Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/30/24 DEBATE: Did RFK Jr BETRAY His Voters w/Trump Endorsement? | CounterPoints Friday

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Ryan and Emily are joined by journalist Michael Tracey and RFK Field Director Jeff Hutt to debate RFK Jr endorsing Trump. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed he was going to be running this groundbreaking, once in a lifetime, oncelifetime, once-in-a-generation, independent campaign to challenge both parties. So for RFK Jr. now to just abandon all the critiques that he was

serially making of Trump, now he's just become a cog in the very duopoly that he claimed that he was running to dislodge. You can't say this was an easy decision that Mr. Kennedy made, and you can't say it was just an opportunist. Mr. Kennedy went against some of his key advisor in this campaign over this issue. He has a real chance to get into a Trump administration and bring a lot of these policies and all these principles that his volunteers and supporters want. The reality of it is, is if you don't have a seat at the table at the end, you might as well stay home. Welcome to CounterPoints. We have a great conversation lined up for today.

We are joined by journalist Michael Tracy and Jeff Hutt, who was a national field director for the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign. First, welcome to both of you. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you. Thank you, too. It's a real pleasure. I actually have a logistics question to start out with. So, Jeff, you're working for the RFK Jr. campaign. Is that campaign, so he's off the ballot in the swing states, or he's trying to get off the ballot in the swing states, but now Democrats would love it if he would just stay on, despite trying to kick him off like a year earlier. But he's still campaigning and telling people, or he's still telling people to vote for him in the non-swing state. So are you still on the campaign? Is there still a campaign happening? What's going

on? Okay, so to be clear, I was the former national field director. I left in July of this year, late June, after the Libertarian Convention. So the campaign has shut down. There is still a volunteer effort going on in the background, but in terms of sort of a paid political effort to knock doors and get out, no, there is not. They've shut that down. Why did you leave after the Libertarian Convention? And what happened at the Libertarian Convention? Well, we had, it was a real missed opportunity on behalf of everybody. We had been talking to the Libertarians for several months leading up to that. Actually, some members of our staff had actually been, you know, trying to make inroads into the Libertarian Party. My pitch to the Libertarian Party had always been that Robert F. Kennedy is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.

We should knock down the door with him and all come through. So there was a lot of interest at the Libertarian Convention. Unfortunately, at that time, we had individuals in our campaign who were not that excited about being on the Libertarian ticket. I think some of those things have changed. After the Libertarian convention, and we didn't get on their ballot, I realized at that time that we were not going to be on the debate stage. And I left the campaign to pursue some personal things. But I also knew that it was going to be easier for me to try to use my influence outside of the campaign.

And since that time, yes, go ahead, I'm sorry. Oh, no, finish your answer. No, and since that time, I've been early on, I've been a proponent of Mr. Kennedy working with President Trump. And since leaving the campaign, I've been talking to people behind the scenes and trying to make this happen. Great. Well, let's start right there, actually, with you, Michael, because what Jeff just mentioned was the once-in-a-generation possibility that genuinely some people really did see in Bobby

Kennedy Jr. But you have since called RFK Jr.'s kind of flip-flop on Donald Trump is probably the best way to put it, given previous tweets. I think we have one of those we can put up on the screen, tweets and statements. Under no circumstance would I ever join up on the Trump campaign. That's a tweet from May 10th, 2023. He said, just to quell any speculation, under no circumstances will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to government, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart. Now he has joined the Trump campaign to promote Donald Trump, to campaign

on behalf of Donald Trump. And Tracy, you've since referred to this as a, quote, farce. So walk us through your position on why this turn in sentiments from Bobby Kennedy Jr. is a farce. Well, I can also quote the founder of the Alliance Party in South Carolina, which actually just did remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from its ballot, despite Robert F. Kennedy Jr. having previously accepted the presidential nomination for that minor party in South Carolina. Now, as we know, seemingly on false pretenses, which is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed he was going to be running this groundbreaking, once in a lifetime, once in a generation, independent campaign to challenge both parties.

He would go around bragging that both Donald Trump and previously Joe Biden, when he was a nominee or the presumptive nominee, were both afraid of him and both regarded him as a spoiler. I mean, the polling was always a little bit mixed. There were some indications that perhaps he did more disadvantage the Democrat and other polling suggested he perhaps more disadvantaged the Republican. It wasn't entirely straightforward. But the entire core premise of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign starting last October, when he at least ostensibly declared his quote-unquote independence, and that he was going to have this earth-shattering independent campaign that was going to make the biggest impact on the

