Democrats are apparently so worried about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of former President Donald Trump last week that the party’s “War Room” has sent out a massive list of talking points against him — one week later.
Last Friday, after the Democratic National Convention ended in Chicago, Illinois, Kennedy announced that he would be suspending his campaign in battleground states and endorsing Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris. He cited the fact that Harris had not been voted on by anyone, but merely selected by the party bosses, and kept away from the voters and the media. He also noted that the Democrats’ had done everything possible to exclude him from the ballot.
According to a poll released Friday by Rasmussen Reports, 34% of likely voters believe Kennedy’s endorsement makes it more likely that Trump will win, versus 16% who think it is less likely, and 43% who say it will make little difference.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) sent a long list of talking points against Kennedy on Friday, under the title “Whales, Worms, and Bears: Trump Spends the Week Owning RFK Jr.’s Baggage.” Here is the whole email, in full, with original emphasis.
Whales, Worms, and Bears: Trump Spends the Week Owning RFK Jr.’s Baggage
“Trump’s Embrace of RFK Jr. Glues the GOP to Kennedy’s Years of Babbling Nonsense.” … “[Trump] and His Campaign Really Do Deserve to Inherit All the Baggage that Comes with [RFK Jr.]”… “A Political Risk In Addition To The Brand Risk Of Just Being Weird”… “The People Around Trump Are Completely Crazy. Adding Kennedy to the Team is the Perfect Distillation of This” … “ [Kennedy] Has the Ability to Really Turn Off A Lot of the Voters”
Key Excerpts
MSNBC: Trump embraces RFK Jr. and all of his baggage—including the whale juice
Chris Hayes: “Kennedy is his own special kind of problematic. And so if Trump is going to tie himself to a guy like that, he and his campaign really do deserve to inherit all the baggage that comes with him. […] He wanted the world to see him telling Roseanne Barr about how he was going to stage a hit and run bike versus bear accent in Central Park. Bear story has got nothing on the whale story. […] That’s, well, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to Kennedy and dead animals. […] Far, far more seriously, Robert Kennedy has promoted consistently false, dangerous, and deranged conspiracy theories. He is probably one of the most prominent anti—vaccine activists in the world. It was he— almost chief among everyone who helped spread deadly lies about vaccination that ultimately cost the lives— and this is not hyperbole— literally hundreds of hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans during covid. Hundreds of thousands of people died who didn’t need to because they had been told lies about vaccines.”
Boston Globe: Column: Bobby Kennedy Jr., we got to know ye all too well: Camelot’s clown prince leaves the race in a revealing manner.
“Kennedy’s real agenda isn’t about advancing a set of issues. It’s about securing unmerited prominence. He wants to be noticed, to be considered important, to be remarked upon — and he is willing to squander his last reputational remnant in that pursuit. Like a fairgoer taking a ride in a hot-air balloon, RFK Jr. hoped to use his family name to ascend to an elevation he couldn’t achieve on his own…But he is also an oddity, oddity, oddity, oddity, oddity, oddity, ODD-i-ty. Voters came to realize that during a 16-month campaign…The news so far is that Camelot’s clown prince will be an honorary cochair of Trump’s transition team. That would be a perfect fit: an empty role for an empty suit.”
The New Republic: Trump’s Ugly, Shameless New Offer to RFK Jr. Hands Dems a Big Weapon
“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. […] Kennedy’s renown might help Democrats here,’ [Matt Bennett, an executive vice president at the Democratic group Third Way] 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.’ […] 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.”
CNN: CNN News Central with Boris Sanchez
Mallory McMorrow: “I think he pulls more support from Donald Trump […] I said then that RFK Jr. is just Donald Trump with a Kennedy name slapped on him. […] And you look at where we are months later, and he’s falling in line. He’s endorsed Donald Trump. He is promoting dangerous conspiracy theories. The more that we learn about him as it relates to dropping a dead bear off in Central Park, or apparently cutting a whale head off, it’s just— you talk about character. It’s not quality character. And I think that we see who he is, and I’m not worried about him pulling support from the Vice President.
MSNBC: Alex Wagner Tonight with Ayman Mohyeldin
Tim Miller: “I think that a lot of the soft RFK support people that were the so-called ‘double haters,’ Kamala has kind of gobbled them up over the last month, and that explains a lot of her poll movement, really. And so the remaining RFK voters were pretty Trumpy and conspiratorial and anti establishment. […] What I don’t understand is going to the next step of saying that RFK is going to play a key role in the next administration. RFK told Tucker, I guess, that he’s one of the leaders on the transition team for Trump if he wins, which is pretty scary, that I think has the ability to really turn off a lot of the voters you were talking about earlier— these kind of suburban, ex-urban, former Republican swing voters in the Atlanta suburbs that he needs. And I just if you’re one of those voters, you’re more traditional, old school Republican, and you’re looking at this group, and it’s Vance— who doesn’t care about Ukraine at all— and it’s weird RFK with the brain worm and the vaccine conspiracies, and it’s Tulsi who’s like, Putin’s number one fan in Congress. What are they? They’re not offering anything to that voter. And so I do think that that’s a political risk in addition to kind of the brand risk of just being weird, yes.”
