As 21 columns of fire shot out of the stage, Donald Trump walked out in front of a booming crowd in Phoenix last week to introduce the exiled scion of Democratic royalty he hoped would, once again, reset the 2024 campaign.
“Had he been allowed to enter the Democratic primary, he would have easily beaten Joe Biden,” Trump said to a huge crowd about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who stood on stage prepared to endorse Trump over the objection of his own family. “But they would not let him.”
Kennedy’s support for Trump comes after weeks of momentum by Vice President Kamala Harris. President Joe Biden’s exit from the race gave her a polling boost, which even Trump’s team expects to continue after last week’s widely watched Democratic National Convention.
Kennedy was running for president as a Democrat before becoming an independent, but then last week dropped his bid completely and backed Trump. The rally in Phoenix, which opened with the sort of strobe lights and pyrotechnics expected at a concert or monster truck rally, was Kennedy’s splashy coming-out party in Republican politics.
The Kennedy family has openly viewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as their black sheep because he both flirts with right-wing conspiracies — most notably as a vocal voice in the anti-vaccination movement — and has been well outside the Democratic Party’s political mainstream.
But for Trump’s campaign, the endorsement from Kennedy has been framed as a huge win — even though it came from someone Trump himself called “liberal” when Kennedy was still running for president. The Trump campaign gave the Kennedy endorsement more oxygen than perhaps any other endorsement to date, hoping he can convince some disenchanted Democrats and skeptical conservatives to come aboard.
Beyond the rock star greeting Kennedy received in Phoenix, Trump and his campaign-aligned social media accounts have spent a significant time hyping the endorsement.
There has been such a rush of intensity that some social media accounts run by Trump allies with huge followings have joked that Trump-Kennedy is the real Republican ticket instead of the actual running mate: Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
“The strongest anti-establishment ticket in American History,” tweeted Benny Johnson, a right-wing social media influencer with 2.7 million followers.
The infamous “Distracted Boyfriend” meme was also repurposed to show Trump longing after Kennedy while a hapless Vance looked on. Vance laughed off the meme when told about it in an interview on Tuesday.
“The meme stuff just doesn’t bother me at all,” he told NBC News aboard his plane. “I’ve never worried about where I stand with him [Trump], and I’ve never worried about whether we’re going to win this race. I just have to play the role that I can. And if that means RFK gets more headlines in a given week, good for him.”
Trump himself has repeatedly posted about the Kennedy endorsement on his social media pages, and he and his supporters have used the endorsement of both Kennedy and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii as proof of a generational “realignment” of American politics.
Like Kennedy, Gabbard — who has been helping Trump with debate prep — is seen as out-of-step with mainstream Democratic politics, but the Trump campaign has said that her and Kennedy’s support is proof he is able to attract Democrats upset by the state of their own party.
Both were named to Trump’s transition team this week, but only Kennedy received the rock star-like welcome to Team Trump after his endorsement.
Kennedy has long said his top policy priorities are stopping government censorship — especially on social media platforms — ending foreign wars and focusing on boosting the nation’s health, especially among children. Part of his welcome message to the Trump campaign was “Make America Healthy Again.”
Vance told reporters Tuesday that those are perfect focuses for Kennedy on the campaign trail or for the Trump transition team.
“I think RFK talks about a lot of stuff that, frankly, the media does not talk about, like why do we have one of the highest obesity rates in the world?” Vance said. “Why do we have such bad health problems with our kids, skyrocketing rates of mental abuse, skyrocketing rates of addiction?”
Spokespeople for Vance and the Trump campaign would speculate on any role Kennedy would have in a potential Trump administration, but a Trump official said the former president is aligned with Kennedy on most of his top-tier policy priorities. The two do disagree on some issues, most prominently abortion, but have said their new alliance is about larger existential threats to the country.
Longtime Republican operative and Trump supporter Roger Stone says that Kennedy’s addition to the campaign can help offset perceived Trump weaknesses, mainly the fact that during his time in the White House his administration created a Covid-19 vaccination program now wildly unpopular with Republican base voters and something Kennedy vocally opposes.
Another area where Stone thought Kennedy could help is balancing the fact that Trump appointed people to key posts — like FBI Director Christopher Wray and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster — who are now deeply unpopular with Trump supporters. They are seen as part of a prior era of GOP politics that supported U.S. involvement in foreign wars over domestic interests.
“I think he has several different values,” Stone said of Kennedy. “If you think one of the complaints of some about the Trump presidency is the handling of the [Covid vaccine rollout] and pandemic and the appointment of neo-cons, Kennedy is clearly critical of the vaccine and those people.”
“I think he is able to reassure voters,” Stone added.
On Kennedy’s well-known vaccine skepticism, Vance told NBC News that his three children have received “the standard vaccines,” but he likes Kennedy’s “general skepticism” to the public health bureaucracy.
“That doesn’t mean that I agree with him on every issue, but I do think that we should be a little bit more willing to challenge public health authorities in the wake of Covid,” Vance said.
Trump’s embrace of Kennedy prompted the sort of backlash to be expected from the Democratic National Committee, which worked to keep Kennedy off the ballot in several states and outlined its opposition to him in a memo last Friday, but also from Kennedy’s own family, who has long opposed his political viewpoints.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” his sister Kerry Kennedy and four other family members said in a statement on X.
The DNC memo referred to “disqualifying acts” — a nod to a series of bizarre stories that have come out in recent weeks about Kennedy, such as him being behind a well-known incident in which a dead bear cub was dumped in Central Park, and another in which Kennedy used a chainsaw to cut the head off a dead whale.
A potential complication moving forward is the fact that while Kennedy has said he is dropping his bid for president, he will likely be on the ballot in up to two-dozen states. Kennedy said he would remove his name from the ballot in 10 states considered toss-ups, but has not yet specified those states.
Judges in Nevada and Pennsylvania, key swing states, have approved removing Kennedy’s name from the ballot. Conversely, judges in the key “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota have ruled that Kennedy’s name will appear on the ballot in those states.
A memo from Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio released shortly after Kennedy’s endorsement showed that his exit from the race helped Trump in seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, as well as Wisconsin and Michigan.
“The net vote gained in a state like Arizona based on just 2020 turnout model would be over 41,000 votes, nearly 4 times Biden’s winning margin,” Fabrizio wrote. “In Georgia the net gain would be over 19,000 votes nearly twice Biden’s margin.”
“This is good news for President Trump and his campaign — plain and simple,” he added.