electorate since Ross Perot in 1992, and some polling did indicate that he was garnering more voter support than any third party candidate since Ross Perot in 1992. The intent, he claimed, was to challenge the two party system. And the founder of the Alliance Party in South Carolina, Jim Rex, told me yesterday that it wouldn't be too strong to say that many of the supporters of that party in South Carolina feel like they've been swindled because RFK Jr. now, in retrospect, has proven that he was not intending to move forward and fulfill that pledge. And when you accept the nomination for president of one of these small parties, you're effectively forging a contract with them of sorts. And he's abrogated those various contracts. Because remember, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had this

multifold strategy for how he was going to get on the ballot in 50 states plus the District of Columbia, which is in some cases, he was going to already pre-existing minor parties in the various states and petitioning them to nominate him for president so then he could be afford F. Kennedy Jr. pulled a fast one on him by claiming that he was going to actually pose a bona fide challenge to the two-party system, which, yes, included the Republican Party and Donald Trump. RFK Jr. loves to bang on about how the DNC undermined him, and I don't necessarily dispute that. There was an extensive effort to fund litigation by the DNC and DNC-aligned groups to challenge his ballot status in the various states. But that's nothing new for a third-party candidacy. Maybe the vigor of it with RFK somewhat increased. But, you know, go talk to Ralph Nader about all the hurdles that he encountered to get on the ballots in, say, 2004 or 2008. So for RFK Jr. now to just abandon all the critiques that he was searingly making of Trump, including accusing Trump of being a stooge of the military industrial complex, in hock to corporate power, arming Ukraine and bragging about it and being unrepentant about that, sinking relations with Russia. I mean, RFK Jr. loves to also claim

that one of the reasons he's now endorsing Donald Trump is because of the Ukraine war. You don't have to go very far to look up what RFK Jr. was saying. This is as of May. RFK Jr. said, quote, President Trump bragged about arming Ukraine more than Obama did.

He also walked away unilaterally from the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty with Russia, destabilizing our relationship. He also exacerbated tensions between Ukraine and Russia that ultimately caused the war. So that's RFK Jr. at least purporting to, in part, blame Donald Trump for causing the war in Ukraine. And what happened? What happened in the interim? Yeah. So, Jeff, Jeff, what did happen as somebody who followed this from the beginning? RFK Jr. starts running as a Democrat in the middle.

He's taking on the duopoly. Extremely critical of Trump. By the end, he's part of the duopoly. So what did happen? Well, you know, I think so. Kennedy came into the campaign with already a broad support base. And a lot of that broad support base had started around the medical freedom movement, the fighting corporate capture. So this movement had already, people had kind of, as soon as he jumped on the campaign trail, people had jumped into back him.

At that time, there were a lot of Republicans, a lot of Libertarians, a lot of Bernie folks, a lot of Green Party folks, and they were all willing to run in the Democratic primary and win the Democratic primary and then go on to the presidential, knowing that they themselves weren't Democrat, but knowing that they were behind a cause that was greater. We couldn't, the campaign, you know, the problems of the primary. So Mr. Kennedy decided that he was going to run an independent run. And he went, he did an independent run. We set up 50 state structure. We tried to get on the ballot in all those 50 states.

And I believe at the end we will. Maybe New York and a couple other states are going to prove a little difficult. But what he still did was, what he still did was just incredible. We got to a time where we started looking at third parties to augment the ballot access, and this was our plan. And all of these conversations that Mr. Tracy is talking about happened early on in the campaign, first of the year. The Alliance Party in South Carolina, which I was part of, happened, I want to say, in May or April. We were really trying to get on the ballot at that time. When that window closed for Mr. Kennedy was definitely when he didn't get on the first

debate stage, when Joe Biden had the disastrous debate, and then when Harris came on as sort of the coup d'etat and replaced him. So the question is, what, Mr. Kennedy has a bunch of supporters who, most dedicated supporters in the world that I've ever seen. I've done campaigns a lot. So in terms of, I understand the philosophical idea about what's said and what's done, but what's Mr. Kennedy supposed to do? He has a group of individuals who are single or at least monolithic in terms of what they want to accomplish. He has himself right now a path to be able to bring those ideas and those agendas that his community wants, and he's able to leverage them into the Donald Trump campaign. Well, Jeff, let me ask you about that,

actually, because it's not as though RFK Jr. has just said what you just said, like, hey, this is for the greater good. I have a pathway now to promote these ideas that are near and dear to my heart. He's gone on to, we can put this element up on the screen. He wrote almost an essay about what Make America Great Again really means. He wrote almost an essay about what Make America Great Again really means. He has been fawning about Donald Trump. He was on Tucker Carlson's show recently. And that is a stark reversal from previous comments that he made about Donald Trump. So it's not just that he's saying this is for the greater good and I'm sort of doing that. Is that defensible? I mean, is it really defensible

going from we have fundamentally incompatible issues to this guy is actually great and a generational hero? Well, when you endorse somebody and you bring somebody on and there's a possibility that you're going to become able to work in somebody's White House, you want to see that person in the White House. And I think what you heard in a lot of the early speech that he said is there's definitely places where they disagree. They don't disagree on anything. And if you want to know those, you're going to have to ask Mr. Kennedy himself. But there's areas of disagreement. But he's all on board because he realizes that the only window, the only pathway for him at this time and to represent the ideas and what his volunteers want is for him to help Mr.

