The candidacy of a member of the Kennedy family in the next election for the White House was already seen with some fear in the re-election campaign of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and has now become part of the concerns of the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump .
In a series of messages published this weekend on the social network Truth Social, Trump launched a harsh attack against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), a son of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy — and nephew of John F. Kennedy — who withdrew from the Democratic Party primary elections to remain in the race as an independent candidate in the November presidential election.
“RFK Jr. is an agent serving the Democratic Party, a left-wing radical who was called in to help Joe Biden, the worst President in the History of the United States, be re-elected,” said Trump. “A vote for Júnior would essentially be a wasted protest vote,” said the former US president.
Anti-vaccines
Kennedy, 70, a member of the most famous political family in the US — but whose involvement in several conspiracy theories distances him from the legacy that remains in the memory of the Democratic Party electorate — began to be seen as a threat to Biden’s re-election.
Less than two weeks ago, several members of the Kennedy family — including six of RFK Jr.’s brothers — declared their support for Biden in this year’s presidential election, in a ceremony in which they appeared alongside the US President.
At the time, one of RFK Jr.’s sisters, Kerry Kennedy, said that a vote for Biden “is a vote to save democracy and decency”, and pointed to the US President as the true political heir of John and Robert Kennedy.
“President Biden has defended all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncle promoted,” said the independent candidate’s sister.
According to polls, RFK Jr.’s prominent role in anti-vaccine activism and opposition to confinements during the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, indicated that his candidacy could take more votes from Biden than from Trump.
This idea has been called into question in recent weeks, after the publication of polls that paint a different scenario, in which the candidate most harmed by Kennedy’s presence in the campaign is Trump. Whatever the result, it is certain that the support received by Kennedy in the polls, around 10%, is enough to influence the duel between Trump and Biden in some states — such as Michigan — that will be decisive in choosing the next candidate. President of the USA.
In a Quinnipiac University poll, published in the middle of last week, Kennedy appears with 16% of voting intentions in a race of five, behind Trump and Biden (both with 37%) and ahead of the Green candidate, Jill Stein ( 3%), and another independent candidate supported by the progressive left, Cornel West (3%).
In the same poll, 44% of Republican Party voters said they had a positive opinion of Kennedy, compared to just 11% of Democratic Party voters who said the same. In a race between the two main candidates, 47% of Kennedy supporters said they would vote for Trump and 29% for Biden.
In a statement reacting to Trump’s attacks, Kennedy referred to the former US President as “a scared man who appears to be unbalanced”, and challenged him to a two-way debate.
“Trump, who has already demonstrated that he is the best debater in the history of modern American politics, should not be in a panic to debate me,” Kennedy said. on social network. “Instead of dropping poison bombs from the safety of your bunkerTrump should defend his promises respectfully.”
Michigan decision
In the state of Michigan, where the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were decided by very narrow margins, there are indications that Kennedy’s candidacy could take more votes from Trump than Biden. — which could, in turn, help the President of the United States to mitigate the impact of a possible electoral boycott by part of the Arab-American and Muslim community, unhappy with the White House’s support for the Government of Israel.
Michigan — where Biden won in 2020 with 150,000 more votes than Trump, out of 5.5 million voters — was at the forefront of protests against confinements imposed during the pandemic, which were led, to a large extent, by voters who this year will have the possibility of voting for one of the figures who stood out most nationally in criticizing the vaccine against Covid-19.
It was also in Michigan that the FBI stopped a plan by a group of anti-government extremists to kidnap the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, from the Democratic Party, one of the biggest defenders of confinements during the pandemic. Nine of the 14 accused of the attempted kidnapping were sentenced to between one year and 20 years in prison.
