Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump over the summer yoked together two men with large egos and dedicated followings, with an eye toward political expediency and mutual interest.
But Mr. Kennedy has proved not to be your average surrogate. As he campaigns for Mr. Trump, Mr. Kennedy, long accustomed to being the star of his own show, is making it clear that this is a package deal. His message is an unusual one: Vote for Trump — to get me.
Mr. Kennedy sees himself as the leader of a populist movement that has tapped into a vein of anti-establishment outrage and government skepticism. He knows that some of his most die-hard fans — the ones Mr. Trump was eager to bring into his fold — want to see Mr. Kennedy hold real power.
Whether it is ego or political strategy aimed at drawing votes to Mr. Trump (or both), Mr. Kennedy continues to center himself in his pitch.
In a message that Mr. Kennedy has posted several times on social media since he bowed out of the race in August, he has urged his followers not to vote for him, even though he may still be on the ballot in their state. “No matter what state you live in, you should be voting for Donald Trump,” he said. “That’s the only way we can get me and everything I stand for into Washington, D.C., and fulfill the mission that motivated my campaign.”
In another message, Mr. Kennedy says: “If Donald Trump wins re-election with a strong mandate, then no one will be able to stop us. When he empowers me to clean up corruption and the federal agencies, and especially our health agencies, you know what’s at stake here.”
Mr. Kennedy’s focus on his own plans is apparent in his repeated insistence that he has been promised a significant role in a potential second Trump administration — at times getting out ahead of Trump campaign and transition officials. “I want to be in the White House, and he has assured me that I’m going to have that,” Mr. Kennedy said of Mr. Trump in a Fox News appearance on Sunday.
In September, The New York Times reported, based on people who were briefed on private conversations, that in the weeks leading up to Mr. Kennedy’s suspending his campaign, many people in his orbit were skeptical of a potential alliance with Mr. Trump. The former president, they felt, had a track record of breaking promises.
But Mr. Kennedy felt that aligning with Mr. Trump would give him more power to address the issues he had described throughout his campaign: chronic disease, censorship, corporate power in government, the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has not wholly subsumed Mr. Kennedy’s world. Perhaps the best evidence of this is the branding of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a take on “Make America Great Again” that took off in the days after Mr. Kennedy’s endorsement and that has become a kind of offshoot of the Trump campaign.
MAHAnow.org is the evolution of the Kennedy campaign’s website. There, supporters can contribute $47 to be featured on a mosaic depicting Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump shaking hands. The image, Mr. Kennedy wrote on X, commemorates “the historic moment when I endorsed Donald Trump.”
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