The Morning EditionHe’s the fifth member of the Kennedy clan to run for the American presidency. But, notably, the only one to have dumped a bear in Central Park, as a prank. Even so, Robert F Kennedy Jr was, for months, a thorn in the side of Joe Biden and Donald Trump and, more recently, Kamala Harris. All feared that he could siphon votes from them. And ruin their bid for the White House.
Today, international and political editor, Peter Hartcher, on what power RFK Jr has to sway the election, now that he’s suspended his presidential bid, and thrown his weight behind Donald Trump. And just how much damage he’s doing to the Kennedy family legacy.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Thursday, August 29th. He's the fifth member of the Kennedy clan to run for the American presidency, but notably, the only one to have dumped a bear in Central Park as a prank. Even so, Robert F Kennedy Jr was for months a thorn in the side of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and more recently, Kamala Harris all feared that he could siphon votes from them and ruin their bid for the white House. Today, international and political editor Peter Hartcher on what power Robert F Kennedy Jr has to sway the election now that he has suspended his presidential bid and thrown his weight behind Donald Trump, and just how much damage he's doing to the Kennedy family legacy Okay, Peter, this is something of a roller coaster of a story, but let's just start with the news first, which was that last week that Robert F Kennedy Jr finally ditched his campaign to run for president himself, and instead he sided with Donald Trump. So can you tell us something about that moment?
Well, it had been flagged that he was about to abandon his campaign, and the campaign had become increasingly untenable as support had slipped away. But then he did. He held a press conference in Arizona, followed a few hours later by a rally where he joined Trump on stage. And they embraced. And there were fireworks.
Of course there were.
Of course there were. At the press conference where he made his announcement, he spoke for quite a long time.
I'm sorry to keep everybody waiting. 16 months ago in April of 2023.
Initially, the news networks were all carrying it live, but after the first maybe 20 minutes or so, they started to to flag and go to other programming. He was covering old ground.
The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big Pharma, big.
I don't think he said anything new except, well, you know, he went through the conspiracy against him that he wasn't succeeding because all the news organizations had conspired to censor him, which was difficult to assert when they're all broadcasting him live. Nonetheless, he continued about that. The only new things he told us were he confirmed that he was not ending his campaign, but suspending it. He said suspending.
My name will remain on the ballot in most states that.
He would leave his name on the ballot in some states, which weren't really going to be contested. But in the critical swing states where the election outcome is likely to be decided, he would remove his ballot so he wouldn't be a spoiler, unquote. Then a few hours later, the moment of magic where he joined with Trump and transferred his magic to Donald Trump.
I don't think too many of you people have heard of him. He's very low key, but he's highly respected. He is a great person. I've known him for so long for the past 16 months. Robert F Kennedy Jr.
And that was where Donald Trump not only accepted him, he reversed his earlier judgment. Trump had said earlier that RFK Jr was, quote, the dumbest member of the Kennedy family. But suddenly, Trump said he's a brilliant guy. Now that he's joined forces with Donald Trump. So that was a moment.
Because he also went after me a couple of times. I didn't like it.
Never a dull moment. I mean, it reciprocated too, because RFK Jr had previously said that Trump was a terrible human being, the worst president ever, and barely human. He is probably a sociopath. So they've really traded barbs, haven't they, in the past?
Yeah. And it's funny, people ask, well, why would Trump accept this junior guy when this other guy had been so disparaging of Trump? And similarly with Trump's vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, who'd called Trump America's Hitler, among other insults, and had said some very harsh things about Trump. What people overlook is this Trump loves a sycophant, no question. But there's one thing he loves more than a sycophant is that he loves a convert. He loves showing that somebody who'd been opposed to him or critical of him has now seen the light and become a Trump fan. And that's why he's. He was happy to accept the support of RFK Jr. He's happy to embrace JD Vance and making him him vice president. Okay, so.