Salon: Donald Trump’s embrace of RFK Jr. exposes the campaign’s QAnon strategy
“Trump has a stench of desperation to him, as Harris rises in the polls. Still, it’s not initially clear what an alliance with Kennedy does for Trump. Although he and Vance keep insisting they’re ‘normal’ and ‘not weird,’ here they are, lavishing attention on a man who claimed to have a brain worm and by his own account once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park. The choice is yet another indicator of how much the Trump campaign’s strategy depends on appealing to fringe constituencies in hopes that they turn out just enough creeps and conspiracy theorists to eke out a win in the swing states.”
USA Today: Column: Donald Trump, JD Vance and RFK Jr.? ‘Weird’ doesn’t do justice to this loony trifecta.
“Trump’s embrace of RFK Jr. glues the GOP to Kennedy’s years of babbling nonsense. The Trump campaign can hem and haw and say the two sides don’t agree on everything, but good luck threading that needle. […] Hope you like measles and polio, America, because that’s what the Trump/(Vance)/Kennedy ticket has cookin’!”
Politico Playbook: 3 Trump transition issues that aren’t Project 2025
“This time, the problematic personnel situation involves Trump’s anointing of RFK and Gabbard with gold-plated titles on the transition team. […] And one Trump insider told Playbook that the honorary co-chairs are just that — figureheads who won’t be doing much. […] ‘Is RFK going to have a role in staffing at the EPA?’ [Tim] Chapman continued. ‘Health and Human Services? Is he going to maybe lead one of those agencies? The CIA? … I would not be comfortable with either of them leading any agency.’”
USA Today: Column: RFK Jr., Bobby Kennedy was everything you aren’t. You’ve betrayed your father’s legacy.
“That’s the question every scholar of the Kennedys is asking who recalls how much you adored your namesake father – and how much your father’s life centered around three totems: the Democratic Party, the Kennedy family and God. You have abandoned them all. […] Now you’re embracing that very right-wing stuff, to the point where nearly all your siblings felt the need Friday to denounce your staining of what the Kennedy name stands for […] Are you really so desperate for attention – or a job – that you are doing this? Is it resenting the spotlight that has shined on your sisters, brothers and cousins, and reasoning that this radical turnaround is the way to make your own headlines? Or is it simply seeking some way to measure up to the fame you inherited by virtue of your name? Whatever the motivation, the result, as your siblings say, is sad.”
MSNBC: Opinion: RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have joined Trump’s campaign. It could backfire.
“Kennedy and Gabbard don’t represent significant Democratic constituencies, however. They’re fringe, idiosyncratic political players who’ve long had supporters on the right. Trump’s tent didn’t necessarily get bigger; in fact, this is a potential narrowing of his coalition, as there’s a chance that, by bringing Gabbard and Kennedy under his wing, Trump alienates more voters than he wins over. […] But it’s hard to predict how persuasive Kennedy will be in persuading his supporters to cast their ballots for Trump. It is plausible that a significant proportion of his remaining die-hard followers were disinclined to ever vote for either of the two major parties. It’s also plausible that much of his support was never going to materialize at the ballot box since his campaign hinged on the idea of mistrust of American institutions. Instead of winning more independents, there’s even a chance Trump takes a ding among such voters for Kennedy’s most extreme views and for lending credence to the Democrats’ seemingly effective attack that the GOP is hobbled by weirdness and creepiness.”
New York Times: Opinion: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert Kennedy and Trump’s ‘Game of Thrones’
“Donald Trump has surrounded himself with ideological shape-shifters […] On Tuesday, The Times reported that Trump plans to name Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr., who both recently endorsed him, as honorary co-chairs of his presidential transition team. […] Now, Kennedy blows a lot of smoke, but the idea that Trump would make America healthy again is too much to take. […] But they don’t care about the obvious contradictions. They’re playing the game.”
MSNBC: José Díaz-Balart Reports
Zerlina Maxwell: “I don’t think necessarily they’re going to help Donald Trump very much. I think that Donald Trump support is baked in, and the Vice President and Tim Walz, their job right now is to try to capture people who believe in democracy […] So I don’t think an anti-vaxx extremists like Robert Kennedy is going to draw out Republicans who weren’t already supporting Donald Trump. […] Folks like Robert Kennedy both, like Tulsi Gabbard, they’re a big distraction from the principal fact that what we are fighting for in this election is democracy. […] So Robert F Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard, they can endorse whoever they want. I don’t think it’s going to have a big electoral impact.”
The Daily Beast: Trump and RFK Jr.: a Political Marriage Made in Heaven—or Hell?
