Why did RFK Endorse Trump? Shifting Undercurrents Explain Kennedy’s Move

Photo via Reuters

Allister Adair: In August, after a chaotic presidential campaign devoted to attacking former President Trump, the Biden Administration, the two-party system, the media, and nearly everything else, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unexpectedly endorsed the former President. But just how unexpected was it? 

Kennedy’s unequivocal support for a man he previously called unhinged and claimed disagreement with on ‘certain fundamental issues’ initially appears inconsistent with his core beliefs and decision to run for president in the first place. Kennedy’s populist rhetoric, isolationist sentiments and belief in numerous conspiracy theories — vaccines cause childhood autism, the CIA was responsible for assassinating John F. Kennedy, COVID-19 was bioengineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people — may have once left him politically homeless. Now, however, Kennedy correctly perceives the Republican Party as sharing much of his idiosyncratic and pessimistic worldview. Moreover, the post-Trump Republican Party may look more similar to Kennedy’s outlook than to the McCain-Romney days of establishmentarian conservatism.

Throughout his life — his birth into America’s preeminent political dynasty, his so-called ‘rambunctious youth’ and his work as an environmental lawyer — Kennedy showed an inclination for defying the mainstream but not necessarily for right-wing politics. In fact, many of his political opinions aligned with the dissident left. He has always been a critic of the bipartisan (but primarily conservative) tendency toward hawkish foreign policy and the military-industrial complex. His 2005 article criticizing the Bush Administration’s use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on suspected terrorists could have easily been written by a peace-loving, bleeding-heart liberal. 

Kennedy’s decades of environmental advocacy paint a similar picture. In 2013, he lobbied Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking in New York and spent much of the following years speaking out against the transnational Keystone Pipeline — beliefs that aligned him with left-wing climate activists. Furthermore, in a 2020 interview, Kennedy stated that “He [Trump] is simply the radical step of a process that's been happening in our country and in the Republican Party from the past — really, since 1980 — which is a growing hostility towards the environment, a growing orientation to representing the concentrated corporate power” and that “I think the Green New Deal — and all that stuff — is important. We ought to be pursuing it.” 

In his presidential campaign, Kennedy did not make discussing the environment a top priority, instead expanding upon another pattern from his past — namely, professing anti-vaccine, anti-government, and anti-media conspiracy theories. Kennedy has been lobbying against vaccine rollouts for over 20 years. More recently, he said, "I do believe that autism comes from vaccines," in a July 2023 interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters. In the 2020s, ‘anti-vaxxers,’ who refused life-saving COVID shots and likely contributed to hundreds of thousands of excess American deaths, are associated with the Republican Party. However, neither the left nor the right has historically held a monopoly on anti-vaccine sentiments. Marin County, an overwhelmingly-blue collection of towns and cities north of San Francisco, was a longtime stronghold of the anti-vaccine movement, although this has changed in large part due to broader political realignment on this issue. Moreover, trust in the scientific community was not politically polarized until recently; now, there is a 30-point gap between Democrats and Republicans. This mirrors Americans’ trust in news media — while Republicans have always been more media-skeptic, the partisan gap was approximately 20 points throughout the 2000s and 2010s but has recently grown to over 60 points. Ultimately, then, Kennedy predicated his campaign on issues that have recently become strongly associated with right-wing politics in the United States and therefore anathema to liberals. 

When Kennedy declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination on April 9th, 2023, he initially enjoyed favorable approval ratings. At the same time, concerns over President Joe Biden’s advanced age potentially left an opening for a Democrat to successfully contest the nomination. However, Kennedy’s main challenge was that Democratic primary voters were repulsed by his stances. The longer he stayed in as a challenger to President Biden, the more his favorability numbers decreased. 

In light of his diminishing chances, Kennedy pivoted to run as an Independent in October 2023. Polls initially suggested that Kennedy could siphon more votes from President Biden than former President Trump, leading many Democrats to worry that Kennedy would deliver the 2024 election to Trump à la Ralph Nader or Jill Stein. As time went on, however, it became apparent that Kennedy was siphoning more votes from the former president, in large part due to Kennedy’s chief concerns being far more aligned with Republican voters. Most Kennedy voters would therefore see Trump’s policies as superior to Harris’s, even if both are flawed.

Evidently, Kennedy believes the same. In August, Kennedy announced that he was suspending his campaign and appeared onstage with Trump. Kennedy claimed that the two of them shared common cause in aspiring to “Make America Healthy Again” and oppose the “war on our children.” These statements allude not only to his anti-vaccine beliefs but also broader skepticism of the American medical establishment and concern about certain aspects of the American diet. The latter has recently become a discussion point in right-wing circles, with various untrue theories about the dangers of seed oils, pasteurized milk, soy products, and other modern staples. 

In this, Kennedy is once again making common cause with a growing cadre of voters that views the American political establishment (but mostly the Democratic Party and its allies in the ‘deep state’ apparatus) as an evil force that brave fighters — Kennedy, Trump, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard — are warring against on behalf of the American people, even in the face of so-called ‘weaponization’ of the criminal justice system. After special counsel Jack Smith levied a 37-count indictment of the former president, Trump told his supporters, “They're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way." 

Despite outward differences, the core messages that Trump and Kennedy pushed were strikingly similar. It is no wonder, then, that they joined forces. Kennedy was always an outsider, but when he says that “the Democratic Party left me,” it would perhaps be more accurate for him to say “The Republican Party became more like me.”

What is Trumpism if not deep pessimism and fear of the future? In his 1984 bid for reelection, President Ronald Reagan’s ad slogan — “It’s Morning Again in America” — highlighted the optimistic spirit inherent to his ideological bent. To Reagan and pre-Trump Republicans, Democrats were more misguided and unintelligent than they were evil, and the United States would continue to grow and prosper. 

Meanwhile, in the closing statement of September’s debate, Trump proclaimed that “Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation.” In March of 2023, he told his supporters,  “I am your retribution.” Trump’s rhetoric could not be more distinct from Reagan’s, highlighting that his movement has been built upon the increasing and profound resentment of his voter base. 

To Kennedy, and to his voters, this worldview simply makes more sense than the rosier one painted by the Democratic establishment and by Republican politicians in days of yore. For them, something has gone awry in this country: a certain group of powerful, malignant elites (usually referred to as ‘They’) must be responsible, and Trump and his allies are fighting to destroy that enemy and save the country from ruin.

Kennedy and Trump supporters alike will tell you that ‘They’ — the enemy — has imposed chemicals and vaccines and wars and poverty and race hatred and censorship on the American people, and ‘they’ must be stopped if ‘We the People’ have any hope of surviving. The Republican zeitgeist has undergone a sea change, and it appears unlikely to reverse. Dick Cheney and John McCain have been purged; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is here to stay — Cheney’s and Kennedy’s conflicting endorsements tell the story well enough. What this means for the country is anyone’s guess.

Allister Adair is a Freshman from San Francisco, California studying International Political Economy in the School of Foreign Service. His ongoing column ‘Faith in Fallacy’ covers the increasing salience of conspiratorial beliefs in American politics and analyzes how recent events can be understood through this lens.