The Daily: The Spoiler Threat of R.F.K. Jr.

This is Mary Wilson, producer for The Daily, in downtown Philadelphia, waiting for a campaign

event with presidential candidate RFK Jr. It's about three hours before he's expected

to speak and there are already maybe a few dozen supporters here.

And I'm going to start talking to him.

Are you a supporter of RFK Jr.?

Yeah.

I'm actually a supporter big time.

I have followed him for several years even before he decided to be a presidential campaign.

I have always appreciated his honesty.

I've listened to everything he's, every interview I can get my hands on.

And I think RFK is just one of the people to know the truth.

And from the research that I've done, the little rabbit holes that I've gone down, it

aligns with a lot of the stuff that Kennedy says to be the truth.

I'm going to RFK.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bilbaro.

This is The Daily Today.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once dismissed as a fringe figure in the 2024 presidential

race.

But this week, as he announced an independent run for the White House, he's striking fear

within both the Democratic and Republican parties.

My colleague, political correspondent Rebecca O'Brien, explains why.

It's Thursday, October 12th.

Rebecca, a few days ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he was running for president

as an independent, which all but ensures that he can be a candidate in the general election

next fall.

He doesn't have to go through a difficult primary process.

He can't really be knocked out of the race because he's not a Democrat or Republican.

And the question immediately became when he announced, how much does this really matter?

Because third party and independent candidates have a very spotty record in the US.

So the Democratic and Republican parties think that this move really does matter because

it has the potential to draw votes from both sides.

There's always a risk that independent candidates will draw support from the two parties.

And in this case, we're facing an election where in all likelihood, we're going to have

a rematch of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

And they're both, they have bases of support, but they're both unpopular in large segments

of the population.

Right.

People are tired of them.

People are tired of them.

And Kennedy in particular speaks to, I think, a pretty sizable population of people who

are sick of the two party system and tired of the narratives on both sides.

And so their fear is that in a three-way race, he would end up drawing support from both

candidates.

And from what I've seen in person at various Kennedy events, he draws people from across

the political spectrum.

And it's a pretty powerful coalition.

And just in a sort of numerical sense, it doesn't take that much, as we've seen in

recent elections, to swing the results.

Right.

And that wouldn't be the first time that this has happened.

There's, despite third party and independent candidates' inability to ever win these races

in the U.S., there's a long and rich history of them acting, and you're kind of getting

at this as spoilers, as people who draw just enough support away from one or both major

party candidates to become decisive.

I mean, it was widely believed Ralph Nader did that in 2000, winning just enough votes

in key states to cost Al Gore the election.

Some believe Ross Perot did that in 1992 and helped defeat George H.W. Bush in his re-election.

So from what you're describing, that's the fear that Democrats and Republicans have.

Not that RFK Jr. becomes president, but that he costs one of them the presidency.

That's exactly right.

Okay.

I want you to explain how we get to a point where RFK presents this kind of a threat and

can draw this unique coalition that you alluded to just a few moments ago.

So what is that story?

So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a scion of pretty much American royalty.

His uncle, former president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated when he was nine years old.

Five years later, his father was assassinated.

Making his own run for the presidency.

Right.

And so he's 14 years old.

He's the pallbearer at his own father's funeral.

And in the years that followed, he had a troubled youth, troubled and privileged.

And he was addicted to heroin at one point.

But then by the mid-80s, he sort of establishes himself as an environmental lawyer.

And he's a litigator and he's persistent.

It's against the law.

You're not allowed to pollute the air or the water in this country.

People who have known him, admire about him is that he is determined and tireless.

I sued them.

It took 11 years for us to finally win that lawsuit.

At some point during this phase, he is diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, which affects the

sound of his voice.

It sounds sort of rugged and rough.

And it doesn't stop him.

Obviously, it sort of becomes part of his public persona.

Kind of his vocal trademark.

Right.

