LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, August 28th.
I’m glad to have you with us on today’s edition of The world and everything in itGood morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.
NICK EICHER, HOST: I’m Nick Eicher. Now it’s time for us to speak in Washington on Wednesday.
On Friday, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
His decision comes at a time when Kamala Harris has taken a slight lead in six of the seven key states, according to recent data from the Cook Political Report. Those states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
MAST: Could Kennedy’s support help? World Bureau reporter in Washington, Leo Briceño, tells the story
LEO BRICENO: At the end of his campaign, Kennedy had a support percentage of around seven percent nationally, a sharp drop from the twenty percent he had in various polls in November 2023. But that’s still millions of potential votes. And in a very close election, they could be decisive in November.
JASON AMATUCCI: There will be a lot of people in the campaign who will follow him and follow his example…
Jason Amatucci is a former Kennedy campaign manager in Virginia. He spoke to me by phone right after receiving the news about Kennedy.
AMATUCCI: This new formula of unity, as they are calling it, I think is a very powerful coalition that will combat many of the forces that are working against the United States at this moment.
Amatucci declined to say definitively how he will vote this fall, but said he will follow Kennedy’s lead.
AMATUCCI: And I support Kennedy and his mission and his issues and wherever that takes me, I will go.
The question for Kennedy supporters who are interested in the Republican nomination is whether Trump will take the same positions as Kennedy on key issues. Triumph The question is whether there are enough Kennedy voters to improve his chances in key states.
According to a June poll by Mainstreet Research, Kennedy had a sizable showing in the battleground states. In Pennsylvania, for example, in June, Kennedy had a percentage of about 8 percent. In Wisconsin, she had 13 percent. And in Michigan, Kennedy had a percentage of about 11 percent. Meanwhile, recent polls show Harris and Trump either tied or within two points of each other in all three states.
In his closing campaign speech on Friday, Kennedy explained why he believed his voters should support Trump in the future. He pointed to areas of common ground between himself and the former president that had become apparent in private conversations between the two.
JOHN F. KENNEDY JR.: Last summer it seemed that neither candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the war in Ukraine, confront the chronic disease epidemic, protect free speech, our constitutional liberties, eliminate corporate influence from our government or challenge the neoconservatives on their agenda of endless military adventurism. But now one of the two candidates has embraced these issues as his own, to the point that he has asked me to join his administration.
Kennedy did not say what kind of role he hopes to take in a possible second Trump administration, but supporters like Amatucci hope that possibility, whatever it looks like, means his campaign was not in vain.
AMATUCCI: If he is really going to be in government, making decisions and making things happen, I think that is a very important thing. I think that is a very important thing, I don’t really understand the mentality of “oh, this is ending” and “everything is going to go down the drain and nothing is going to happen next.”
Fighting chronic diseases was not part of Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020, but he has always taken a more critical view of the US role in conflicts abroad, especially during his presidency. And he has put a lot of emphasis on combating the administrative state.
Here is Trump in his first address before a joint session of Congress.
DONALD TRUMP: We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.
On the same day Kennedy dropped out, Trump began incorporating some of the language that the third-party candidate had made a fixture of his campaign.
TRUMP: Millions and millions of Americans who want clean air, clean water and a healthy nation are concerned about toxins in our environment and pesticides in our food. That’s why today I’m repeating my commitment to establish a world-class panel of experts to work with Bobby to investigate what’s causing the decades-long rise in chronic health problems and childhood diseases.
But some longtime Kennedy supporters aren’t so sure. Esther Maynard worked on Kennedy’s campaign in Virginia as a volunteer and is skeptical of Trump’s campaign promises.
ESTHER MAYNARD: I’m not sure there’s much Trump can say that would convince me to trust him. I don’t think I’m going to trust him until, if he becomes president, he’s able to carry out his actions.
He noted that in 2017, Trump pledged to work with Kennedy on a panel on vaccine safety, but that did not happen.
That said, he thinks he’ll probably end up voting for him anyway.
MAYNARD: I don’t think people will get excited about this, because there’s a reason we supported Kennedy and not Donald Trump, but if we thought before that Bobby Kennedy had a very good read on the situation, very good judgment and would be a very good president, then I think we should listen to him when he says this is the smart strategic decision on how we can best preserve the republic.
Even if Kennedy doesn’t play a role in a second Trump administration, Maynard believes the issues Kennedy highlighted will still play a role in American politics, especially chronic disease and the onset of allergies, developmental delay in children and more.
MAYNARD: He’s kind of the canary in the coal mine, but he notices the gas before the rest of us do, but if we ignore it, we’re going to notice it sooner or later. And if you can put the pieces together and say, “Look around you, we’re not okay, and here’s the reasons why we’re not okay, and here’s how you fix it,” I think that definitely has the power to stay in the national conversation.
And there is historical precedent for third-party candidates influencing the national debate. Daron Shaw is chair of state politics at the University of Texas at Austin. He says the issues that gain prominence in politics often arise from outside voices.
DARON SHAW: Historically, the political science literature tells us that those movements are pretty important, if only because, at least if they have any kind of momentum or force, they force political parties to take into account the issues and grievances that a third party is raising. That’s been true all the way back to socialism and social democrats and Franklin Roosevelt, who basically co-opted a lot of the socialist party’s agenda when he was putting together his New Deal. That’s true of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, when Democrats and Republicans basically co-opted a lot of his budget ideas.
So what was the main motivation of Kennedy’s supporters? His policies or his status as a third option?
In July, the Pew Research Center found that as many as half Many of Kennedy’s supporters said they were open to voting for him because he provided a alternative To both major parties. Only 9 percent of respondents said they followed him for his political reasons. That means the voting bloc that will follow Kennedy to join Trump is likely to be smaller than many believe.
In his speech, Kennedy presented his support for Trump as the best way to continue his work. He compared it to a coalition formed in 1861 that supported Abraham Lincoln’s campaign and helped him win the election.
KENNEDY: At those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a united party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately, and vehemently if necessary, on issues where we differ, while working together on the existential issues on which we agree.
Kennedy joined Trump on the campaign trail in Arizona last week and has been tapped to join Trump’s transition team.
Reporting for MUNDO, I am Leo Briceno.
