Double Trouble: Bobby Targets Trump, Too

By David Talbot, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon

The mainstream press was all aflutter this week about how the Democratic Party establishment is suddenly waking to the electoral threat of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates. The Democratic National Committee just hired spin artist Liz Smith, a former top advisor in Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s failed 2020 presidential campaign, to go after Kennedy and other independent challengers. Smith promptly denounced Kennedy as “a useful stalking horse who could throw the election Trump’s way.”

But the truth is Bobby’s campaign is drawing both Democratic and Republican voters. As Kennedy has pointed out, those voters who identify as independent now comprise the largest political group in the country, and they’re gravitating towards his bold campaign.

In the video clip of a speech his campaign released this week on X, Kennedy forcefully targeted Trump, making clear he sees this as a three-way race, not just a contest with Biden. Kennedy attacked Trump’s empty promise to “drain the Washington swamp.”

All candidates vow to clean up the systematic corruption in the nation’s capital, Kennedy observed, but once they get elected, they allow federal agencies to keep festering. “They’re all corrupt, they’re all captured,” Kennedy declared to loud applause.

President Trump actually made the swamp worse, said Kennedy: “There were more lobbyists in government than any time in American history, running the agencies that are supposed to regulate their industries.” For instance, Kennedy pointed out, Trump brought in pharmaceutical executive Scott Gottlieb to head the Food and Drug Administration. According to Kennedy, as FDA commissioner, Gottlieb paid $88 billion to Pfizer for its COVID vaccine, then joined the drug company’s board of directors “to collect his payoff.”

Trump “had his chance,” Kennedy concluded in the video clip. “President Biden had his chance.” Each man could’ve cleaned up the corruption in Washington. Instead, both Trump and Biden got rolled by their bureaucracy.

But I believe Kennedy when he says he will take on these corporate-dominated agencies. He knows how they work, he knows their shadow-players and their victims. He has fought these agencies in the courtroom – and as an author and activist – for many years.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump crowed about his wealth and power – about how we would game the system in Washington. Instead, he got played by the system.

Kennedy knows: Trumpism is phony, corporate populism. It’s part of the problem. “We need a big change in this country,” he said in the video clip.

Trump and Kennedy have politically danced around each other for years. In January 2017, during Trump’s transition to the presidency, he met with RFK Jr., who said he offered him a role in his new administration as a vaccine safety advisor. But after a media hoopla about the reported decision, Trump denied making the appointment.

As Kennedy has pointed out on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump initially opposed the COVID lockdowns, then ordered them. The pandemic disaster, from which the country is still recovering, is part of Trump’s legacy.

During the current presidential race, Trump has said some nice things about Kennedy. “He’s a very good man,” Trump praised Kennedy last year. “And his heart is in the right place. And he’s doing really well.”

But more recently, Trump curtly denied Kennedy’s report that the former president’s team reached out to him about the vice president position. “False story,” Trump told Fox News. “It never happened.”

For his part, Kennedy emphasized he would not accept a formal Trump offer to join his ticket. “I would not take that job,” he told NewsNation recently. “I’m flattered that President Trump offered it to me, but it’s not something I’m interested in.”

Kennedy has publicly supported Trump’s effort to be on all 50 ballots this year, condemning the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision in December to exclude Trump as a “banana republic” move to deny citizens the right to vote. “If they can do this to a former U.S. President,” he messaged on X, “EVERYONE is vulnerable to punishment for crimes with which they have never been convicted.”

On Thursday, a bipartisan spectrum of US Supreme Court justices seemed to agree with Kennedy, suggesting they will overwhelmingly rule in Trump’s favor on the Colorado case.

Nonetheless, hearing Kennedy’s footsteps, the Trump camp has started escalating its attacks on him. Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, has denounced RFK Jr. as “a radical liberal.”

Kennedy told NBC News this week that he is serious about going all the way to the White House, not just being a “spoiler,” as the mainstream media often dismisses him. To do that, he must beat Trump as well as Biden. He must continue to enlighten voters about Trump’s policies – how again and again as president he favored the wealthy elites and screwed the rest of us, despite his populist rhetoric.

As RFK Jr. said this week, “The big questions that are confronting our country” revolve around “the systematic destruction of the working poor, the American middle class.” Under both Trump and Biden, “it’s gotten worse and worse and worse.”

That’s why Kennedy is running – against both men.

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David Talbot is the author of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy
Years and The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, books which have shaped the American narrative about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.