So some observers, it sounds almost like he's been out for days on end fighting the tough

fight and has run his body and his voice hoarse.

When we destroy nature, we diminish ourselves.

And we're imposing a clause upon ourselves that I don't think is prudent and on our

children that I don't think we have the right to impose.

Thank you very much.

And at the height of his environmental law career, he's really a source of pride for

his family members because he is fulfilling the promise of the Kennedy family and what

his father was unable to do in his life that was cut short.

And then by the turn of the millennium, he's had so much success in identifying and holding

to account these corporations that have caused chemical spills and long-term injury to the

environment and to people that he starts to attract the attention of what at the time

was a growing community of vaccine skeptics.

And these are largely parents of children who have suffered some sort of, they call

it injury, is often vaccine injury.

And people who believe that autism is caused by vaccinations or that other developmental

disorders and delays are linked to chemicals and vaccines, chemicals in water, even more

broadly than that, that the public health infrastructure of this country might be complicit

in damaging their children.

So these parents see Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his environmental work as making him, they

think, a natural ally in this fight, which we should say, especially in the case of

autism, is a belief that's been widely debunked but yet very firmly held by many people.

Right.

Kennedy then takes up this mantle of the injured wronged parent and begins to take on these

cases and do his own research.

And then in 2005, he publishes these articles in Salon and Rolling Stone in which he purports

to lay out scientific evidence of vaccine damage to children.

So this is kind of his national general audience debut as a major force in this parental world

of vaccine skepticism.

Correct.

Now, those articles have since been retracted or qualified as the studies that gird them

have kind of become widely debunked, but that didn't stop him.

He has continued to raise questions.

And in the years following his embrace of this cause, there were all sorts of instances

of measles outbreaks, a rise in vaccine skepticism, and he played a really important pivotal role

in bringing that community maybe not to the mainstream, but giving it more prominence

and acceptability.

Right.

Here's a Kennedy, a scion of American political royalty saying, it's okay.

Maybe even it's your duty not to get a vaccine.

Right.

You know, if a Kennedy is saying we can't trust our government and our public health

establishment, I mean, we have to listen to him and he gives it credibility.

He gives the movement legs, but as big as this movement became, I don't think anyone

was quite prepared for how well the COVID pandemic would tap into that underlying skepticism

and general fear.

Right.

What does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have to say when COVID rolls around and the government

begins developing and releasing COVID vaccines?

So I think we just step back and see it as the bigger picture.

His issue with the COVID response was not just about the vaccine.

In the course of his sort of progression from environmental steward to anti-vaccine crusader,

he developed a deep distrust of the government and that has manifested itself not just in

public health issues that he's raised, but also his open questioning of pieces of American

history, including his own family.

He has raised questions about whether the CIA played a role in the death of his uncle,

John F. Kennedy.

Somewhere along the way, this skepticism about the public health establishment turned into

a skepticism about the American government itself.

From what I'm gathering, perhaps a conspiratorily minded approach to all things government.

That is exactly right.

He sees in the workings of America a large conspiracy and corruption.

So his role in the COVID pandemic is multifaceted.

Oh, they tell you, we just want you to lock down for two weeks, but then 20 months later,

they still have us locked down.

He pretty much immediately seizes on the growing public skepticism of lockdown orders,

of government intrusion into the free market as he sees it.

The minute they hand you that vaccine passport, every right that you have is transformed into

a privilege contingent upon your obedience to arbitrary government dictates.

It will make you a slave.

He deeply distrusted the efforts of local and federal government to restrain the free

movement of people.

And if you're going to give 22,000 vaccines to prevent one death, you better make sure

the vaccine doesn't kill anybody.

And finally, he openly questioned whether the COVID vaccines were safe.

We are watching something now that I never believed that I would see in my lifetime.

So one day, the United States would be overtaken by fascism, orchestrated by Tony Fauci.

And this led pretty quickly to him and a group that he ran being kicked off social media

platforms.

YouTube videos in which he espoused these theories were also removed from the platform.

