“The only way for him, for Bobby, to shake it up and to get rid of Biden is if he’s on the ballot in every state, including New York,” says Rita Palmer, identified as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s New York director, on a recording that is going viral this afternoon. “The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter,” she says, “our mutual enemy is Biden.”
Judd Legum, who reports on politics in the influential newsletter Popular Info, saw the video (below) and responded with earlier reporting on how RFK’s donors — especially those in the upper financial echelons — are commonly those who have supported Trump and MAGA causes, and rarely Democrats.
In the video, the speaker says: “Right now we have a majority of Republicans in Congress. So who are they going to pick? If it’s a Republican Congress, they’ll pick Trump. So we’re rid of Biden either way.”
BREAKING NEWS: in a found video, @RobertKennedyJr's New York State Director revealed that the campaign's goal is to give Trump a win.
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) April 8, 2024
"If [Biden] doesn't get 270 [electoral votes] then Congress picks the president … They'll pick Trump." pic.twitter.com/ahyxKMIZNC
Donald Trump has treated RFK’s candidacy as a welcome one, but not because Kennedy’s views on vaccines and other issues like Ukraine support align with MAGA views on those issues — though they do.
Trump welcomed RFK because the former President calculated that the candidate with the famous Democrat pedigree, who he calls a “radical leftist,” would “mean [Kennedy] is going to be taking votes from Crooked Joe Biden, which would be a great service to America.” (The video appears to confirm Trump’s opinion — at least of the RFK campaign’s ultimate target.)
Trump wrote on Truth Social that Kennedy “is Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine.”
(NOTE: Republican political strategist Sarah Longwell has the opposite take, saying “If I were Donald Trump, I would be very concerned that when voters become more educated on who RFK is, that he will pull much more from the MAGA anti-vax right…He will take more from Trump than Joe Biden.”)