Trump loves a convert. But from the side of Robert F Kennedy Jr, it has been something of a roller coaster because of course originally he was campaigning. Well, you tell us Peter, you tell us a little bit about how his campaign has led up to this point, please. Because it is it is a lot of to ING and fro ING. Yes.
Well, when he first announced there was a real flurry of interest in the guy, most people didn't know much about him, but the Kennedy name was obviously his big brand and his big attention point, and that got him a lot of initial interest. So at first in the initial polling, he was polling up to 15% of the national vote, obviously nowhere near enough to become president, but near but enough to spoil the vote of either of the main candidates who actually could be president, depending on where those votes were taken from. And in some of the state and local polls, in that initial flurry of of excitement, he was polling up to 20%. That's pretty serious. Is this when he.
Was campaigning to be the Democratic nominee? Or is this when he was campaigning as an independent? As an.
Independent? Yeah, he'd given up on the Democrats. He said they were conspiring to block him, which is, you know, they weren't conspiring. They were simply stating and planning that they weren't going to block him. They certainly saw him as a spoiler. And the main reason. Look, we should say up front, Samantha, the main reason that he'd really shut himself out of polite Democrat society was because during the pandemic, he'd advocated anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and had been widely criticized for peddling misinformation. So the Democrats weren't going to have anything to do with him. So he said, I'm going to run. And initially, by the way, this is lost in the in the mist of time sometimes. But he said, my primary purpose is to stop Joe Biden getting a second term. So he actually set himself up as the Anti-democrat. He took money from some Trump supporters. He said some, some positive things about Trump's priorities, if not Trump's personalities. But then over time, that initial excitement faded as people learned more about him. And as he was criticized by the main parties, that 15% slacked off to about ten 987. And by the time he'd finished his announcement a couple of days ago, it was down to about 5% of the national vote. Still enough to be a spoiler, but, you know, just clearly hopelessly unfeasible as a presidential candidate. And he said, that's the reason I'm dipping out of this race.
Okay. And before we get into what impact he might have on who wins the presidency in November, can you give us a little bit of a primer about who Robert F Kennedy Jr is, because he doesn't just have a storied family history, but he has something of a bizarre career trajectory.
Yeah. Look, I know that he was an environmental lawyer, spent most of his life campaigning for environmental causes. He's campaigned against the oil industry. He's campaigned against big carbon emitters. He campaigned famously against and was arrested for demonstrating against a new oil pipeline bringing tar sands oil from Canada to the US, the Keystone XL project. He was actually arrested for that.
In our country. Half the people don't believe that global warming exists because of propaganda works, and Exxon and Koch brothers have spent $200 million, you know, erecting phony think tanks.
And and and now he's now he's embraced Donald Trump, one of his favorite slogans is drill, baby, drill and says he'll give a free hand to fracking and oil exploration. So it was particularly bitter betrayal for his environmental supporters.
And I really want to get into something which you touched on before, which is that he especially during Covid, you know, he became very anti vaccines, but really even more so, his name, I think has become something of a byword for conspiracy theories and, and some other really dangerous beliefs about health. So I'm wondering if you can walk us through some of them because they're pretty out there.
Well, he's flirted with or committed to almost every conspiracy theory there is.
And I said, can you show me one vaccine that has been subject to a safety test? Show me one study that shows that. And so they don't they literally don't have any. So nobody knows what the risk profile for these products are. So they're telling people they he.
Said that he thinks his very famous uncle, John F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, that the CIA was implicated in his murder. He has continued to toy with those conspiracy theories, and I think he must have struck a deal with Donald Trump, at least in part based on indulging those theories, because Trump said, okay, I'm you know, I'm happy to have this brilliant guy and his support. He said, everybody loves RFK. If we win, you know, we maybe can find a job for him in my administration. And I'm going to set up a presidential commission to investigate, uh, earlier assassination attempts on presidents. I'm going to they're going to investigate the John F Kennedy assassination, and they're going to release under my authority, if I'm president, all of the secret documents pertaining to that assassination. It suggests that the two of them have got together, and that's what RFK really wants.