And of course, this only confirmed in his mind and in the mind of his supporters that

there was a vast conspiracy to silence him.

Right.

Because what could seem more like everyone trying to censor you than being kicked off

social media platforms?

I'm guessing the reason they did that, in fact, I recall it, is because those platforms

believed he was spreading dangerous misinformation that endangered public health.

Correct.

So, Rebecca, around this time, I'm really curious, what are people close to Kennedy

making of his transformation from this lionized public health hero to someone who seems to

becoming more and more of a fringy conspiracy theorist?

Well, let's talk about his family.

I think that over the course of his growing involvement with the anti-vaccine movement,

he had already alienated them.

Members of the Kennedy family.

Members of the Kennedy family.

And he was sort of seen as this sort of fringy wacko.

But his move to center stage during the COVID pandemic, I think starts drawing alarms from

people in his family and people close to him because now what had been Uncle Bobby's dinner

table conspiracy theories are getting more attention.

And he's drawing a growing crowd of supporters, people who may not agree with his vaccine

views or may not agree with his work on autism and mercury or had no idea that he'd even

been involved in that are drawn to his message that the COVID lockdowns are totalitarian

and are drawn to his anti-government screeds and his sort of open questioning of what

are we doing here?

And some of his own siblings started publicly pushing back against that and saying we pretty

much categorically reject what he has to say about COVID.

They're disavowing him publicly.

They're disavowing him publicly, but he doesn't really care.

He decides to take this growing base of public support, his growing platform and enter the

presidential race.

And in keeping with his family's history, his own voting record, he declares in April

of this year that he is going to run as a Democrat.

We'll be right back.

Rebecca, beyond family legacy, beyond the fact that RFK Junior is a member of Democratic

political royalty, what's his logic in entering the presidential race as a Democrat, given

the reality that there is an incumbent Democratic president and taking out incumbents in a

primary is just really hard.

So he would say that he was running as a Kennedy Democrat.

Which means what?

Well, it's a nostalgic play, really, because what he's saying is that the Democratic Party

used to be the party that was critical of war, that pushed back against corporate interests,

that represented the common person, and that the Democratic Party has forsaken that.

And one thing that has emerged from his work in the anti-vaccine universe is a belief that

certain very powerful corporations are secretly determining the course of American governance

and that they are trying to co-opt and hold captive entire branches of government for

their own greedy purposes.

What are some examples of that, according to him?

So he mentions in particular BlackRock.

The big investment company?

Yes.

And it's capture, as he sees it, of American housing and real estate.

He sees Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, as being inextricably bound up in American

foreign policy and that Democrats are no longer willing to push back against that.

He sees pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna as being inextricably bound up

in the response to the coronavirus pandemic and standing to profit immensely from government

policies.

So he sees essentially Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, the US government as being basically

held hostage by special interests and by big corporations.

Which is a pretty populist strain of Democratic politics, which seems also to be tinged a

little bit with something of a conspiratorial mindedness.

Right.

And the conspiratorial mindset is not helped by the fact that this year, Democratic National

Committee decided to essentially rig or rejigger the...

Depending on who you are.

Depending on who you are and who you ask, the primary process so that Joe Biden would

have the easiest possible path to reelection.

Right.

We've talked about this on the show.

This was the Democratic Party's decision to change the primary schedule.

It was supposed to start in Iowa.

Instead, the party changed it to start in a state that Joe Biden did very well in in

2020, South Carolina.

The party in Biden said that's because it's a more diverse state than Iowa, which is

typically even first.

But to some, and I'm sure Kennedy, it looks a lot like a plan to re-nominate Joe Biden.

Right.

So it looks to Kennedy that the DNC is rigging it against him.

And it's particularly frustrating for him because when he enters the race, he starts

polling very well.

How well?

There were some polls of Democrats where he was up at 20%.

That's a big...

It's a big number.

It's not insignificant.

