RFK Jr is now political roadkill – what does it mean for Harris and Trump?
Hello, good day,
First, an apology. We missed some big election news in July, when the town of Omena, in northern Michigan, elected a horse called Lucky to be mayor. Lucky becomes the first horse to hold the position – the largely ceremonial role was previously held by Rosie, who is a dog. We wish the 16-year-old stallion all the best for his time in office.
One mammal who will not be becoming an elected leader, however, is Robert F Kennedy Jr. The bear-cub-vanquishing, non-dog-eating, brain-worm-surviving presidential candidate dropped out of the race, sort of, last week and endorsed Donald Trump. Kennedy was seen as a threat by both the Trump and Harris campaigns, and we’ll take a look at what his election exit could mean for both after some headlines.
Here’s what you need to know
1.More legal trouble for Trump
The justice department filed a new indictment on Tuesday against Donald Trump, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump had already been charged in the case, but the new indictment aims to work around a supreme court decision in July which ruled that former presidents have complete immunity for official acts. Trump is charged with four federal crimes, including conspiracy to defraud the US, but the case is unlikely to go to trial before November.
2. To mute or not to mute?
The Trump and Harris campaigns are engaged in back and forth over the scheduled 10 September debate, with negotiations seeming to hinge on one issue: whether candidates’ microphones will be turned off when it is not their turn to speak. “Muted microphones” were used in the Trump-Biden debate in July, but the Harris team would like to keep the mics switched on the whole time – presumably with the hope that the notoriously undisciplined Trump will embarrass himself on live TV. Trump has said he wants open mics, too, but his team would rather they be turned off. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own,” a Harris spokesman told NBC. The saga continues.
3. More than 200 Republican staffers endorse Harris
A group of 238 people who worked for former president George HW Bush, former president George W Bush, former Arizona senator John McCain and Utah senator Mitt Romney have come out in support of Kamala Harris, warning that a Trump second term “will hurt real, everyday people”. In an open letter published this week the Republican staffers wrote: “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice-President Harris and Governor Walz … That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”
The bear-conquerer is gone … what does it mean for Harris and Trump?
Well, there goes that dream. We all knew Robert F Kennedy Jr would not be the next president of the United States, and it only took 18 months for him to figure it out too. The scion of the storied Kennedy Democratic family, who was running as an independent, brought an end to his campaign last week, and endorsed Donald Trump.
While Kennedy’s campaign ultimately descended into a laughingstock – one highlight was when he was forced to reveal he had staged the death of a bear cub, another when he had to deny that he had eaten a dog – he was less of a joke to Democratic and Republican strategists.
The election is likely to be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, so if Kennedy had managed to persuade just a few people to vote for him over Harris or Trump, it could have tipped the scales of the election.
In endorsing Trump, Kennedy claimed the former president had invited him to form a “unity government” – although Kennedy also admitted that Trump had given him no commitments about any actual government position. On Tuesday Trump appointed Kennedy to his transition team, giving him some influence in the policies a Trump administration would pursue, but does any of this mean that those Kennedy voters, whoever they are, will flock to Trump? And is Trump now a shoo-in for the White House?
The answer seems to be: probably not.
The polling boffins at 538 reckon the Kennedy exit and Trump endorsement will have “minimal impact on the race”. Ruth Igielnik, a poll expert at the New York Times, says it is “unlikely to change the nature of the race”.
According to 538’s analysis of polling, if Kennedy hadn’t been in the race, his supporters would have been equally likely to vote for Trump or Harris, while polling shows that Kennedy’s supporters were less likely than Harris or Trump supporters to say they will definitely vote in November. So even if all Kennedy’s voters follow him to the Trump camp, they might not show up at the polls.
That’s not to say it couldn’t have an impact.
Biden won Wisconsin by just 20,682 votes in 2020. If Kennedy managed to win over 10,342 of those Democratic voters, and those people now vote for Trump, then assuming everyone else who voted in Wisconsin in 2020 a) votes in November, and b) votes the same way, then Trump would win the key swing state.
But the truth is that Kennedy’s star had been on the wane for a while. Kennedy was polling at 10% nationally before Joe Biden dropped out: that has since dropped to 5%. Kennedy was also running out of money: at the end of July his campaign, which ended up being managed by his daughter-in-law, had $3.9m cash on hand, but was $3.5m in debt.
In the end, Kennedy couldn’t even drop out properly. He’s withdrawing from the ballot in 10 states, including some of the states expected to be particularly close in November, but will remain on the ballot in 30 states. Oh, and some of the states he plans to drop out of have already started printing their voting papers, so Kennedy’s name could appear on the ballot anyway.
While Kennedy says he endorsed Trump because they share some of the same priorities – ending the war in Ukraine, taking on big pharma, and sorting out the climate (lol!) – it’s telling that Kennedy also asked the Harris campaign for a job before deciding to back Trump.
For now, Trump has received Kennedy warmly. On Tuesday it emerged that Trump had appointed Kennedy to his transition team, and while the addition of a man who looks like a melted GI Joe figurine and who says a worm ate part of his brain is unlikely to quell the accusations that Republicans are “weird”, it at least gives Kennedy something to do.
Who had the worst week
Spare a thought for Steve Bannon, the rightwing media guru who helped mastermind Trump’s 2016 election win but is now, apparently, being “tortured” in prison.
That’s what Rudy Giuliani – the occasional lawyer, regular Trump supporter and near-constant raiser of eyebrows – claimed in a recent interview.
According to Giuliani, Bannon is being tortured by not being able to watch television while in prison, where he is serving a four-month sentence for defying multiple subpoenas.
