RFK Jr. and Trump Belong Together

While principled Republicans are putting country before party.

(Photos by Joe Raedle and Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

IF YOU WERE A SKEPTIC BACK IN JUNE when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. insisted he was not running for president to be a spoiler, pat yourself on the back. Whatever his followers may have believed, whatever he himself may have professed to believe, if he endorses Donald Trump on Friday, as he is expected to do, his real intentions will have been laid bare. With Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, and with Kennedy’s own fundraising drying up, MAGA world is his refuge.

On one hand, Kennedy’s anticipated endorsement is cause for amusement; it would represent Trump doubling down on “weirdness.” RFK is a guy who, one dark night, dropped a dead bear in Central Park and staged it to look like roadkill resulting from a hit-and-run with a bicyclist. That’s in additional to the rest of his bizarre menagerie of conspiracy theories. Let’s just say that his endorsement isn’t a likely route for attracting independent voters and suburban moms.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no cause for concern. Trump said on Tuesday that he’s open to a position for Kennedy in a second Trump term. So in case you worried about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s transition plan for an authoritarian Trump-led state starting January 20, 2025, contemplate its implementation under an administration populated by the likes of Kennedy and Elon Musk, whom Trump has said he is considering for a cabinet post.

In Trump’s first administration, traditional Republicans were there to rein him in. But as Olivia Troye, former national security staffer to Vice President Mike Pence, told the Democratic convention on Wednesday night, “The guardrails are gone.” Should Trump be in the driver’s seat in 2025, guys like Kennedy and Musk won’t be guardrails; they’ll cheer him on as he takes America’s 18-wheeler over the cliff of constitutionalism.

There is an election-related reason that Trump has courted RFK, and why the man who said he had a worm in his brain has shown his true squiggly colors. Plainly, they’ve concluded that his independent candidacy was pulling more voters from Trump than from Kamala Harris, especially in the vital battleground states.

For those hoping Trump does not return to the presidency, that’s no cause for despair—it’s a call to action.

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UNLIKE ITS MAGA COUNTERPART, the Democratic party remains democratic; it responds when people cry out for a change. It’s not a mindless cult of personality.

Don’t take my word for it: Note the growing ranks of common-sense Republicans and former Republicans who, like Olivia Troye, have spoken out against Trump. On Monday, Michael Luttig, the retired federal judge who is a conservative icon, stirringly endorsed Kamala Harris:

In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.

On Tuesday, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham endorsed the vice president in front of the Democratic convention and its millions of viewers, grimly revealing how the events of January 6th were the last straw for her. She also gave a succinct description of Trump’s soulless character:

He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth. He used to tell me, “It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie. Say it enough and people will believe you.” But it does matter. What you say matters and what you don’t say matters.

Tuesday night’s convention “celebrity host” was former Republican Ana Navarro, the television commentator and cohost of The View. Also speaking was lifelong Republican John Giles, the sitting mayor of Mesa, Arizona, that crucial 2024 Sun Belt battleground state.

On Wednesday, Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, spoke. For him, it was Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, including his attempt to convince Georgia officials to just “find 11,780 votes,” that was the breaking point. “I realized Trump was a direct threat to democracy. And his actions disqualified him from ever, ever, ever stepping foot into the Oval Office again.

“These days our party acts more like a cult,” Duncan added. “A cult worshiping a felonious thug.”

One of the convention’s final speakers was another Republican, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who served on the House January 6th Committee. “Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong,” Kinzinger said. “He is a small man pretending to be big. He is a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim.”

The Democratic convention even welcomed a conservative Republican who held no political office and “voted for Trump not once, not twice, but three times” and who “donated to him many times.” Kyle Sweetser, a construction worker, explained how he “realized Trump wasn’t for me—he was for lining his own pockets.” Like the parade of other Republicans, he was telling his fellow party members—and independents—that this election was different, that it is okay to vote differently.

“I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst,” said Sweetser, who volunteers with Republican Voters Against Trump. “That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.”

Listen to their explanations and you can hear what unites these principled Republicans—country over party and commitment to the rule of law.

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NOTABLY, THE RULE OF LAW contributed to Kennedy’s decision to quit. A New York court tossed him from the ballot of our fourth-most-populous state for lying about his residence. Similarly, the Arizona secretary of state this week disqualified Cornel West, the leftwing firebrand, from that state’s ballot amid claims of forged signatures. West’s candidacy would only take votes from Harris. That’s why he was being helped by Republican lawyers.

West’s and Kennedy’s candidacies might seem like sideshows, distractions from the Trump vs. Harris contest. But that’s the point: Remember that this was always going to be a close election in the determinative swing states. In 2020, the Electoral College outcome turned on a difference between Trump and Biden of about 41,000 total votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin—and that figure was dwarfed by the number of votes that went to third-party candidates in those states.

Every little thing each of us does, every factor—voter enthusiasm and turnout, Republicans and moderates turning against Trump, the presence of third-party candidates on the ballot—could prove decisive in the swing states this November.

So when you hear RFK Jr. complain about his supposed unfair treatment and his lack of ballot access, keep in mind his flirtation with and now his endorsement of a man who sought to overturn the last election and who refuses to say he’ll accept the results of this year’s election.

These guys deserve each other. The rest of us deserve something better.