So you can imagine that to somebody who's already in a kind of conspiratorial mindset,

he sees this as the Democratic Party stifling a meaningful challenge to their preferred

candidate.

Right.

And that is compounded by the fact that he continuously was calling for a debate.

He wanted to debate Joe Biden.

And debate is a big deal for him.

He wanted an opportunity to have his perspective heard and to demand an answer and response

from the incumbent.

And what was the response?

There was no response.

They will not schedule a debate because the DNC is backing the incumbent president, Joe

Biden.

Which must be very frustrating because if you're at 20% in a poll, that's higher than

many of the Republicans who definitely get to debate each other.

Right.

So that's why he decides that there is no path forward for him in the Democratic Party.

And that's how we get to his decision just a few days ago that he is going to run as

an independent.

So tell us about that announcement.

Here we are, Liberty Bell nearby.

That's a beautiful day.

So it was in Philadelphia and I went with a producer from the Daily Mary Wilson.

It was staged in front of the National Constitution Museum.

Maybe upward of a thousand people were there.

Practice now.

Everybody's invited to dance.

It's sort of like a hippie Trump rally.

And are you ready for today?

Are you ready for the next president of the United States, Bobby Kennedy?

Are we ready to win?

I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate.

And what is his message as he announces that he is an independent candidate for president?

It's very painful for me to let go of the party of my uncles, my father, my grandfather,

and both of my great-grandfathers, Honey Fitz.

He basically said that it was a very difficult decision for him to leave the party of his

childhood and of his family, but he felt that he had no choice.

Americans are weary.

They're tired of the culture war.

And people suspect that the divisions are deliberately orchestrated.

What I heard in Philadelphia was Kennedy taking his message of independence and of anti-corruption

and even of a little bit of conspiracy and making a bigger tent of it and saying, I want

to speak for the people.

We're a populist movement that defies left-right divisions.

I'm proud to say that my supporters include both pro-lifers and pro-choicers.

They include climate activists and climate skeptics.

They include vaccinated and unvaccinated.

This was his effort, more than I'd ever heard him say before, to define himself as part

of a movement, as the vanguard of a movement and inviting people to join him.

And based on what you saw in this audience, how did that message resonate with the people

there?

So Mary and I wade out into the crowd and we speak with all sorts of people.

When did you start taking a look at RFK Junior?

Well, I was looking around for anybody but Biden.

We speak with Democrats who want an alternative to Biden.

Historically, I've pretty much voted Democrat, but I feel that the Democratic Party has taken

black America for granted.

Who feel maybe betrayed by the Democratic Party.

I've always been a Democrat, so I like the ability to actually vote for somebody who

does have Democratic values but is more moderate, I guess.

These are lifelong Democrats, in some cases, who voted for Obama and Biden.

Do you care to be interviewed at all?

I am absolutely a conservative and I've never voted for a Democrat myself.

We spoke with Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in the past two elections.

And I was so fed up after the last election, you know, you look at the polls and stuff

and some of the outcomes just don't make sense or whatever.

So I was frustrated with the system.

There's also a strain of people who are very drawn to his name.

I don't know.

I like the Kennedy family.

You know, they did a lot of great things for this country, so I support the Kennedys.

Really people across the political spectrum and people of both parties that we spoke

to had a tendency to repeat back some of the theories.

The assassination of his uncle when he's talking about like it might have been like an inside

type job.

That he has publicly espoused, including name-checking corporations.

And also with like BlackRock, they're one of the top three shareholder and 88 percent

of the companies in America.

BlackRock got mentioned to us by several people.

Interesting.

When they're that big of a shareholder, they're sitting down with the executives of these

companies and saying, this is what you're going to do or we're going to sell our shares.

And that conspiratorial mindset really does inform a lot of his supporters.

And then we spoke to people from both parties who really just hate the idea of a repeat

of the last election.

And in fact, see that likely match up as a sign that the system needs some fresh blood

and to be shaken up a little bit.

