t be daunted by Kamala Harris. She has no patent on Venn diagrams, though she sometimes acts as if she does.
What I found to be of interest in RFK Jr.’s endorsement speech today was RFK’s suggestion (as condensed and paraphrased here by MJR),
– if you live in a true-blue state, vote for me;
– if you live in a true-red state, vote for me; but
– if you live in a swing state, vote for *Trump*.
RFK’s exact words here: “But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m gonna remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urged voters not to vote for me.”
PJ Media has posted a transcript of RFK’s speech, with the following preamble by PJ Media staffer Chris Queen:
“On Friday afternoon, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced that he is suspending his campaign and endorsing Donald Trump.
“In a speech that lasted over 45 minutes, he explained his rationale for dropping out, how he wants to help Trump, and what he hopes his legacy will be. It was a powerful, epic speech, and even though conservatives have plenty to disagree with RFK over, his idea of a unity campaign with Trump combined with his desire to make America healthy again is admirable.
“Here’s the speech in its entirety. Forgive me if there are errors; I tried to catch them all.”
Finally, here’s a link to the transcript:
https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/08/23/transcript-rfk-jrs-epic-speech-n4931936
Note the timing — the day after the end of the DNC. Now everyone is buzzing about Trump and RFK.
The polls are close. Overall Harris seems to have a slight edge. But she still hasn’t taken questions from the press or debated Trump. I don’t believe she can skate forever on vibes.
This may be as good as it gets for Harris.
Kate:
To elaborate on “I don’t think my father would recognize this party, and I don’t think my uncle would recognize this party,” we reluctantly add neither would they recognize other members of the Kennedy clan who’ve become sacks of narrative consuming and spewing crap. It’s a sad moment.
Can’t we show a little grace and dignity?
This is bad optics:
Axelrod Melts Down After RFK Endorses Trump
Poor guy. He knew it was coming, but he’s melting just the same.
Banned Lizard:
A conservative café friend, who was a political consultant for decades in Malibu, tells me that if you want to know what Obama is thinking read Axelrod.
____________________________________
Robert F. Kennedy was my political hero. He battled fiercely & eloquently against poverty, injustice and for economic fairness.
____________________________________
Axelrod would have been 13 when RFK was shot. I guess RFK could have been his political hero. Or that may be a fine-sounding claim and politically useful at this moment.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama reads the tea leaves that this is a blow for the Harris campaign. Obama waited five days to endorse her candidacy. I don’t believe Obama is optimistic.
The RFK Jr. defection is not good news for the Dems.
I read one suggestion that the DNC might parry the Trump/Kennedy teamup* by forcing Biden to resign so that Harris would have the incumbency advantage. I wouldn’t put it past them. Or that these evil people would then stage a ‘rally round the flag’ attack of some kind to demonstrate Harris’ abilities as a crisis leader.
I’m very hopeful about *this development but it’s not over yet.
CNN’s Erin Burnett reacts to RFK’s endorsement of Trump: “The latest swing state polls show Kennedy with 5 or 6 percent of the vote. Now you might say, that’s not a big deal… Actually, if that’s the case, it is HUGE — it is everything”
Correct, Erin. Game over. A dark cloud of doom is rolling in. Democrats’ only hope now is election fraud. They’ll pull out all the stops and be even more ham handedly blatant than last time. LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-adds-a-kennedy-in-hopes-he-will-draw-all-the-sniper-fire
Trump Adds A Kennedy In Hopes He Will Draw All The Sniper Fire
This election has been rigged … by the Bee, for the Bee. They’re helping me laugh past the graveyard. For too many years, I’ve heard too much whistling, so now grim laughter has replaced false cheer. If we follow the Brits, then even that may become illegal. How many years will the sentence be for making people laugh? You think I’m kidding?
I too laughed during this turn of events Cornflour, though that was when I heard RFKjr referring with high emotion to his father and his uncle — indicating President JFK — and then never mentioned his other uncle!
Y’know, Uncle Teddy. Hilarious!
@ sdferr > “and then never mentioned his other uncle!”
Whatever inclinations I might have had for the Democrats, as a callow youthful LIV who thought their ideals were laudatory and believed them to be honest, I ditched after watching their membership and punditry abase their alleged feminist principles for Bill Clinton. As I learned more about the Kennedys, and especially Senator Teddy, I jettisoned the Camelot Crowd completely as cynical hypocrites.
Thus, in 2016, I was not persuaded by their pretense of prudery on our behalf when they brought up The Donald’s peccadillos (real and imagined).
Ammo Grrlll’s post about the conveniently-discovered Hollywood-tape brouhaha was, essentially, “Don’t the Democrats know any beer-drinking poker players?”
Probably not, given the inroads Trump made (and kept) with their formerly-captive blue-collar voters.
teddy kennedy was a drunk reckless fool who even lent himself over to the Soviets, an indelicate point, similar with Chris Dodd, a corrupt apparatchik who helped bring about the Subprime Calamity, and then provided a placebo along with Barney Frank that made the situation worse, his reward a board seat at MPAA and a cottage in Ireland free from persecution,
it might be argued the 65 immigration act, was the largest active measure, they might have pulled, in fundamentally transforming this country,
Yes the Access Hollywood tape showed executive suite culture in 2006, when Lauer Moonves and co were on the prowl, remember there was no reproach by any of the ones on the conversation,
Obama campaigned on the show of Bubba the Love sponge, a rank degenerate in 2012, so please put away the smelling salts, they used P Diddy as their pied piper, btw have they indicted him yet
Thanks to M J R for posting that transcript link.
