The Inside Story of Donald Trump and RFK Jr.’s Alliance

Ironically, one of Donald Trump’s biggest political liabilities is also arguably his greatest achievement as president: the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine. A swath of the Republican base remains openly hostile to vaccines, which has left Trump exposed to rare criticism from his MAGA supporters. According to sources, Trump allies such as Tucker Carlson and Roger Stone were worried enough about the former president’s vulnerability on the vaccine issue that they wanted him to publicly disavow Operation Warp Speed, the public-private program that released a COVID vaccine in less than nine months. But Trump refused because, well, has Trump ever passed up a chance to claim credit for a success? (Carlson and Stone declined to comment.)

As a result, sources say Carlson, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., and others helped engineer an alternative: Robert Kennedy Jr.’s decision to drop out and endorse Trump. Stone told people that Kennedy, whose third-party campaign served as a vehicle for his anti-vaccine views, was peeling off enough voters to tip the election to Kamala Harris. “You have maybe 3% of voters where opposition to vaccines is their one issue,” says a Republican who participated in the courtship of Kennedy.

But getting Kennedy and Trump to forge an alliance almost didn’t happen. The two New York scions have famously big egos and a history of viciously attacking each other. Trump previously called Kennedy a “phony, radical-left fool,” a “Democratic ‘plant,’” and a “liberal lunatic.” Kennedy, meanwhile, wrote a 2018 Newsweek op-ed that said Trump’s “presidency has not just discredited our nation, but the entire American experiment in self government.”

A breakthrough came following the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A few hours after the shooting, Carlson put Trump and Kennedy on a text thread together, according to a person briefed on the communications. Kennedy texted Trump that he was ready to drop out and endorse him but wasn’t sure of the timing, the source says. On a phone call the following day, Trump courted Kennedy by endorsing Kennedy’s unproven view that vaccines hurt children. “When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Trump said, “and then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times.” But the relationship hit a setback when Kennedy’s son, Robert Kennedy III, posted a video of the call with Trump to social media.

The damage control fell to Florida financier Omeed Malik, a Trump donor and close friend of Don Jr. and Robert Kennedy III. (Malik’s anti-woke private equity firm, 1789 Capital, invested in Tucker Carlson’s digital video venture.) Malik arranged an in-person meeting between Trump and Kennedy on the opening day of the Republican convention to discuss an endorsement. According to people briefed on the meeting, Kennedy came in with unrealistic expectations that he could be FDA chairman or Health and Human Services Secretary in a Trump administration. “There were asks,” a source briefed on the talks tells me. (Kennedy denied this.) “The meeting concluded without a deal,” the source says. The Trump campaign declined to comment.

Talks between Kennedy and Trump went dark. Over the next several weeks, Malik worked behind the scenes to bring Trump and Kennedy back together. According to the source, Kennedy and Trump agreed on four broad policy areas: treating chronic disease, opposing censorship, adopting an isolationist foreign policy, and exposing the deep state. The source said the deal-breaker was that Kennedy needed to be on Trump’s transition team. “That was nonnegotiable,” the source says.

“There was no quid pro quo of any kind,” Kennedy tells Vanity Fair.

On Tuesday, the Trump campaign announced Kennedy would serve as an honorary co-chair of the transition alongside former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. “This is going to give Bobby the ability to decide who gets into government,” the source says.

Former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg says Kennedy’s presence on the transition is a signal to anti-vax voters that Trump will be an ally in office. “This is Trump’s way of winking to Kennedy’s supporters,” Nunberg says.

One open question is what role Kennedy’s vice presidential pick, Nicole Shanahan, might play in Trumpworld. On Tuesday, Shanahan declined to say if she would campaign for Trump. And she disputed that Kennedy dropped out of the race. “We are technically still running and on the ballot! Just suspended,” she texted.