Dem
51
GOP
49
As is the case with approximately 100% of stories involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this one's kind of weird. Consistent with his desire to do anything possible to secure reelection (see above), Donald Trump called the independent candidate to talk about a possible deal. In short, the former president proposed that Kennedy should drop out of the race and endorse Trump, and in exchange there would be a place for Kennedy in a Trump v2.0 administration.
That's not the weird part, though. Where things got weird was that, during the call, Trump went on an extended diatribe about babies and vaccines:
When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it's meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby. And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I've seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn't have an impact, right? But you and I talked about that a long time ago.
Maybe Trump was trying to curry favor with the notoriously anti-vaxx Kennedy. Or maybe Trump was just freestyling. Though if Joe Biden had said such things at a press conference, it would have been front-page news across the country, regardless of the reason he said them.
And the story gets weirder still, because the reason that Trump's words went public is that RFK Jr.'s videographer recorded the phone call, and then Bobby Kennedy III posted the video to the Internet. Kennedy III says he did so to expose Trump as a hypocrite. Kennedy Jr. says he had no idea his son was going to do that, and apologized to Trump. That said, Kennedy Jr. certainly set things up nicely to be able to pull this particular stunt (including having someone take video of a phone call), so maybe take his explanation with a grain of salt.
We actually doubt that Kennedy would be able to transfer many of his voters to Trump; the reason they are supporting Junior is that he's not Trump and he's not Biden and he's not "establishment." In any case, now that the Kennedy campaign has embarrassed Trump publicly, one has to assume that any possible alliance is off. (Z)