Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is enjoying his rise after President-elect Trump won a second White House victory on Tuesday, a remarkable development for someone long dismissed as a fringe political figure.
Kennedy and Trump bet heavily on each other, running the risk that independents and other coalitions of voters disillusioned with establishment politics would unite to defeat Vice President Harris. That partnership paid off for both men, as a huge Trump victory ensured Kennedy was poised to play a prominent role in Washington.
According to a source privy to discussions about Kennedy this cycle, the idea is being floated of making him “an adviser who doesn’t require Senate confirmation but has a direct line to the POTUS.”
“He would make personnel recommendations,” the pro-Kennedy source said. “Nothing solid or set in stone yet.”
Still, figures close to both Trump and Kennedy believe it is only a matter of time before the environmental lawyer takes a higher place in Trump’s revamped brain trust. They see President-elect Kennedy, who has shown great loyalty to the MAGA movement in recent months, rewarded with a spot that could have a substantial impact.
Key nominations, appointments and other top positions in the modern Trump administration are increasingly being debated as speculation mounts about where Kennedy might be a plausible addition.
Immediately after the election, the ex-Democrat began to flex some muscles privately. The trusted source told The Hill that Kennedy had some personal preferences early on, including on foreign policy. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida)’s name has been floated as a potential candidate for secretary of state, something Kennedy has expressed opposition to.
“He will go for someone who is less neoconservative,” the source said.
The extent of influence Kennedy could have has yet to be determined, but many of his critics — particularly Democrats who strongly opposed his third-party candidacy — already doubt he will be a major figure in Trump’s sphere of influence.
Democratic strategists, concerned that Kennedy would be a “spoiler” in the election, portrayed him as an implausible conspiracy candidate who had difficulty getting on state ballots and even had difficulty breaking away later in the campaign to remove battlegrounds where he could hurt Trump.
Party aides and officials handed out talking points and conducted phone calls about Kennedy’s potential threat to Harris’ campaign, highlighting his most controversial moments. A picture of Kennedy trying to eat a charred animal carcass and news of him throwing a dead bear into Central Park were just some of the bizarre stories that emerged about the contender.
Democrats also alluded to a line in a profile of Kennedy in which he said his brain was damaged by a worm years ago.
These particular life events, which shaped the narrative of Kennedy as a queer character, added to some already controversial positions on vaccinations that disregarded much of the consensus of the scientific community.
None of this seemed to faze Trump, however. Instead, Kennedy was seen as a mighty asset who was able to appeal to specific groups who shared many of his unorthodox views, which at times ran counter to both neoliberal and neoconservative thinking.
Before he dropped out of the presidential race, Kennedy and Trump’s allies discussed ways that independents, who had reached double-digit support but were struggling to gain broader appeal, could push Trump to the top. They agreed on a plan that would remove Kennedy from key swing states, assuming this would aid the Republican candidate.
Kennedy, for his part, pushed for an unspecified spot within what both sides hoped would be a second Trump administration. As the election entered its final weeks, Kennedy Trump made known his intention to change America’s approach to public health – his primary focus beyond his recent foray into electoral politics.
Publicly and privately, the president-elect appeared open to the idea, even teasing a possible role that would specifically address women’s health – which quickly angered Democrats, who failed to gain enough traction with female voters. by promoting an abortion message.
Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild” over the government’s health care systems, a statement his son Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically repeated to conservative media after his father’s victory.
Kennedy has recently claimed that he wants to eliminate fluoride from the nation’s drinking water supply, worrying health officials who see the addition of the mineral as a major step forward for tooth preservation.
Trump has kept a low profile except for promising to give Kennedy breathing room to advance some of his health care goals. “There are some things he wants to do, and we’re going to let him do them,” Trump said in part of his post-election victory speech.
Some Democrats, reeling from their defeat at the hands of Trump, are skeptical that Kennedy’s key agenda items will come to fruition, pointing to gigantic bureaucratic bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency as checks on his power. And while Republicans regained control of the Senate, there is an existing 60-vote threshold to confirm Cabinet nominations in the upper house, making it more hard to navigate a high-profile post.
“RFK’s sensational ideas are so toxic that he would never be confirmed in a Senate,” said Sacha Haworth, a Democratic strategist. “Do you think Collins or Murkowski are really going to vote for the brainworm guy who wants to ban childhood vaccinations?” she said, referring to the moderate Republican senators from Maine and Alaska.
Some Democrats like Haworth also hope that Trump, who has been known to form shifting and volatile alliances, will not stand firm against Kennedy. “Now that RFK Jr. has served his purpose, Trump will do what he always does: drop him like a stone,” she added.
The early debate over Kennedy is somewhat astonishing in itself and shows his unlikely rise in the last two years. After failing to challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination last year, few expected Kennedy to advise the Republican president-elect on the country’s most pressing health care issues.
But Trump’s interest in Kennedy only grew as the election drew closer. The two appeared together at state rallies, and Kennedy issued public instructions to his supporters not to vote for him in places where he could not legally be excluded from the ballot, such as Michigan and Wisconsin.
Although Kennedy was no longer an official candidate, he still garnered nearly 44,500 votes in those two states, showing his popularity among his own die-hard base.
As Kennedy now seeks to augment his focus on health care during the transition, Democrats are pointing fingers at each other and wondering who is ultimately responsible for his rise.
“As a progressive, it is disappointing that the Democratic Party establishment is allowing an existential threat to our public health to ravage our country because they have failed to stop Donald Trump,” said Kamran Fareedi, a left-wing Democratic activist.
Fareedi said Democrats failed to adequately address voters’ concerns for a variety of reasons and could now “fall victim to the conspiracy-laden populist right.”