President Trump out and win the White House in terms of I understand philosophically that there's maybe this idea about what you're supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do in politics. But the reality of it is, is if you don't have a seat at the table at the end, you might as well stay home. So, Michael, what about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in other words, has become a Republican functionary by putting out these embarrassing little poetic platitudes about what he claims the true meaning of MAGA is. I mean, it's incredible to me that anybody could read that little essay of his and actually be impressed by it. I mean, I've never seen a more ridiculous collection of cliches, especially when you contrast it with what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was saying as of a couple of weeks ago about Trump, failure, including on the central issue that supposedly galvanized RFK Jr.'s initial supporters around skepticism of vaccines and COVID policy.

RFK Jr. was going around declaring that Trump invented lockdowns and was unrepentant about it. And also that he was the one who was behind the production of the mass vaccine program Operation Warp Speed. That's not my singular issue, but if it's yours, then that's pretty difficult to reconcile. And so Robert F. Kennedy Jr. screwed over third party candidates. Yeah, what do you think about that, Jeff? Third parties that he claimed were going to be running to enhance their viability,

and nobody seems to want to necessarily probe what caused that shift other than, oh, now he has a seat at the table. Well, that's just him saying his own self-advancement and self-empowerment always took premium over what he was purporting to stand for for the past 10 months, which is that he was going to forge this groundbreaking new independent movement. That turned out to be false. So, yeah, Michael, let him appreciate it. No, it's not. You know, the the pathway that Mr. Tracy puts forward is that at this point, like Kennedy just goes away into obscurity and all this effort that was put forth. No, you can't say this was an easy you can't say this was an easy decision that Mr. Kennedy made. And you can't say it was just an

opportunist. I mean, he really went up against his family. He went against family members. I mean, Mr. Kennedy went against some of his key advisors in this campaign over this issue. And I think the best people to decide if this is a right move or not is his volunteers and his supporters. And polling has showed that about 60% of his supporters are going to stick with, if he would have dropped out, would have gone over to Trump. And I'm thinking from what I've seen through the different social media, through the different interactions I have, that there's even going to be more than that. So the people who really care about this decision, Kennedy supporters, they're going to turn out and vote for Trump and they're okay with this.

So once again, I think this philosophical discussion that we're having about what he should or shouldn't do, I mean, I think he's going out on the limb, going against his family a lot of times, going against the party. He's not going to get invited to cocktail parties anymore. None of his friends are either. No Christmas dinners and things like that. And he's really taking this, what is, I think, brave, I know politicians, this is a brave and difficult thing he's doing. It's not that easy to support Trump.

And I think a lot of his support for Trump really has to do with the fact that he believes in his supporters, he has a very close relationship with them, and he wants to see their ideas and what they want pushed forward in a Trump administration. Otherwise, all of this effort that volunteers and folks have put on for a couple of years now just goes in the waistband of history. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To Michael, I mean, there are two ways to look at Donald Trump. On the one hand, he's the guy who said he was going to drain the swamp and then put the CEO of ExxonMobil

at the head of the State Department and brought in Steve Mnuchin and Cohn and all of those guys. On the other hand, there are some areas where he actually does threaten the swamp. But I know that the way you see Donald Trump is basically he's bringing the swamp back to Ryan's point. He's part of the duopoly, essentially. If you look at how Jared Kushner used his time in the White House, there's significant argument for that. No question about it. He does have a lot of billionaires backing him. No question about that either. So why is it that this RFK Jr. argument that Donald Trump actually, you know, longtime history of skepticism of vaccines going back literally years.

Why is it that there isn't a significant chance for Bobby Kennedy Jr. to advance these genuinely anti-establishment causes through the Trump administration? Why is he essentially just rolling over for the duopoly and becoming a part of the system that he decried? Well, I can't get inside his brain, nor would I want to. I might get brain worms. But, I mean, all you have to do is go back and check what RFK Jr. himself said about Trump to verify this critique that you're saying is fairly commonplace about Trump. RFK Jr. pilloried Trump for filling his administration with corporate lobbyists, including appointing as his defense secretary, the chief lobbyist for Raytheon and so on and so forth. That was part of the whole argument that RFK Jr. at least claimed he was making in service of his challenge against the two-party system. Your other guest