And then, of course, there's the health stuff. I know we mentioned his anti-vaccination stance, which is really strong, but he's also claimed that chemicals in the water cause children to become transgender. He believes that Wi-Fi can lead to chronic illness. And he compared Covid 19 restrictions to the Third Reich. And this is a quote from RFK Jr. He said even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. So he really is quite out there, isn't he? With a lot of things.
Yes. Common adjective is kooky that you see often in close proximity to his name. And he knows, by the way, he he has said that he he acknowledges that he has some, some problem with his brain. He has told us that he he actually put it in a court deposition a few years ago, that he had some occasional brain fog and related problems because doctors had looked at a brain scan and told him that they thought that a worm had made its way into his brain, eaten part of it, and died there.
It's so wild that we've all been joking about how RFK Jr. Must have brain worms. And then he actually has brain worms.
It's so become a popular point of fun and a trope in pop media to talk about RFK Jr. S you know, worm brain. And one of the late night comedians said, how did it die? Died of starvation.
Cause of death? Starvation. Oh.
God. I mean, people are having a lot of fun with that. I will divulge to our listeners, Peter, that before recording, you sent me what is probably the funniest article I've read, I'm going to say, in a year. And it was in the Washington Post, and it was by a woman who wrote an opinion piece from the perspective of RFK Jr. S worm.
Yes.
The piece was headlined something like RFK Junior's Brain Worm has an announcement to make, and the piece was written in the first person in the voice of the worm. The worm confessed that it was a parasite on society, didn't have the country's best interests at heart, and therefore was doing the only thing it could, which was to declare its support for Donald Trump. It was quite a nice and creative piece of satire.
We'll be right back. It's amazing to me that we are talking about someone who, you know, who said he has a worm in his brain, and we all know that. He also dumped a dead bear in Central Park, reportedly because he thought it would be funny if someone sort of stumbled upon it. I mean, this is bizarre stuff, and yet he actually is in the running now for a position in the cabinet in a second Trump administration should Trump win in November. Right?
Well, he has.
Said RFK Jr has said that there is no commitment. And Trump himself had said he'd think about giving him a job in the administration, which of course could be anything, anywhere. But they do seem to be, let's say, a little simpatico in many of their unorthodox beliefs, and they might get along really well. And who knows, maybe Trump's regretting he'd already committed to JD Vance and would he would have liked a Kennedy as his vice presidential candidate. You know, these things have got very weird. And, you know, they could yet get weirder. So we'll see.
And I believe it's even been bandied around. I think Trump might have told the crowd at an Arizona rally that in a second Trump administration, Kennedy would be working on a panel investigating, quote, the decades long increase in chronic health problems, including autoimmune disorder, autism, obesity, infertility and more. So that is possibly very worrying considering, you know, what RFK Jr has said about various health problems in the past.
Yeah, but I don't know if it's much worse than Donald Trump suggesting that citizens should inject bleach into their veins. I mean, it really is a compounding series of nutty concepts. I don't know if it would be much worse. Unless, of course, a Trump administration tried to implement the findings of the, you know, the guy with the brain worm.
Now, Peter, I really want to turn to something you've just written about, which is fascinating to me, which is the vast amount of opposition that Robert Kennedy Jr has actually faced from his own family, or many of the members of his family. So can you tell me what they've said?
Yes. Well, he has.
A very big family, and although a few of the family members work with him on his campaign, most of them are appalled. First, that he was running and potentially could have spoiled a Democrat presidency. Biden's and now Kamala Harris's. I mean, there was a statement from five of his siblings. He's got ten, by the way, and five of them put pen to paper to condemn him for betraying everything that the family had stood for by embracing Donald Trump and betraying the work and legacy of the family of JFK.