“‘Kennedy voters hate Trump,’ [Democratic pollster Celinda Lake] told the Daily Beast. Kamala Harris has already picked up half of his support. Endorsing Trump is ‘a fundamental violation of RFK Jr’s brand’ […] ‘They are both prolific liars who appeal to kooks,’ says [Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.] ‘… Low-information voters would say, ‘I’m for him,’ but the numbers are so small, they’re almost negligible.’ […] ‘Not many Democrats will be fooled into voting for him,’ says Elaine Kamarck with the Brookings Institution’s governing program. […] It’s hard to see what’s in it for Trump to have a Kennedy by his side other than the psychic victory of having won over one of the power names of his generation. There’s little that could go right and a lot that can go wrong when two self-centered narcissists are vying for attention on a crowded campaign trail.”
The Dispatch: Why RFK Jr.’s Trump Endorsement Makes Democrats Happy
“‘If you want to have that endorsement, I’m perfectly happy for you to,’ said Karen Finney, a Democratic operative, on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, tweeted dismissively about his cousin’s decision to drop out of the race, saying ‘the easiest decision of all time just got easier.’”
MSNBC: The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
Lawrence O’Donnell: “Robert Kennedy Jr., the Jeffrey Dahmer of the animal kingdom has horrified his family almost as much as Jeffrey Dahmer horrified his family by endorsing the most horrifying Republican presidential nominee in history, the only president who was more of a criminal in the White House than Richard Nixon, who Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s father tried to keep out of the presidency by running against him, until Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, which instantly and it seemed permanently, created a beatific glow around the name Robert Kennedy. A name which his son has now fully disgraced. Robert Kennedy Jr.’s younger sister, Kerry Kennedy, said, quote, ‘I’m outraged and disgusted by my brother’s gaudy and obscene embrace of Donald Trump and his flagrant and inexplicable effort to desecrate and trample and set fire to my father’s memory.’ […] I read an article by Kurt Anderson published in The Atlantic this weekend, in which Kurt Anderson describes buying cocaine from his college classmate Bobby Kennedy when they were both freshmen at Harvard College in 1972. Because Donald Trump favors the death penalty for drug dealers, the death penalty for doing what Bobby Kennedy did […] Given that you sold cocaine in your youth, how do you feel about Trump’s advocacy of a regime that might have resulted in your own execution at age 19?”
The Guardian: RFK Jr is now political roadkill – what does it mean for Harris and Trump?
“…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 […] The truth is that Kennedy’s star had been on the wane for a while. […] [His endorsement] is unlikely to quell the accusations that Republicans are “weird”, it at least gives Kennedy something to do.”
MSNBC: Morning Joe
Larry Sabato: “He has been dropping like a rock ever since Kamala Harris got in. […] People who think that, because he’s endorsing Trump, he can just move that 2% into Trump’s column. They don’t know much about politics. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work that way. […] I can think of, you know, several 100 things that would have more impact than RFK Jr dropping out of the campaign and endorsing Trump. […] But frankly, it’s embarrassing.”
Jonathan Lemire: Kennedy’s endorsement was sharply criticized by his own siblings, by other members of his family. It is inconceivable that it lines up to the politics of his father and uncle. Reverend Al Sharpton, those of us who have been in New York for a long time remember he was— for a while— was a pretty like legitimate fear in the environmental movement, and how someone who actually really cared about climate change could have thrown his lot in with Donald Trump is just unfathomable. But what do we think here? This is, as Professor Sabato just said, a campaign that was already cratering, even before the revelation that he dumped a dead bear in Central Park. Do we think this is going to matter at all?
Rev. Al Sharpton: I do not. I think that [this endorsement] will not matter. […] We had him at National Action Network and worked with him, but then he just got more and more bizarre. And then when the anti- vaccine thing happened, it really caused a separation with some people, particularly among black churches, where some of the anti-vaccine people were getting on us that were giving vaccines to people in our communities. And then he just went on and on and on, from the worm and the brain to the bear in Central Park.”
Pod Save America: Why are so many of the skeletons in RFK Jr.’s closet animal skeletons?
Jon Favreau: “By far the biggest news about RFK right now, involves yet another dead animal. In a newly unearthed interview with Town and Country in 2012 his daughter Kick Kennedy, she said that when she was a kid, her dad cut off the head of a dead whale with a chainsaw and tied it to the top of their minivan to bring it home. Key quote– if you needed a quote– ‘Every time we accelerated on the highway whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.’ […] I would like you to rank the whale head, the dead bear cub and the brain worm in order of which creeps you out the most.
USA Today: Environmental group calls for RFK Jr. to be investigated over dead whale story
“An environmental advocacy group is calling for former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be investigated after a 2012 interview resurfaced in which his daughter said he used a chainsaw to cut off a dead whale’s head. […] The Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund sent a letter Monday to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that it is illegal to possess “any part of an animal, dead or alive” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, according to the letter obtained by USA Today. […] “Given Mr. Kennedy’s reckless disregard for the two most important marine conservation laws in the United States, we ask that NOAA consider all appropriate civil and criminal penalties as well,” they said.
The Kennedy endorsement was followed earlier this week by an endorsement for Trump this week by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), who backs Trump’s foreign policy of nonintervention and “peace through strength.”