hasn't addressed a single one of these inconsistencies or about faces. They're just kind of hoping it gets glossed over and people can extol RFK Jr.'s supposed bravery, because as the head of the Alliance Party in South Carolina explained to me, there is a bit of a divide among the volunteers and supporters, at least as far as he's been able to perceive it. On the one hand, you have people who have like a cultish devotion to RFK Jr., who will follow whatever he does and don't care about any inconsistencies or the fact that he hoodwinked another segment of his supporters for a year or so by claiming he was running this fake independent campaign. And on the other hand,

you have people who actually foolishly believed RFK Jr.'s own rhetoric and thought that this was going to be one of the most formidable independent candidacies since Ross Perot. So they got screwed over. They were obviously mistaken in their belief in the sincerity of his rhetoric because now he's just become a cog in the very duopoly that he claimed that he was running to dislodge. So I don't know what RFK Jr. thinks in his own mind that he can accomplish. I just can look at his own rhetoric and statements. And there's no real way to discern any kind of consistency in those statements other than self-advancement. And if you there's no real way to discern any kind of consistency in those statements other than self advancement. And yes, he does seem tethered to at least some

principles like, you know, food security and removing toxins from food. OK, I mean, I don't disagree with that on principle. I don't think really many people do. But in terms of other flagship issues that he claimed that he was campaigning on, like opposing the military and industrial complex and so forth, in fact, he's now granting some degree of credence or validity to Donald Trump as an avatar for carrying forth those issues on the basis of virtually nothing other than that he met with Trump in, I think it was Minnesota and then Florida, and they had a cheery conversation and they decided that, you know, they liked each other or they could have a nice gab fest. I mean, where's the substantive departure on any of this? It doesn't really make

much sense. But then again, RFK Jr. only has a national stature because people have this cultish devotion to the idea of the Kennedy dynasty and this bogus mythology that he peddles around his deceased uncle and father as though somehow it became a credential for to become president that your father and uncle were killed. whatever energy actually did exist within the electorate to challenge the national security state, the military industrial complex, the so-called deep state, by claiming that Trump is a vehicle for doing this when there's no indication at all that Trump actually wants to do oversight or actually erode the power in any way of the national security state. He just wants it more in hock to himself as far as we anybody can ascertain. So, yeah, it's not it's not that this didn't accomplish anything. I mean, obviously, it did accomplish what turned out to be the ultimate objective on RFK's part, which is to bring disaffected independents or hazily ideological voters into the Republican fold. So if you're Timothy Mellon, who dumped $25 million

into RFK Jr.'s campaign while simultaneously dumping, I think, 50 million or more into the Trump campaign, then your cynical strategic calculus worked out swimmingly because now you were able to use your apparent tactic of using RFK Jr. as a proxy Republican for the past year and a half. All right, Michael, let me. Turned out to be the ultimate objective. I think the other guest is a Republican himself. Michael, let me get Jeff. You were on some Republican council.

So if your ultimate objective is to elect a Republican and elect Donald Trump, I could see why you'd be celebrating this. Let's get. It works out for your partisan advantage. Let me get Jeff to respond either to that or to something else that you raised earlier, which was this contradiction between the single issue for many RFK Jr. voters of medical freedom, contrasting, conflicting with Trump's record of Operation Warp Speed, you know, the production of the vaccine and, you know, being the guy who maybe he was more skeptical than Fauci

about some of the lockdowns, but he was the president during these lockdowns. So how does a Kennedy supporter and how does Kennedy himself square that circle? I think it's pretty easy. You know, if you look at the two parties and you look at across the states, what states went on the major lockdown and what states didn't, I think you'll see a divide between Democrats and Republicans. And now you have a vice president candidate that really played, you know, real strong on the war on COVID in terms of mandates and, you you know, it was actually pro-mandates and pro-shutdown and things like that. So for me, I think it's a pretty simple kind of movement over. Nobody really acted well during Trump, none of our elected leaders. I have local officials who are my good friends, and they didn't act well either.

But the idea is that, you know that Trump seems to have come across, he seems to have understood where he went wrong. And there's this belief that once you put Kennedy into the Trump administration, maybe not in a seat or something like this, that you will have this influence and Kennedy can have influence in the Trump administration. And you've already seen,

I think on the telephone call that Mr. Kennedy's son put out, you always see there's already a sense of natural affection with Donald Trump. I'd like to answer the question. No, I was really happy. I thought there was no sort of talk in the campaign early on about republicans and i think if you will there were some instances where our campaign staff especially our national our upper level campaign staff that the idea of us being republican was just repugnant to them and a lot of the um a lot of the campaign has riled against it and i like to say the idea that Mr. Kennedy is an opportunist, you know, in the twilight of your life, what you decide to do is wreck your relationship with your family, run your social structure, you know, your social settings, put your marriage to making that change are closed on you not of your own doing mostly and then what what choice of a politician are you left for your for your movement or what your folks uh want to want to do what what's your choice your choice is to find the

best path forward to make those reality. And, you know, I mean, this has happened. It's not like the first time this has happened in political history. I mean, you look back at the populist movements of the late 1800s, and this thing sort of happened where you had candidates and you had supporters of one party who trashed another party who ended up coming together in these coalition governments. And as much as it is, this is a coalition government. So I reject the idea that one, Kennedy ever wanted to go as a Republican. I mean, you could see it was just, he was strained when he had to come out and say it. Two, that there were people within his campaign that wanted him.

