Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a conservative nonprofit organization founded by former vice president Mike Pence, took a shot at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leftist political beliefs, an ideological bent that some on the Right fear will play a role in his new job as a member of former president Donald Trump’s transition team.
The Trump campaign announced that Kennedy and fellow former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard will join the transition effort on Tuesday, one day after Kennedy told Tucker Carlson that the former president asked him to help choose the “people who will be running the government.” Speaking to CNN last week, Trump said that he would “be open to” appointing Kennedy to a position in his administration. Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, said he would like to see Kennedy in “some sort of major three-letter entity” to “let him blow it up.”
AAF wrote in a memo that, “given RFK’s unsteady record, it’s hard to imagine him filling any post that would not prove an unmitigated disaster for the country.”
The Pence-led group pointed to Kennedy’s far-left policy positions on a host of issues including abortion, environmental policy, and national security. On the first topic, Kennedy said the government has no right to restrict abortion, even in late-stage pregnancies. He also called for the government to create and administer “healing farms,” which he described as places “where people can reconnect with nature, learn the discipline of hard work, and rebuild there lives” — potentially with he help of psychedelic drugs, which he wants legalized.
Kennedy has described himself as “arguably the leading environmentalist in the country” and opposes fracking, supports ending the use of fossil fuels, and made a career of filing activist lawsuits against American energy companies. During Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, the former vice president considered Kennedy for a spot on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and both presidential candidate John Kerry and former president Barack Obama had Kennedy on short-lists for Environmental Protection Agency administrator. Kennedy went so far as to get himself arrested at a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline, a project President Joe Biden canceled on his first day in office.
Stefanie Spear, Kennedy’s press secretary during his presidential run, praised China’s “war on coal,” occupied the Ohio statehouse during an anti-fracking protest, and celebrated Senator Bernie Sanders’s (I., Vt.) position on massive federal climate action. Before joining the Kennedy campaign, Spear consulted for a diversity, equity, and inclusion organization funded by George Soros.
Kennedy said in 2014 that China’s threats of organ harvesting as a means of meeting green-energy goals showed that the communist country took environmental policy “very seriously.”
On matters of foreign policy and defense, AAF argued, Kennedy presents a threat to both American and global security. He promised during his presidential run to cut the United States military budget in half, accepting the idea of a multipolar world order in which American adversaries like China and Russia exert increased influence against American interests. He has called for ending all U.S. aid to Ukraine and accused those questioning socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro’s fraudulent Venezuelan electoral win of simply desiring an American invasion of the country.
AAF also noted his vaccine skepticism. He has stated that there is “no vaccine that is safe and effective” and has claimed that vaccines cause autism. He has been accused of helping fuel a skepticism of the MMR vaccine in Samoa that led to the 2019 measles outbreak in the country, killing over 70 people. He has also falsely stated that the polio vaccine killed “many more people than polio ever did” during a 2023 podcast appearance.
“RFK Jr.’s embrace of loony ideas and policies that are antithetical to conservatism will do more damage to the Conservative Movement than the support he may bring in,” AAF wrote in its memo. “The Conservative movement must be laser focused on the issues this November, not platforming conspiracy theorists in an attempt to scrape out an election.”