For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been running for president, Democrats have cast him as a stalking horse for Donald Trump. But Kennedy has consistently denied playing the role of spoiler. When a Kennedy campaign official gave a detailed presentation laying out how he could help Trump, the Kennedy campaign distanced itself from her.<\/p>\n
But now Kennedy\u2019s vice-presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has dropped any pretense. She indicated in a new podcast interview that the Kennedy campaign would prefer to help Trump than see Vice President Kamala Harris win the presidency. And she even floated the idea that she and Kennedy could drop out of the race to assist in that outcome.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the \u201cImpact Theory\u201d podcast, Shanahan laid out two paths forward for the Kennedy campaign: trying to get enough votes to form a more robust third party, or dropping out to help Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s two options that we\u2019re looking at,\u201d Shanahan said. \u201cOne is staying in, forming that new party. But we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency, because we draw \u2026 somehow more votes from Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump, and \u2026 explain to our base why we\u2019re making this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
RFK\u2019s VP Nicole Shanahan says they are debating whether to stay in the race or drop out and join forces with Trump:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s two options that we\u2019re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz presidency because we\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/O3HrLbbCLO<\/p>\n
\u2014 End Tribalism in Politics (@EndTribalism) August 20, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kennedy\u2019s campaign didn\u2019t directly comment on whether it agreed with Shanahan\u2019s comments. It instead pointed to an X post from Kennedy that said he was \u201cwilling to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shanahan\u2019s unvarnished comments are the latest indicator of a fading and potentially dying campaign. But as much as that, they feed into Democrats\u2019 longstanding allegations about Kennedy\u2019s true motivations.<\/p>\n
Shanahan\u2019s comments also come, it bears emphasizing, shortly after it became evident that Kennedy was suddenly hurting Trump.<\/p>\n
Shanahan said generally positive things about Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, despite Kennedy\u2019s having said back in April that he \u201coppose[d] Donald Trump and all he stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also played up the idea of Kennedy serving in the Trump administration and even of her falling back on a run for office in California. (Trump responded to Shanahan\u2019s comments by telling CNN that he would entertain giving Kennedy a job in exchange for Kennedy\u2019s dropping out and endorsing him.)<\/p>\n
Needless to say, these are not generally the kinds of things you hear from a serious campaign that is full speed ahead. Merely airing them publicly is likely to give would-be supporters pause; one donor set to hold a fundraiser for Kennedy told ABC News he is now canceling the event.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s campaign has seen its support wane in recent months. And he was dealt a sharp blow when Harris joined the race, reducing the ranks of voters who dislike both major-party nominees (\u201cdouble haters\u201d). While Kennedy once polled in the mid- to high teens \u2014 some of the best numbers for a non-major-party candidate since Ross Perot in the 1990s \u2014 he\u2019s now averaging about 5 percent.<\/p>\n
The other big shift has been in who he is pulling from. He previously drew about evenly from the Democratic and Republican tickets, despite his and his family\u2019s ties to the Democratic Party and his earlier Democratic primary campaign.<\/p>\n
But more recent surveys suggest the third-party factor has shifted against Trump. Harris actually gains ground when you include third-party and independent candidates, and Kennedy in particular draws significantly more from Trump.<\/p>\n
One survey showed Kennedy supporters preferred Trump to Harris more than 2-to-1 when asked to choose. Another showed Kennedy pulling 23 percent of Republican-leaning independents, compared to just 8 percent of Democratic-leaning ones.<\/p>\n
All of which suggests that if Kennedy does drop out, it could help Trump on the margins by pushing those Trump-inclined voters toward him.<\/p>\n
(It\u2019s worth noting that most major polls now are straight head-to-heads between Trump and Harris, so we have a pretty good sense for what a Kennedy-less race looks like.)<\/p>\n
Shanahan, for her part, suggests that the motivation to help Trump has come about relatively recently. She blamed Democrats for stifling Kennedy\u2019s campaign by keeping him off the debate stage and launching legal action against his campaign. More conspiratorially, she suggested they were \u201cmanipulating polls\u201d somehow and \u201ceven planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it and to create actual legal issues for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have, unfortunately, turned us into a spoiler,\u201d Shanahan said. She added that \u201cwe are taking a very serious look at making sure that the people that have corrupted our fair and free democracy do not end up in office in November.\u201d<\/p>\n
That stated reason would be easier to square if not for the fact that Trump tried to overturn an election based upon lies and distortions. And just two weeks ago, Kennedy reached out to this supposedly nefarious and underhanded Harris campaign to discuss trading an endorsement of her for an administration job.<\/p>\n
The Kennedy campaign seems to realize that it is listing badly, and they\u2019re suddenly in the bargaining phase.<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign had almost no motivation to cut such a deal. But Trump suddenly does.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been running for president, Democrats have cast him as a stalking horse for Donald Trump. But Kennedy has consistently denied playing the role of spoiler. When a Kennedy campaign official gave a detailed presentation laying out how he could help Trump, the Kennedy campaign distanced itself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8230,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}