I mean, I was big on, I personally was big on the Libertarian Party. And I'm trying to get in the middle here. And- Other way. There you go. Yeah, I'll make it. A little more, a little more. Other way, other way. There you go. I appreciate it.

It takes a village. I was, you know, I was big. I mean, there was a lot of people who came into this with a lot of experience. But the fact of the matter is that the doors for Mr. Kennedy closed. He had Mr. Trump offered him opportunity. Mr. Kennedy also talked to the Democrats. And he has a real chance to get into a Trump administration and bring a lot of these policies and a lot of these principles that his volunteers and supporters want. So it's so it's not good yes ma'am well i was gonna say michael respond to that so if if we take this argument that you know this is a broken two-party system all of us probably agree with that if we we take that argument and say there's an opportunity to make one of the

parties slightly better is there a moral argument for doing what RFK Jr. is doing? A moral argument? I'm not sure. I could just evaluate what RFK Jr. has actually done, which is he's squandered what he was previously claiming insistently was the most formidable third party or independent run in decades. Now he's allowed that to all be subsumed into the Republican Party, one of the two party duopoly parties that he claimed that he was running to dislodge. Again, if you're a Republican, like our other guest here, I could see why you'd be happy about this outcome

because perhaps you were always inclined. And he said that he was in favor of some collaboration with Trump and RFK Jr. from the beginning. So, I mean, if the rubber hit the road or you said that you said something to that effect. So you can explain to us then. I mean, would you have voted for RFK Jr. against Trump? Say, if you were living in a swing state, were you that committed to him? I mean, if you're saying the door closed on RFK Jr. Oh, absolutely. I don't work for somebody that I'm not going to vote for.

OK. OK, very good then. Absolutely. The door closed on RFK to sort of rationalize his behavior. I'm not going to vote for it. Okay. Okay. Very good then. So if you say the door was going to close or the door had closed on RFK Jr., how did the door close exactly? You claim it is because he was excluded from the debates. RFK Jr. was previously accusing Trump of colluding against him to exclude him from the debates. He filed an FEC complaint against Trump, Biden, and CNN, saying they all had worked in concert to illegally exclude him from the debates. Now he's sycophantily cozying up to Trump and trying to pretend that never happened.

And many of the cultish supporters are willing to join in his effort to memory hole what happened a month or two ago, because now they're just becoming partisan cheerleader Republicans. And if that's your M.O., go out, you know, have at it. But, you know, if you actually were had the misfortune of believing this guy's own rhetoric, then I guess the fault is your own. And yeah, opportunism, this guy has been an opportunist for decades. He hadn't sought office prior to this run. I think when he first announced his campaign in April of last year, I went and just dug a bit through the archives. I don't think anybody has ever endorsed Hillary Clinton more times in total than RFK Jr., probably including Bill Clinton. He would speak at every Democratic convention. He was a hardcore Russiagator during Trump's first term. He has this messianic worldview that he claims derives from the Kennedy legacy about interventionism abroad. You can go find op-eds that he wrote during Trump's term, denouncing him

for sidling up to autocrats like Putin or Kim Jong-un. And now he's done this total 180 and he hardly even is pressed to explain it because I'm sorry, I know we're on alternative media right now, but much of alternative media has just brown nose RFK Jr. because they're so irrationally enthused by this phony mythology around his dopey, overrated family, where RFK Jr., in his speech announcing he was going to endorse Trump, said, the Democratic Party under my father and uncle was the party of peace and free speech and transparency. Are you kidding me? JFK was a hardcore militarist. He actually ran to the interventionist right of Richard Nixon in 1960. He tried to do regime change in Cuba. He was obsessed, along with his brother, who was his hatchet man as attorney general, with assassination campaigns abroad. So JFK's running for office? I mean, what does this have to do with the conversation? RFK Jr. has tried to, RFK Jr. has incessantly invoked

the legacy of his family to claim that he's carrying forth this anti-establishment, anti-war mantle. And everybody just gobbles it all up because they don't look at him with any degree of scrutiny because they're all so impressed that he happens to be the progeny of this supposedly martyred family dynasty. I mean, it's actually insulting to one's intelligence if you actually know a single thing about what the Kennedys actually did in power. Another irony is that the people who were enamored of Camelot, you know, the Kennedy sort of estate and like this mythology around them. They used to be just standard fair liberals. And RFK Jr.'s tactic, which obviously made some inroads, was to claim actually he's going to marshal this Camelot legacy to challenge the so-called

