RFK Jr. has pledged his allegiance to Team Trump, and on today’s edition of The Editors, Rich asks the panelists what effect — if any — this will have on the race’s outcome.
Noah is skeptical, and immediately labels RFK Jr. “a crank.” “His eccentricities,” Noah says, “all revolve around the notion that a nefarious cabal of Americans are working in malign ways behind the scene to do harm to their fellow Americans for no other purpose, I suspect, than to enjoy the delight of their suffering.
“But there is a galactically larger universe of voters who are not so paranoid,” he says. “There is a much larger universe of voters whose vote for establishmentarian candidates in generals, in midterms, in off years, in specials, and those voters are not going to be enlivened by the appearance of a guy who today has been accused of cutting off a whale’s head with a chain saw.”
Charlie thinks that parts of RFK Jr.’s speech endorsing Trump could teach the other candidates a thing or two about presentation. Unfortunately, “He’s a weirdo. He’s always been a weirdo. And the reason that he is now being condemned on the left and embraced on the right is that he endorsed Trump.
“It’s very strange,” Charlie says, “to see people who up until now were his friends — and will admit as much in their denunciation of him — say that for years they’ve loved the guy, hung out with the guy, donated to the guy if necessary, but that now this was a bridge too far.”
Jim says that, “with Kennedy off the ballot, . . . it really is head to head Harris versus Trump, and there shouldn’t be any third-party figure taking away a significant chunk . . . from either one of these two major candidates.”