Do you think if he were not running, would you cast a vote in the upcoming presidential

election?

No.

There isn't a candidate in my mind, although, you know, it's tempting to vote for Trump

to get rid of Biden, but that wouldn't work.

It would just be trading one monster for another monster.

So I'm done with the monster thing, you know?

So what you're describing makes me think of him.

And I want you to tell me if this is right as kind of a catchall for Americans who are

alienated from our politics and a lot of Americans are those who have gone down the rabbit hole

of this internet era and are drawn to theories about the government and corporations and

who's really pulling the strings and those who just love the idea of a Kennedy back in

the mix and taken together, I have to imagine, that could be a fair number of people.

Right.

And that cross-section that you just described includes people who voted for Donald Trump

in 2016 and 2020 or who sat out 2020 after being disillusioned after the 2016 election.

And that really gets us to the question of who has more to fear here, the Democrats or

the Republicans.

Right, because his appeal, as you have laid bare, is really bipartisan.

Yeah, it's a bipartisan, almost anti-partisan appeal.

Right.

Nonpartisan, anti-partisan.

Nonpartisan.

And it was really telling to me and to my colleagues in the politics team that about

an hour before he started his speech declaring independence, the Republican National Committee

put out an email saying 23 reasons not to vote for RFK Jr.

And that sort of just tells you something, right, that they are already seeing him as

potential threat to Donald Trump or to the potential nominee.

And they're describing him as pretty much a rank-and-file Democrat in all but name.

But the fact that they put it out there-

So there's a little bit of truth, because he just was one, but it means they're afraid

of him as a challenger to a Republican.

Right.

And of course, fear him too, because the feeling is that the incumbent has more to lose here

when there's the presence of a third party or independent candidate.

So there's genuine uncertainty and a lot of interest in which side Kennedy will be helping

or hurting.

Right.

So look, as an independent candidate, he faces a tremendous uphill battle getting on

the ballot in all 50 states.

Right.

It has to get the signatures.

It's a whole rigmarole.

Right.

It's a huge endeavor.

But he doesn't even have to get on the ballot in all 50 states to be a spoiler, because

really what it comes down to or what it's likely to come down to is tens of thousands

of votes in a few critical swing states.

Right.

Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania.

And if in those states he's able to pull votes away or even cause people not to vote

at all, that makes him a spoiler, and that could have significant ramifications for the

election.

And that is truly what both parties are worried about.

I think at this point, they're not quite worried that he's going to win the presidency.

It's a fear that he will do just enough at the margins and just enough at the right margins

to swing the results one way or another.

Rebecca, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

The Democrats are frightened that I'm going to spoil the election for President Biden.

Right.

And the Republicans are frightened that I'm going to spoil it for President Trump.

The truth is, they're both right.

My attention is to spoil it for both of them.

We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today.

On Wednesday, Israel formed an emergency government that will sideline political hardliners and

incorporate two new ministers, both former army chiefs, as the country prepares for what

could be a drawn-out war with Hamas in response to its massacre of 1,200 Israelis over the

weekend.

In a speech announcing the new government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that,

quote, every member of Hamas is a dead man.

In Gaza, where Israel is launching airstrikes aimed at Hamas, more than 1,100 Palestinians

have been killed.

Local officials said that Israel is targeting buildings that are normally off limits, including

schools, hospitals, and mosques.

And House Republicans have nominated their Majority Leader, Representative Steve Scalise

of Louisiana, as their next speaker.

But it's unclear whether he has sufficient support to actually win the job during a vote

on the House floor.

Scalise can only afford to lose the votes of four fellow Republicans.

But so far, seven of them have said they will not support him.

Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Stella Tan, and Rob Zipko, with help from

Rachelle Banja.

It was edited by Rachel Quester and Devin Taylor.

Fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lazano, and

was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lantefork of Wonder Lake.

That's it for the Daily.

I'm Michael Babarro.

See you tomorrow.

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