establishment. The Kennedys embodied the establishment for decades. And, you know, JFK, you know, another thing that really bothered me in particular is that, look, if you've read about the Vietnam War, which I have, maybe others haven't, you know that JFK actually introduced combat troops to Vietnam for the first time. He authorized the CIA to take on a combat role in Vietnam. He expanded the powers of the national security state. He did not diminish them, including the CIA. And yet RFK goes on this whole, and RFK Jr. pedals this nonsense. This is the topic. The topic is the fundamental fallaciousness and incoherence of RFK Jr.'s campaign as evidenced by his misuse and phony invocation of his family legacy, which people use to shower him with praise to this day

and now are following him into the fold of the Republican Party because they just believe his fake presentation. So, if RFK Jr. was gonna drop out and he was going to give a simple endorsement, say like a Pete Buttigieg endorsement of Biden in 2020, I'd kind of understand where some of this was coming. It would be a meaningless endorsement because it would have zero impact on the election.

But Kennedy is bringing to the Trump administration, which is a Republican administration, he's bringing a constituency and he's going to deliver the White House for Trump. And if you look at the numbers across the swing states, his numbers of supporters in the swing states show that clearly that he's going to be able to make Trump more competitive in the swing states. And also the interesting thing about polling says across the nation. I mean, if if you know, if Trump and President Trump and Mr. Kennedy were really serious about going after this, I mean, they should. Mr. Kennedy, I believe, should come off the ballot in Oregon, should come off the ballot in Colorado, should come off the ballot in New Mexico.

And they should full court press this thing. And yes, I do think we talk about is he selling out a message? Is he selling out of people? No, he is. He is going to be the deciding factor in bringing Trump the bringing Trump the election. And I don't know if you've ever worked in politics on sort of a campaign level. I'm not a pundit. I'm more of just a political geek. So my job is just to get my candidate where they need to go. But if you've ever worked on it, there's no more power

that an individual has than if you're the one who delivers the office for the person running for who's running for the you know running for the office in the first place so he mr kennedy and mr kennedy's supporters just by what they do and how they turn out the vote they're going to be a major they're going to be a major partner in this um in this new administration if trump wins and you talk about you can't really trust Trump. I mean, I think in terms of constituencies, if you look at 2016, if you like this or not, but it's the truth.

I mean, the evangelicals really came out and they put a lot of ideas and a lot of sort of things that it was difficult for a lot of evangelicals to endorse Trump and to vote for Trump. But what did Trump end up doing for them? He delivered three Supreme Court justices that ended up sending the abortion issue back to the states, which is a conservative viewpoint. It met what they want.

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Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's say this comes to pass. There's a bunch of RFK Jr. turnout in the swing states, and they do lift Trump over the finish line. He becomes president again. What would the prior, we know what the evangelicals wanted and they got it. What would the similar thing be for RFK? I missed a little part of that, but I'm not too sure. You know, I've heard there's a lot of people in the sort of the Internet world who talk about how they like him to be part of the CIA because he can look at the assassinations and this and that. I don't know what he would like to do, but I can tell you from his volunteers and folks that I've talked to, they would love to see him in something like Health and Human Services, where he can have an impact on things that are important

to us. And I would like to, a lot of the things that his supporters are into are sort of this third wave of politics, regenerative farming, medical freedom, health in our food, things like that. So I cannot speak for Mr. Kennedy himself. And I don't know what hit the conversations that him and President Trump have, but personally, I'd love to see him in a position in health and human services. I mean, from my own perspective, agree. Like, the thing that's most interesting to me about him is his elevation of the problem of toxics in the food supply and in the environment and the regenerative farming is awesome, all that stuff. But isn't it a problem kind of inherent to RFK Jr. that we don't know the answer to that and they're about to start printing ballots? Sort of a gamble.

Shouldn't we know which element of his eclectic politics is going to be the thing that he pushes in a Trump administration if this group of people is going to go out and help push him over the top? When you say we, are you talking about? Everybody, like me, you, all of us. Like we know what the evangelicals wanted. They wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and they wanted, you know, this list, this literal list of justices slapped onto the Supreme Court.

