Will Robert F. Kennedy endorse Trump?

The independent campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Nicole Shanahan for President and Vice-President is getting nowhere fast. Yesterday saw the most electrifying development in that campaign thus far. Nicole Shanahan sat for an interview with Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of Impact Theory – and suggested that she and Kennedy might abandon their campaign and endorse Donald J. Trump. Later that day, reporters caught up with Trump and asked him whether he would consider giving Kennedy a job in his administration as repayment for such an endorsement – and he said yes. An obvious question arises: where might Robert F. Kennedy fit in a second Trump administration?

Latest on the Kennedy and Shanahan campaign

Practically no influencer seriously believes Robert F. Kennedy has a chance to become President. The Democratic Party, of course, locked him out of their primary process. Now they have knocked him off the ballot in New York State, on a claim that seems spurious. (The son of an assassinated New York Senator claimed residency in New York. His actual residency, according to the challenge, is in Los Angeles, California.)

Democrats have also knocked him off the ballot in Pennsylvania. Kennedy is trying to challenge that in court, but suffered a crippling setback. A judge, having originally scheduled a hearing on the matter in Philadelphia, changed the venue to Harrisburg. Kennedy managed to change flights from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, only to see the airline cancel the flight. So the judge barred him from testifying on his own behalf, citing his late arrival. (Sources: The Gateway Pundit, and CBS.) Kennedy made a statement outside the courthouse, denouncing the Democratic Party for the challenge. In addition his lawyer denounced the court for not considering either the change of venue or the airline cancellation.

Harrisburg is a “spoke city” with no fewer than four airlines serving it – the Big Three (American, Delta, United) and the regional carrier Allegiant. Kennedy’s lawyer mentioned a flight from Massachusetts to Harrisburg; the most likely departure airport was Boston’s Logan Airport. Flight status searches disclose no cancellations of service from Boston to Harrisburg yesterday. Whether airlines scrub canceled flights from their searchable records is not clear.

Shanahan gives an interview

In any event, Nicole Shanahan, not Kennedy, gave the interview to Tom Bilyeu.

The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Mail, and Axiosshared excerpts. The interview ran for nearly an hour. During that time, Ms. Shanahan laid out the major positions of the independent campaign, including without limit:

• Reduction in military spending, to save money and to curtail seemingly endless foreign military adventures, and
• A full audit of contracts between government agencies and private-sector “partners,” a phenomenon she called “corporate capture,” and:
• Either a return to the gold standard or the establishment of Bitcoin as an alternative currency.

She then directly accused the Democratic Party of sabotage against her and Kennedy’s campaign.

They have banned us, shadow-banned us, kept off stages, used lawfare against us, sued us in every possible state, they even planted insiders into our campaign.

Democrats did that last, she said, to provoke the campaign into making embarrassing information lapses or even legal missteps. In that part of the interview, she expressed regret for having helped the Democrats in the past. This included supporting the campaigns of Senators Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (both D-Ga.) in the 2021 Georgia Runoff.

In fact her political opinions, and her evaluations of the two parties, have changed radically in this decade. She made abundantly clear to her interviewer that she does not want to see Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) become President and Vice-President. “We are not spoilers,” she said; “we only wanted a fair shot at winning.”

The Big Scoop

In this context, for the first time, Shanahan revealed that she and Kennedy face a choice. They seem to have no real hope of winning, but they had hoped to garner 5 percent of the vote in each State in which they ran. After that threshold, they can call themselves a political party and appear on the ballot almost automatically. This would also give them access to public matching funds (that is, if they agree to limit their spending).

But in her interview, Shanahan revealed another choice the candidates might make: to drop their bid, and endorse Donald Trump.

Almost two weeks ago, The Washington Post shared polling data suggesting that Kennedy might take more votes from Trump than from Harris. Whether that’s reliable or not, Nicole Shanahan clearly believes it and does not want to risk it. (The Post also reported that Kennedy had tried to talk to the Harris campaign about a Cabinet appointment. Shanahan denied that report flatly and suggested the Post was lying.)

Kennedy himself was not silent, either. Before the foul-up with the Harrisburg hearing, he shared this:

As always, I am willing 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. These are: reversing the chronic disease epidemic, ending the war machine, cleaning corporate influence out of government and toxic pollution out of the environment, protecting freedom of speech, and ending politicization of enforcement agencies.