@Moly+Brown:forcing Biden to resign so that Harris would have the incumbency advantage.
If true, this is a succinct example of Leftist magical thinking.
Harris IS the Vice-President, that either makes her an “incumbent” as far as the electorate is concerned, or not. Making her President for a few weeks is an attempt to write “incumbent” on her in purple crayon, and that magic spell will MAKE the electorate regard her as the incumbent–in the same way that putting “gun free zone” on a placard makes all the guns in that area vanish.
I don’t see how making Harris the president for a few weeks would change the election, especially since her campaign is working to distance her from all the bad decisions of the past three and a half years made by her administration. This would make her officially the owner of it all.
When you have Bret Weinstein considering voting for Trump, I would say the RFKjr endorsement is significant.
Weinstein validates how extreme the current iteration of the Democrat party is and how a coalition of traditional liberal Democrat, libertarian and Conservatives may be the only path forward to reclaim the country:
The GOPe/Dem leftists recognize this potential. Vance has shown Trump_Vance is really interested in blue collar/middle class Americans in a way that the old GOPe/cheap labor Republicans have always eschewed.
Now if Trump finds a significant role for a liberal Democrat, where our interests align, the center left/libertarian may join Trump. Talk about expanding the coalition. The coalition may only last this term– which is what you would expect. The traditional Democrats can begin claiming their party, and the Republican party will battle whether the populist conservative America First movement has power post Trump or the old guard GOPe retains it’s “rightful” legacy position.
“Threat to The Republic” – Reaction to RFK Jr. Dropping Out + Endorsing Donald Trump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F746FWYIp34
@huxley: The traditional Democrats can begin claiming their party, and the Republican party will battle whether the populist conservative America First movement has power post Trump or the old guard GOPe retains it’s “rightful” legacy position.
I’d be happier about this were it not that the traditional Democrats and the GOPe are the one who got us to where we are today; letting them have it back just puts us there again in a few years.
Trump is a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of candidate. You can’t build something with that, and certainly not if you have to do it repeatedly. What you can do is use the breathing space to prepare for the next phase. People who are unhappy with how it’s been going for the last thirty years need to take the time to do this and not just think that electing Trump fixes anything. It doesn’t.
Niketas, I agree. If this once in a lifetime coalition comes together, it is temporary and both sides know that.
For this to work, the libertarian side has to believe RFKjr will have an influence on a policy area. This may all be a pipe dream, but I assume Weinstein has a certain following. If he and others get behind the notion, it can affect the election, IMO.
Whether it’s Vance or DeSantis or someone waiting in the wings to solidify the gains of the populist America First movement and it becomes enduring or fades under the pressure of the legacy Republicans will be played out in the coming years.
But at least we’ve had a reprieve from the fundamental transformation Obama promised– and the radical goals of the left are coming into focus.
Well, yes, electing Trump would be only the beginning of the process to repair the republic.
At the Instapundit, Green Reynolds linked to a Richard Fernandez tweet pointing out that, while Trump was being portrayed as weak in the new Dem offensive, he was actually working behind the scenes to change the electoral landscape. RFK Jr. says that he reached out to Harris also but she and her team wouldn’t even talk to him.
@Brian E:libertarian side has to believe RFKjr
The guy who advocated jailing climate science skeptics isn’t much of a libertarian… then again most libertarians consider most libertarians to not be much of a libertarian.
Niketas Choniates:
I believe you are responding to Brian E, not me.
Trump is Trump. For better or worse, sometimes unlikely individuals do change history.
America is undergoing another huge realignment and this is what those look like.
____________________________
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’
–Bob Dylan, “The Times They’re A-Changing”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dVNqkqrygQ
@Niketas Choniates
On the whole I agree with you on many things as well as the overall situation and relative importance (or lack thereof) of Trump himself. However I have to disagree with:
Trump has built more than a few “somethings”, even if we can agree they are not adequate in and of themselves. But things such as the Abraham Accords and US Space Force (which at present mostly exists as a sinecure and more bloat on government but should be important for the future development of the US and humanity) are worth noting. Granted these are largely foundations to be sure, but they are foundations built and that can be built on, and that is worth noting. Especially given how many go on about how things like the Israel conflict is some kind of unchanging, ancient, intractable problem that we have to appease the Palestinian Authority to change.
Trump is no God-Emperor but I an loathe to sell him short any more than overselling him.
most libertarians consider most libertarians to not be much of a libertarian.
==
Fair descriptions of different segments of the libertarian strand:
==
“An ideology for people without children”.
==
“Applied autism”
==
“A pose adopted by dweebs who don’t want to be yelled at by liberal women”.
==
Recall that Tyler Cowan made excuses for the conspiring between the security agencies and Twitter when Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi began publishing their correspondence. That’s suggestive of what faculty libertarianism amounts to for the post-1955 cohorts.
==
Trump is a “break glass in case of emergency” sort of candidate.
Andrew Jackson was an outspoken populist with, let us say rough edges, who became president and changed the whole game.
Founded the Democrat Party in fact.
Ironically today’s Democrat Party is the sort of entrenched elites Jackson fought against and won, thereby empowering the common man. (Though I suppose that can be argued.)
We’re now in the midst of another major realignment as in Jackson’s time.
We’ve been to this rodeo before.