So they would. That's a good point. I don't think we can know for sure. It is a gamble. Go ahead, Tracy. That gets to the core of the incoherence of the RFK campaign. You can't pinpoint what exactly

he would be receiving in exchange for him abandoning every declaration that he had been making for the past 10 months and claiming he was running this unbelievably earth shattering third party campaign by using his overrated family name to galvanize disaffected voters from across the political spectrum. could just speculate you can trust him by saying he had all these fruitful conversations with trump and it turns out they agree on more than they disagree and now rfk jr understands the true meaning of maga and can give us all these weird spiritual poems about the meaning of maga and then you can be contented with that it seems a little bit foolish especially if you were believing what rfk jr was saying uncritically as of like a month ago, which turned out to be a total fabrication. And don't take my word for it. I know our other guest is trying to reflect the sentiments of the

portion of RFK Jr.'s voter base that is pleased by this development. But there's another portion, some of whom I've just been speaking to and reporting on as of the past day, who told me that they believe they have been swindled by RFK Jr., who has violated this kind of a covenant or agreement or a contract with those third parties whose nomination he accepted on the understanding and the commitment that he would be seeking the presidency and running a viable third party campaign to the very end, he's proven that now that that was false. So if you're going to say, oh, maybe RFK Jr. is going to be in the administration. Look, I don't doubt that Trump wants to throw a bone to him and try to siphon off his electoral support to whatever degree is possible. But even before Trump came into office in 2017, he met with RFK Jr. in Trump Tower as president elect.

And RFK Jr. came away and said, look, Donald Trump says he wants to work with me on some sort of vaccine oversight program or some, you know, low level bureaucratic panel. And I'm happy to work with them. That didn't come to pass. if the end result is simply that RFK Jr. might be installed on some FDA panel to analyze, you know, the toxicity of soil. I mean, look, I don't necessarily denigrate that as a valid pursuit, but it's not in keeping with these sweeping themes that RFK Jr. was using to promote himself and cast himself as this unprecedentedly formidable third party or independent candidate who was going to galvanize all these independent and disaffected voters when now he's just encouraging them to become MAGA Republicans. And I mean, if people in his family or in his social cohort are offended by this, I think they're correct to as long as they're not offended to

it because they just hate anything associated with Trump reflexively, but because it shows that RFK Jr. is willing to just throw into the garbage can any of his purported principles if circumstances modestly shift and pretend that he wasn't just denouncing somebody who now he is enthusiastically endorsing. It doesn't even explain this supposed change of mind. I mean, if you just kind of irrationally give yourself over to whatever change of mind that a political figure makes, then it shows that you're incredibly credulous and willing to believe anything, which is why I'm not surprised that some of the more cultish devotees of RFK Jr. are following in this path. But if you think of yourself as more of a critical thinker who's like challenging the establishment, and that's why you were supposedly enamored with RFK Jr. And now he wants you to become a card carrying Republican. I mean, give me a break. I mean,

this is this really should be insulting to anyone's intelligence. But again, it gets to the core theme of RFK Jr.'s campaign from the beginning, which was always insulting, which is that he's going to be the torchbearer for the supposedly anti-establishment Kennedy legacy, which was always a farce. There was no anti-establishment Kennedy legacy. It was just apparently a self-promotional venture on RFK's part so he could get on an FDA panel, ultimately? Really? Well, next debate could be Tracy versus, like, Oliver Stone. I would debate Oliver Stone. I mean, that movie was integral in furnishing

some of this bogus Kennedy mythology that puts him out as this, like, savior figure of America who was martyred and needs to be avenged. And unfortunately, RFK Jr. was able to continue on those ridiculous themes. Well, and on that note, Jeff, let's give you the last word here with also the, I'll toss the last word to you with the question of, is there also a danger? If you're somebody who opposes the duopoly, opposes the broken two-party system, is there a danger to someone who was formerly or who still says

they're a torchbearer for that cause, dragging people into the Republican Party? Is there anything about that that concerns you? And just give us your general sort of wrap-up thoughts as well. Okay, I'm a big proponent of third-party politics, and that's the reason I'm into this campaign, so I personally. So I don't think that he is dragging, I don't think he's dragging people into the Republican Party. I think a group of his supporters are going to vote for Donald Trump because they want to see Mr. Kennedy in a position within the Trump White House to make movements and to push their agenda. So does this mean that four years from now that these say if the Democratic Party doesn't change or the Democratic Party doesn't have a has a different candidate, they're not going to vote in that. I mean, no, these are true. These are true

independents. There is no third party in the United States. They're probably the way that they've demolished the fusion voting laws over the last 10, 20 years. They'll probably never be another third party again until one of these two parties, either the republican or the democratic parties fall um what a better way to crush the duopoly duopoly than bringing out um than having a crushing defeat for a democratic um presidential candidate in this election and causing real change in the democratic party understanding that this pathway that they're on is not a good pathway. And if you're in Mr. Kennedy's spot and you look at the primary, you look at the lawfare that's been waged against them, and you look at some of the other things, I think it makes

