RFK Jr. Ramps Up Election Attacks on Donald Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched a wave of blistering attacks on Donald Trump, accusing the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee of having "a weakness for swamp creatures" and having "scammed American workers" to give a tax cut to the rich.

Kennedy, an environmental campaigner and vaccine skeptic who is running for the presidency as an independent after failing to secure the Democratic Party nomination, made the comments on X, formerly Twitter.

A recent Emerson College poll found Kennedy had the support of 6 percent of registered U.S. voters, making him by some margin the third-strongest candidate after President Joe Biden at 38 percent and Trump at 44.

Professor David B. Cohen, a politics expert at the University of Akron, told Newsweek that Kennedy is likely to have an impact on the result in November, though its "very difficult to predict" which of the two main candidates he will benefit.

In a series of X posts, Kennedy attacked Trump's anti-establishment credentials, portraying him as an ally of the Republican old guard and corporate interests.

On May 27, the 70-year-old attorney posted: "President Trump scammed American workers. He promised to bring back manufacturing, raise wages, fix trade deals, close the carried interest loophole, and help small farmers.

"But everything President Trump achieved were things the Republican machine wanted. We got a tax cut for Jeff Bezos, deregulation for special interests, and giveaways to agriculture conglomerates.

"President Trump let the Bush wing of the GOP run all his agencies. His Interior Secretary was an oil & gas lobbyist. His Defense Secretary was a Raytheon lobbyist. His EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] Administrator was a coal lobbyist. His HHS [Health and Human Services] Secretary was a pharmaceutical lobbyist. And his Labor Secretary was a lawyer for mega corporations."

Kennedy also accused Trump of having "exacerbated tensions between Ukraine and Russia that ultimately caused a war," having let "Democrat-run cities burn" during the 2020 George Floyd protests because he thought it would be "good optics" and having done "nothing to solve the opioid crisis."

Kennedy was particularly scathing of Trump's record during the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that he "invented lockdowns" and "facilitated the greatest wealth transfer to billionaires in this country's history."

Earlier, Kennedy shared an article by Australian writer Caitlin Johnson entitled "Trump is bad because he is similar to other U.S. Presidents, not because he is different" adding: "I will be different."

In a post on June 6 Kennedy Jr. shared a list of prominent figures from the 2017-21 Trump administration whom he claimed were either corporate lobbyists/lawyers, business tycoons and other establishment figures, including "the ultimate swamp creature, John Bolton," who served as national security adviser.

Kennedy Jr. followed this up explicitly on June 12 when he posted: "Despite rhetoric to the contrary, President Trump has a weakness for swamp creatures, especially corporate monopolies, their lobbyists, and their money. After promising to drain the swamp, instead, he hired swamp creatures to regulate their own industries."

Newsweek contacted the Kennedy and Trump campaigns for comment by email on Wednesday outside of usual office hours.

Speaking to Newsweek Mark Shanahan, an American politics expert at the University of Surrey in the U.K., said Kennedy is looking to boost his status as an outsider with his comments.

"Kennedy is looking to establish himself as the 'outsider's outsider,'" Shanahan said. "While he hopes the family name will take votes from Biden, his tactic with Trump is to brand the 45th president as much more a political insider in 2024, campaigning at the whim of the 1 percent.

"Trump won in 2016 by seeming to be an authentic voice from beyond the Beltway, while Kennedy now seeks to paint him as in thrall to special interests. Kennedy is certainly outspoken—in attacking both the Trump and Biden machines, he seeks to present himself as fearless. That certainly played well on the right in 2016."

However, Kennedy Jr. did defend Trump during an appearance on Ari Melber's MSNBC show, accusing Melber of "feeding into the vitriol" and "trying to get me to hate on President Trump" after the host accused Trump of racism, misogyny and said he refused "to leave [the White House] peacefully" following his 2020 presidential election defeat.

Kennedy Jr.'s net approval rating fell from +15.5 percent on June 4, 2023, to -6.6 percent on June 4, 2024, according to analysis by polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

Update 6/13/24, 03:50 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with comment from Mark Shanahan.