Robert F. Kennedy Jr. excoriated the Democrat Party, U.S. government, and our supposedly free press during his Friday press conference. Kennedy’s announcement that he will remove his name as a candidate for president in swing states and endorses Donald Trump brought cheers from Trump supporters and derision from Democrat die-hards.
But what does the alliance between Trump and Kennedy mean to the future of the Republican platform? Properly understood, nothing.
Friday’s speech was not about the policies of the Grand Old Party any more than it was about whether Kennedy’s old-school Democrat belief system remained intact. As Kennedy acknowledged, he had been “a ferocious critic of many of the policies during [Trump’s] first administration,” and the two will “continue to have very serious differences” about “issues and approaches.”
Yet an alliance will allow him and Trump to “work[] together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance,” Kennedy explained during his press conference last week. The key “existential issues” Kennedy identified, and the hopes he professed for our country, transcend partisan politics and harken to the days of our founding.
Kennedy identified institutional corruption of both the government and the press, manifesting itself in “government propaganda,” a “resort to censorship and media control, and the weaponization of the federal agencies” as foundational threats to the country. Lawfare at the voting booth, against both Trump and Kennedy, further built the former Democrat’s case for exiting the race.
These complaints are not Republican or Democrat: indeed, every American should be
