Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is weighing whether to exit the race and endorse former president Donald Trump, according to Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan.
In a new interview on the Impact Theory podcast, Shanahan said the campaign is trying to decide whether to shutter or try to win more than 5 percent of the popular vote to “establish ourselves” as a viable third-party alternative – though Shanahan said she doesn’t want to be a “spoiler candidate” by pulling votes from Trump.
“There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump, or we draw somehow more votes from Trump,” Shanahan told host Tom Bilyeu in an interview recorded Monday.
“Or we walk away right now and join forces with … Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that and explain to our base why we’re making this decision,” Shanahan added, saying it is “not an easy decision.”
Shanahan accused the DNC of rigging the race against them. She said Clear Choice, a DNC-aligned PAC that was behind the lawsuit that got Kennedy disqualified the New York general election ballot, has “unfortunately turned us into a spoiler and we don’t want to be a spoiler.”
“We wanted to win. We wanted a fair shot,” Shanahan added. “The DNC made that impossible for us. They have banned us, shadow-banned us, kept us off stages, manipulated polls, used law-fare against us, sued us in every possible state — they’ve even planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it and to create actual legal issues for us.”
“We’re still learning new ways that they have sabotaged us,” she claimed.
She “exclusively” blamed the Democrats for rigging the race against them and said Republicans were not at fault.
The DNC responded to Shanahan’s interview in a statement saying she “isn’t even pretending to be a serious VP candidate anymore.”
“In one interview alone, she floated RFK Jr. for HHS Secretary in a Trump administration, discussed her interest in running for governor of California in 2026, admitted that the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign has no path to victory, and raised the possibility of joining forces with Trump to defeat Vice President Harris. From the beginning of this race, we’ve said that RFK Jr. is nothing more than a spoiler for Donald Trump, and we’re glad that his running mate is finally admitting it,” DNC communications adviser Lis Smith said.
In five-way national polling that includes Harris, Trump, Kennedy and third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, Kennedy pulls an average 4.5 percent support, according to RealClearPolitics. Harris, meanwhile, leads Trump 46.4 percent to 44.9 percent.
In a head-to-head match-up between Harris and Trump, Harris leads Trump an average of 48.2 percent to 46.7 percent.
The Kennedy campaign appeared to be running out of steam even before Shanahan’s comments, raising just $5.6 million last month while spending $7 million, according to the latest FEC filings. The campaign has also not held a public event in over a month.