The NPR Politics Podcast - RFK Jr. Endorses Donald Trump, Suspends Campaign

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose conspiracy-minded presidential campaign failed to gain traction with the American public, suspended his campaign Friday and endorse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. That could be a boon for Democrats who have centered their message on what they see as Trump's fringe beliefs.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And it's 3.36 Eastern Time on Friday, August 23rd.

And we have some breaking news from the campaign trail. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suspending his campaign. He said he's seeking to remove his name from ballots in battleground states. Here he is in a speech this afternoon in Arizona. I've made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. Stephen, I want to start with you. You've been following RFK Jr.'s candidacy. His speech was really a diatribe against many things, including conventional politics, the media, the Democratic Party. And, you know, interestingly, he says he's not fully leaving the race. So where exactly do things stand? He says, if you live in a blue state, you can vote for me. If

you live in a red state, you can vote for me. But I'm going to try to take my name off of the ballot in, he said, about 10 states where his presence and people voting for him could be enough to throw that state from one candidate to the other. In this case, he does not want to harm Donald Trump. And he is telling his supporters to vote for Trump in those states. Okay. And he had failed to find significant momentum in this race. Aside from not harming Trump, what else did he say about his decision to exit the race to the extent that he has? Well, he blamed the media, he blamed the Democratic Party, he blamed basically everybody but himself for how he has chosen to exit the race, sort of. When RFK first joined as an independent candidate, there was a lot of displeasure with the prospect of a rematch between President Biden

and former President Trump. There were people on the left unhappy with Biden that were supporting RFK. There were people on the right unhappy with Trump that were supporting RFK. There were people on the right, unhappy with Trump, that were supporting RFK. But over the course of his campaign, he really only sought to reach out to people that either weren't very big on voting to begin with because they didn't feel like they had a voice with two parties, or people that had this conspiratorial view about America, about the government, about vaccines. And so instead of the reach across the aisle, grab everybody, independent tour de force, he really just had a very, very small base that he appealed to. And over time, that's what we saw in the polls. So Domenico, the big question is, what difference does this make, if any? As best as we can tell, you've been looking at polls, it looked like RFK Jr. was attracting

voters away from both major party candidates about the same, maybe a little bit more from Trump than from Harris. Do we have any clear indication of where these voters will go next and how much his endorsement of Trump might matter? Yeah, you know, clearly it looks like it would help Donald Trump very slightly. When I looked at the polls based on DDHQ and the Hill's polling averages in each of the seven battleground states, it was about a point or two on average that Trump wound up picking up with RFK out of the race. The only place where that wasn't the case was in North Carolina. That could be because younger voters matter so much in North Carolina. And so many of them were a big part of RFK Jr.'s base of people he was attracting that maybe with him out of the race, they go back to Harris. But it also could just be a polling asterisk, and we're not sure. It's a very small number, but still could be significant within this race.

Clearly seems to be would help Trump a little bit, which is why obviously Trump is scratching around sort of looking for almost anything to be able to help him gain a few points because he's lost a few points clearly to Kamala Harris, who now has, you know, about a three point lead on average in national polls, including ours. And, you know, when Joe Biden was in the race, he was losing far more non-white voters and younger voters to RFK Jr. when third party choices were introduced, as compared to Harris, who seemed to hold on to more of those younger

voters and black voters in particular. So he says he's backing Trump. Now, this is a candidate he once called unhinged, and Trump has criticized him, calling RFK Jr. fake. How is he explaining this decision? One reason is politics. I mean, RFK thinks that he is more aligned with Trump and Trump's policies. Trump has also indicated that he could have a cabinet position for RFK to deal with things like health care that are shared interests and projects. But he said in his press conference, there are three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place.

And these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party, run as an independent, and now throw my support to President Trump. He says it's free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the, quote, war on our children. So even though Kennedy was a Democrat for most of his life, and even though he has some views that are still aligned with Democrats, his top issues align with Donald Trump, and he's hoping his voters share the same view. Okay, it's time for a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment. And we're back. Stephen, is there any reaction so far from the Harris campaign to

RFK Jr.'s announcement? You know, Sarah, it is still early, but they were kind of preparing for this. The Democratic Party did send out a memorandum on the RFK Jr. failed spoiler campaign, as they call it. They reiterated some key things of RFK's support dropping, of the favorability ratings against him being negative. And in their view, they call him a quote, MAGA-recruited, MAGA-funded chaos agent. And it's important to remember, too, that even if RFK wants to stay on the ballot in some of these other states, there are still a number of legal challenges that Democrats have filed seeking to remove him from the ballot. He's making their jobs easier. As of right this minute, he removed himself from the Arizona ballot.

And actually in Pennsylvania, we found out he was officially dropping out and endorsing Trump because of a court filing there. So the Democrats see this in many ways as a net positive because not only do they have one less candidate to run against, but because of some of RFK's extreme views and now him tying himself to Trump, they have an even easier target to convince voters why they say Trump shouldn't be the next president. It's certainly the argument that Democrats in 2016 were hurt by having third-party candidates in the race who wound up getting more support as compared to 2021, third-party support dropped dramatically. And Trump basically got the same share of the electorate, but Democrats wound up going up pretty considerably. RFK Jr. has always been sort of a little bit of a wild card in this because he did appear to pull about evenly from both candidates for a while because of the disaffection with both candidates. And it's kind of remarkable here having Kennedy back somebody like Donald Trump, somebody who had previously criticized and called unhinged and also really going against the Democratic Party and his own family. I mean, so many people in the Kennedy family speaking out against what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing here. Members of his family put out a statement, in fact, today

saying, we want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise, and national pride. We believe in Harris and Walls. Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It's a sad ending to a sad story. So quite the break within the family there. Stephen, you were just talking about states where RFK Jr. is or isn't on the ballot and sort of the different instructions he's given his followers. I mean, how many states are we talking about? About how many states did he actually manage to get his name on the ballot? Well, before he started withdrawing, he had about 20 or so states

where he was already confirmed on the ballot, including the very, very difficult to get on Texas ballot. There's 48 total states where they say they submitted enough signatures. They were in various stages of processing, various stages of legal challenges. There's a couple interesting side notes that will come from this that we'll have to keep track of. In many states, he latched onto minor party ballots. He either created his own party, the We the People Party, or accepted the ballot line from other small parties in other states. And they run the risk of having to deal with the punishment of this because a lot of these smaller parties can only keep being on the ballot if they have somebody actually run

and get votes. So it's not just RFK withdrawing from the race that will have this sort of ripple effect. The other thing that is worth looking at is that a lot of the voters that I've talked to that support RFK throughout this year are people that didn't see themselves having a place in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And that's not going to change just because he's not running. So another thing that could be likely to see is some people that would have voted for RFK just not deciding to show up. One last question. We've been talking, of course, about the fact that RFK Jr.'s campaign didn't get a lot of traction, actually lost support as it went forward. But just to put a

marker down for history, you know, Domenico, what was his theory of the case here? Why was he in the race? Well, he was really appealing to people who are unhappy with both Trump and Biden or both parties, frankly. You know, there's been really this rising online culture of people distrustful of government and expertise and meshed in conspiracy theories, seeing corruption around every corner, despite pieces of evidence to the contrary for all of that. It really is sort of speaks to the larger state of affairs in America, where you have this decline in trust of a lot of the institutions that exist in this country, and the sources of information that people are getting, including

the media and the government. And that's a really difficult thing to put back together that he was certainly personifying. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.