Rolling Stone recently uncovered a juicy data point for understanding Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s odd political coalition: A super PAC called “Heal the Divide” intended to support his candidacy was created by a MAGA-aligned political consultancy based in Georgia. In fact, the magazine says it found that, until recently, the terms of service for the super PAC referred to the Heal the Divide site as “MAGApac.com,” which suggests that those words were carelessly copied and pasted from the website for that Trump-aligned political action committee.
Rolling Stone reports that RTA Strategies, the political consultancy that created the “Heal the Divide” super PAC, has worked for MAGA superstar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Trump ally Herschel Walker, who last year lost his race for Senate in Georgia. The operators behind RTA have also recently signed up to work for Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., as he navigates a seemingly unending series of political and legal crises.
The right’s embrace of Kennedy is not a secret plot. Right-wing activists and media outlets are openly buzzing about Kennedy.
A political consultancy that usually works with right-wing politicians supporting Kennedy may be the clearest sign yet that it’s chiefly the right and not the left that views him as a weapon against President Joe Biden. There are many on the right who believe that Kennedy (who has occasionally reached support as high as 20% among Democratic voters) could make Biden look like a weak incumbent ahead of the 2024 general election. This has anti-Trump Republican activists worried: “RFK and his candidacy are nothing but a Trojan horse to weaken Biden’s candidacy,” the Lincoln Project tweeted over the weekend when sharing the Rolling Stone report.
But the Trojan horse metaphor gets it wrong. The right’s embrace of Kennedy is not a secret plot. Right-wing activists and media outlets are openly buzzing about Kennedy. And that’s because they don’t just think of him as a candidate who might confuse unsuspecting Democrats; they also like him. And can’t stop saying so. That, in turn, makes Kennedy less likely to be a covert chaos agent and more likely to code as someone who doesn’t belong in the Democratic primaries.
Kennedy is a regular on the right-wing and right-friendly independent media and activist scene. He's appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast and Joe Rogan’s podcast. Right-wing venture capitalist David Sacks held a fundraiser for Kennedy last week, and Kennedy will be speaking at the annual summit for the right-wing activist group Moms for Liberty this week. Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who leans libertarian, has enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy. Elon Musk has given him special attention through a Twitter Spaces interview.
Kennedy isn’t the passive or unwitting recipient of attention from these folks. He’s participating — and discussing ideas they support. Large swaths of the right find much to like about Kennedy’s views on opposing vaccines, opposing Covid safety measures, opposing U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, criticizing the CIA (which, without evidence, he claims assassinated President John F. Kennedy, who was his uncle, and assassinated his father, Robert F. Kennedy, a former attorney general and 1968 presidential candidate).
Infowars host Alex Jones, whose entire media personality revolves around outlandish conspiracy theories, said in April: “I don’t agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on some topics, but he’s a man of integrity that fights fluoride and poison shots and fentanyl and everything else. He’s a good man.” He added: “He’s got a lot of guts, and I really support him for the Democratic nomination.”
Kennedy has not repudiated support from the right. He has said, "I’ll talk to anybody," and is voluntarily showing up on these platforms. (He told The Atlantic he believes 2024 “will be decided by podcasts.”) At the same time, he appeared upset over the Rolling Stone reporting on the super PAC, tweeting after the article published: "Expect Rolling Stone to lead the corporate media’s frantic crusade to vilify me to stop my White House bid."
Does the right want to hurt Biden’s chances of winning?
Yes.
Are they going about backing Kennedy purely through covert dark money operations?
No. This is an open alliance.
If Kennedy were a third-party candidate, then things could get messy. He could plausibly draw defectors from the Democratic and Republican parties. But Kennedy insists consistently that he’s a Democrat, suggesting that his candidacy would end if he lost the Democratic primary. And his chances of winning there are not good when his most vocal constituency is made up of people who don’t even vote in those primaries.
More substantively, the precise things that make him exciting to people on the right are likely to alienate the Democratic base. Democratic voters are unlikely to trust someone who believes Anthony Fauci is a fascist and promises to gut the Food and Drug Administration. It’s highly likely that Kennedy’s dynastic name is helping him overperform in early polling; if voters learn more about his views — and the right’s zealous embrace of him for that reason — those numbers are likely to plateau or drop.
Bannon and his ilk might view Kennedy as a weapon. But it’s precisely because they actually like him that that weapon is likely to misfire.