sense. So no, I don't think this is in any which way a hurting the independent party. I would imagine that this is a good philosophy that I would encourage other third party candidates to do in the future. If we were having this conversation, say, 2001, we would have been telling, a lot of people would have been telling Ralph Nader he should have dropped out and endorsed the Democrat. And we wouldn't have had Bush. So this idea of endorsing a candidate, especially at this time, and you know, the presidential not as a primary, I think it really gives an independent movement, it gives an independent candidate a lot of political leverage. And I've heard a lot what he said. Philosophically, I understand that maybe some pundits have a

problem with it. Maybe some folks have a problem with it. But I see it on, and I don't think they're old-ish at all. I think the volunteers are some of the most brilliant, well-rounded, achieved volunteer base that I've ever worked with. But, yeah, I mean, I think this is a boss move on Kennedy. And, you know, Mr. Tracy and I just really disagree on what this outcome is. And I do expect Kennedy to be, Kennedy and his support and his supporters to be the key thing that, you know, moves Trump across the finish line and wins the election for Trump. Can I just make a quick final point?

Yeah, quick. I mean, the Republican Party is also regularly engaged in lawfare to stymie independent or third parties like the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party. So that's not unique to the Democratic Party. Yes, they've been more vigorous this cycle in combating RFK Jr., Cornel West, and so forth. But it's in no way unique to the Democratic Party. So to say that the best way to topple the duopoly is to empower one prong of it that's amazing pretzel logic but that's what you get when you're talking to a campaign officer isn't this what happened ridiculous decision um and one other thing i mean you're just like i mean one other thing

one other thing i'm not pissing on history i'm saying that the republican the end of the end of the end of party systems in America has normally happened when one party has had a disastrous election and they change. The end of the Whig party, the end of the Democratic party. We'll see if the Democratic party, I'm sure come 2025, if Trump wins, the Democratic Party on a nationwide basis will dissolve itself. Yeah, that seems really feasible. Anyway, I did want to just note that one of the reasons that RFK Jr. claims that he is aligned with Trump is on the issue of free speech.

And I'm not defending at all the record of the Democratic Party as of late on issues of speech for the First Amendment. And it's been abysmal. But the Republican Party, including Trump, have been fanatical over the past 10 months in trying to curtail and punish and penalize speech that's critical of Israel. And I can see why RFK Jr. excludes that consideration from his calculus, because his fanaticism around Israel is roughly comparable to that of Donald Trump. So I'm sure they bonded

over that in their little soirees down at Mar-a-Lago. So congratulations. Last word. Last word. Ten seconds, Jeff. Kennedy derangement syndrome is real. I want to end on that. I'm not deranged. I'm trying to be rational. I'm just not a fanatical cult devotee of the guy. This is the guy who this is the guy who came out early on in the campaign and said that kennedy was a bad candidate because of the way he talked and people i did note that i mean my issue was not his voice i didn't bring that up he does sound like he's gargling rocks which seems like a potential communicative impediment but i mean that's just you trying to say that i have some, like, psychological malfunction in my analysis.

You just said his supporters have psychological malfunction. So I guess what's good for the goose is the answer. I said there's a portion that have a cult following. That's what the third party care in South Carolina said to me directly. Since our closing here is just off the rails anyway, I actually do think the voice was an actual substantial problem for him in the race. Jeff, do you know what was up with that? Was that diagnosed or what the situation is there? So, you know, he had a, I don't know, there was something that happened medically that happened to him where his voice got really bad. Some time before the election, he went, I believe he went to Japan and he got some shots to try to fix it.

And some people they fix and they didn't. I mean, it corrected it some, but it's still, I admit, it's difficult. You know, I listen to him so much, you get to the point where you can't hear it. And when you're talking to him one in person, it really doesn't come across at all. My issue is not his voice and it was his misappropriation of his phony family legacy. We can go on all day. All right. Well, journalist Michael Tracy and former National Field Organizer for the RFK Jr. campaign. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you, guys. I appreciate

y'all. I love y'all's program. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you, guys. I appreciate y'all. I love y'all's program. All right. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to that really interesting debate. It's worth saying, I think we probably all agree, all four of us would agree that this is a consequential voting block, RFK Jr. voters, given what happened with Jill Stein and just how the math works out in those blue wall states, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. We know he's going to be on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin as of right now, not getting his name off the ballot. So how people decide to vote based on RFK Jr., their previous support for him, actually will matter. I learned stuff from that conversation. That's all I ask for. That's all we ever ask for.

I thought that was actually interesting. Yeah. It was interesting. Those were a couple of different viewpoints argued out. What more can you ask for? Exactly. It's always good when there's real contrast. And that is what we hope to do on CounterPoints, especially on these Friday debate shows. Name kind of gives it away, I guess. Yeah, we're not subtle. So we hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend and we will see you back here on Wednesday with more CounterPoints. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the

rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of

something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.