Because Donald Trump always—of course—places the national interest before his own narrow political needs, he is now prepared to name Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a second-term transition team, a Trump adviser tells The New York Times. This comes right after Kennedy endorsed Trump, having ended his own crashing-and-burning third-party presidential bid last week—which is surely pure coincidence and could not possibly have figured into Trump’s decision-making.
The temptation among some Democrats will be strong to treat this as low comedy, by highlighting Kennedy’s “weirdness” as part of the broader party strategy of mocking Trump at every opportunity. But Democrats should also cast this move—the idea that Trump would even suggest putting the anti-vax, conspiracy-theory-spouting, whale-head-chainsawing Kennedy anywhere near such an influential role—as a serious danger to the nation and another sign of Trump’s towering unfitness for the presidency.
Kennedy himself has confirmed his bargain with Trump. “We’re working on policy issues together,” Kennedy said recently, adding that he has been asked “to help pick the people who will be running the government, and I am looking forward to that.”
This might give Kennedy a big hand in recommending people for positions in the federal bureaucracy that are instrumental in maintaining public health. It’s worth appreciating that these positions comprise a wide-ranging set of roles, from promoting research into human wellness and development, to protecting the environment, to guaranteeing the safety of food, drugs, medical devices and procedures, and much more.
Kennedy has a well-documented history of promoting dangerous quackery and deranged conspiracy theories about vaccines, pharmaceuticals, guns, and other issues related to public health and well-being. So Kennedy’s influence on a second Trump administration could result in the appointment of people in key positions who are just as devoted to misleading Americans about highly consequential health and medical matters as he is, potentially corrupting government information.
We already saw the concrete effects of anti-vax mania in real time: Thousands of people who died of Covid-19 might have survived if they’d gotten vaccinated. A Kennedy-influenced administration—or Kennedy in an important government position himself—could facilitate the spread of anti-vax sentiment beyond Covid, not to mention untold other anti-science quackery.
“If RFK Jr. were to gain any position of power, there’s no question that he’d try to staff the Trump administration with anti-vax activists,” Jonathan Howard, a neurologist at New York University who closely tracks the anti-vax movement, told me. Howard said this would cause the spread of more “misinformation about all vaccines,” potentially meaning “decreased vaccination rates” and more “suffering and death.”
For Democrats, educating voters about this particular Trump menace is the correct public-spirited thing to do. But there’s also a political opening here. Democrats say they will tie Kennedy’s fringe positions to Trump, and if so, there’s an opportunity to communicate to key voter groups the danger a Trump-Kennedy alliance poses.
To see why, consider that when Kennedy was a third-party candidate and President Biden was still running, many Democrats feared he might appeal to voters who pay little attention to politics—young people, low propensity voters, people disaffected with our institutions—and who also disliked Biden and Trump. The entry of Vice President Kamala Harris into the race has caused a decline in those so-called “double haters,” with many moving to Harris.
But there are still untold numbers of them out there. With Kennedy not running, his endorsement of Trump could soften their impressions of the former president. What’s at issue here are not voters who were fully committed to Kennedy’s third-party run—they are probably not gettable for Democrats—but still-undecided voters who might as yet prove susceptible to Kennedy’s appeal. They might find the Kennedy name—and his vague associations with environmentalism, hostility to corporate power, and even the health of children, all of which he talks a good game about—reassuring about Trump. If Bobby Kennedy backs Trump, why, how extreme and crazy can he really be?
Other Kennedy family members are working to undo that effect by forcefully arguing that Robert Kennedy doesn’t represent the legacy of his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., or his uncle John F. Kennedy. But there’s more to be done. Importantly, those lower-information voters are not necessarily anti-vax or red-pilled by conspiracy theories, so a message highlighting the threat of a Kennedy-influenced Trump administration could reduce Kennedy’s ability to cast Trump as a less extreme, destructive figure.
“We have to make clear that Kennedy himself has a lot of extraordinarily dangerous ideas,” Matt Bennett, an executive vice president at the Democratic group Third Way, told me. Kennedy’s renown might help Democrats here, Bennett noted: “One challenge is making voters care that the people around Trump are completely crazy. Adding Kennedy to the team is the perfect distillation of this.”
This could also help sway swing voters who aren’t all that ideologically alienated by Trump but recoil at anti-vaxism. “The American people, especially suburban parents, viscerally understand the danger of anti-vax lunacy,” says Democratic strategist Jesse Lee, who has been warning of the threat a Kennedy appointment poses.
All of this points to a deeper perversity. As Kurt Andersen notes, Trump and Kennedy share a bond in that “both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth” who have been buoyed by inheritances all their lives despite being people of extraordinarily debased character. Both pose as traitor-to-their-class elite figures who have turned on the establishment.
But a consummated Trump-Kennedy bargain—Kennedy endorsing Trump, followed by Trump appointing Kennedy to his transition team or administration—would actually constitute the epitome of corrupt elite self-dealing.
Trump, you may recall, solicited $1 billion in campaign contributions from Big Oil executives while offering to carry out their bidding in office. Trump has also promised roomfuls of wealthy corporate donors that he’ll keep their taxes low. Kennedy—the self-styled heroic environmentalist and scourge of corporate power—can be counted on not to raise a fuss about Trump’s corrupt bargains with these financial elites on causes that Kennedy professes to care deeply about, all in exchange for reaping the rewards in boosted influence himself.
And so, the Trump-Kennedy bargain is another indication that Trump would basically strip down the government and sell it off for parts to whomever is willing to humor his passing whims and political needs. That Trump would blithely hand over to this man some measure of control over the staffing of the government illustrates just how dangerous a second Trump term would be to the country—as well as the sheer, unchecked corruption it would unleash. It all demonstrates just how profoundly unfit for the office Trump truly is, and Democrats can say so, clearly and forcefully.