Several X users took that to signify openness to endorsing Trump. Most (not all) of those users encouraged him to do just that.

Reporters following the Trump campaign in Howell, Michigan, asked Trump about the Shanahan interview and what it might mean. Influencer Benny Johnson shared a 28-second segment from CNN:

Jim Hoft shared a full transcript:

Reporter: Can I ask you about RFK? Just moments ago, his running mate said that they were considering endorsing you. Have you considered him for a role in the administration? And what role would that be?

Trump: Well, we haven’t, but I would love that endorsement because I’ve always liked him.

Reporter: Would you also consider putting him in the administration?

Trump: You’re asking me a very unusual question. I haven’t been asked that question yet. I like him a lot. I respect him a lot. I probably would if something like that would happen.

Kennedy in a Trump administration?

Three days after an assassin tried to kill Trump, The Daily Mail reported that Trump and Kennedy did talk. In that conversation, Trump did try to persuade Kennedy to quit the race, endorse him, and accept a position in his administration. Kennedy’s son, Robert III, posted the conversation to an unnamed platform. Someone subsequently deleted it, but not before the Mail got a transcript. Trump expressed skepticism about the childhood vaccine schedule, and said something was “very wrong” with so many doses. Reform of the immunization schedule would, Trump said, be part of a job Kennedy could do in his second administration.

That conversation obviously happened before Biden dropped out of the race, and Harris took over as the (now confirmed) nominee. If this story is true, then it is the first documented untruth Trump has told. More to the point, if those two have conversed, neither man has said a word about it.

But lately, Kennedy has criticized Harris far more often than he has Trump. After the Shanahan interview, he criticized the Harris campaign even more severely. Thus far he still talks as though he’s running an active campaign. But most of his targets are Trump’s targets.

Updates!

Late last night, Alex (InfoWars) Jones dropped a thirteen-minute segment. In it he said his sources tell him that Kennedy has definitely decided to leave the race and endorse Trump. An announcement could come in two days. Jim Hoft provided this partial transcript:

I started reaching out to some of my contacts, and I was able to confirm about an hour ago that RFK Jr. is going to be endorsing President Trump this Friday in Los Angeles.

I was given other details, but I’m not going to give those out about how they’re going to do it at this point. This is from inside the RFK Jr. campaign from a very, very trusted source.

I also had sources very close to his campaign, high up, that had told me that he had been gunning for the head of the EPA or the head of the NIH or even the attorney general slot that his father, Robert F. Kennedy, senior had.

Today Kennedy all but confirmed that plan: he announced an address to the nation.

That post doesn’t say where he’ll be when he does address the nation. But Jim Hoft (TGP) had information that he would be in Phoenix, Arizona. Lo and behold, President Trump will hold a rally in Arizona that day. His rally starts at 4:00 p.m. (presumably Arizona time, UTC – 7 hours year-round) in the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale.

Coincidence?

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action. Ian Fleming

Where would he fit in?

CNAV has said before that Kennedy’s positions do not make him a fully attractive candidate for President. His interview with Elon Musk revealed many positions CNAV would never share. In other interviews he has shown himself to favor abortion on demand – on the theory that the government has no right to “interfere in a woman’s healthcare decisions.” The presence of another living body within any pregnant woman continues to escape his philosophical notice. He has also stood opposed to most mineral resource extraction, considering that too “messy” for the environment.

But Kennedy could indeed serve the country well in more than one capacity. As Director of the National Institutes of Health he could reform many concepts of healthcare the medical profession calls basic. These demonstrably include the very notion of vaccines – and their side effects, which demonstrably include induction of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Even as Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, he could investigate the origins of coronavirus. And as Attorney General, he could reform the FBI and every other part of the Censorship Industrial Complex. Prosecutions might be in order – and perhaps, as CNAV has said, abolition of the FBI.

Nicole Shanahan – who probably should have been at the top of their ticket – wants to run for Governor of California. But Trump could do worse than to appoint Kennedy to at least one of the positions he reportedly seeks. Not merely to secure his endorsement – but to serve the country.