And so, my fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
Of RFK Jr's father, Robert F Kennedy, who was the Attorney General to JFK and ran in his own right for the presidency in 1968, before, of course, he also was assassinated and many others have had critical words to offer about him. Several have written pieces. There's been a barrage of Kennedy family condemnation of RFK Jr for supporting Trump. It's um, yeah, he's not going to be the most popular guy at, uh, at the next Thanksgiving.
But it actually has to be said that Robert F Kennedy Jr. He's actually leaned into the legacy of his family and even the aesthetic. I mean, he wears the skinny ties and the gray suits that his father and his uncle were famous for in the 60s. And perhaps more pointedly and for some egregiously, he actually copied his uncle's 1960 TV electoral advertisement that helped him nab the white House. I mean, it's an exact That copy. Kennedy. Kennedy.
Kennedy. Do you want a man for president? Who?
And it really angered some people, didn't it?
It did. And he's backed off from that and apologized and said they did that. You know, the super PAC, the support funding network, did that without my knowledge or consent. I'm really sorry. But, you know, he has played into the family name, the storied Kennedy dynasty. I mean, it's really the only reason he got any attention. There are two other independent candidates still running, Samantha. Nobody's ever heard of them. They're running at 1% or less. Um, so if he didn't have the Kennedy surname, he, like them, would be. Would have been, you know, an asterisk at the bottom of the polls. So it really was the Kennedy name that got him where he was. But it's all his own work that's taken him to where he now is.
And really, the concerns of some of Robert F Kennedy Jr. S siblings. They really do center around the fact that he could threaten. I mean, first they were concerned he was going to threaten the reelection of Joe Biden and now, of course, Kamala Harris. So I guess, how realistic do you think that is?
Well, there was a New York Times poll on the weekend that showed of the people who still describe themselves as RFK Jr supporters, um, almost an exact proportion, exactly the same proportion would go to vote for Trump, as would vote for Harris on November 5th. In other words, that they would cancel each other out and it would end up making no difference to the ultimate outcome for every one former RFK Jr. Voter who went to support Trump. One would also go to Harris and they'd cancel out. But more likely, as some of the pollsters have pointed out, and Pew Research bears out, this assertion.
That the.
RFK Jr supporters were only ever very weakly, very feebly attached to the idea of voting for him actually turning out anyway, much less so. For example, asked if you were extremely committed to voting on November 5th, people saying they were going to vote for Harris or Biden, about 70% said they were extremely committed to voting, whereas only about a quarter were. Of those saying that they were supporting. RFK Jr were extremely committed to turning out. So most likely the thing is just died. Um, you know, uh, it it's just seems to have become, well, memorable for his kookiness. And the initial flurry of support really become quite a trivial and perhaps end up being completely insignificant.
So perhaps the concern by some of RFK Jr's siblings, in particular his sister Kerry Kennedy, who I know has been very vocal against her brother's role in this race perhaps was somewhat overblown, because I know she told The New York Times that she was concerned that her family could actually shoulder some of the blame should Donald Trump return to the white House next year. So perhaps really, all he's going to do is perhaps, maybe just tarnish the Kennedy legacy and nothing more.
I think that's.
Right. I think she can probably rest easy, although it can't be fun, as you say, having your family name associated with all the things that you've always worked against. But I did quote an American historian, a historian of US policy and US politics, David Greenberg. He referred to Teddy Kennedy's famous quote where he said, speaking of the whole Kennedy clan and the spirit of an optimistic liberal can do approach to government. Teddy Kennedy said the dream will never die. And David Greenberg said, maybe that's right, but it's certainly taken a hit.
Well, this this has definitely been a ride. I've got to. I've got to be honest. And I'm so glad you've taken us on it. So thank you so much, Peter, for your time.
With any luck, we'll never have to hear of this guy again.
That's right.
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia Carcasole. Our head of audio is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au forward slash, subscribe and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris, this is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.
