Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drops out, endorses Trump.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

A reader essay.

Earlier this month, we covered the controversy over Tim Walz’s military record. The edition prompted a huge reader response, but one note stood out in particular: Zach Juhnke, a Tangle reader who served in the Minnesota National Guard at the same time Walz did, told us that he had a different perspective from many pundits on the left and right about which things mattered to him as an Iraq War veteran. Naturally, we thought it would be best to share Zach’s perspective with everyone. You can read his piece here (paywall).

Quick hits.

1. Israel said it carried out preemptive strikes in Lebanon to prevent a larger-scale attack by Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based militant group. Hezbollah then launched 320 rockets and hit 11 Israeli military targets in what it said was a retaliation for Israel's assassination of senior commander Fuad Shukr last month. (The attacks)
2. Two astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station are now scheduled to return to earth on a SpaceX vehicle in February. (The plan) 
3. The U.S. Supreme Court partially reinstated Arizona's 2022 law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. The law has not yet been enforced. (The decision)
4. Venezuela's top court certified President Nicolás Maduro's election victory amid allegations of fraud. (The certification)
5. Pavel Durov, the CEO of the messaging app Telegram, was arrested by French authorities on Saturday, reportedly in connection with an investigation into Telegram’s role in spreading child pornography. (The arrest)

Today's topic.

RFK Jr.’s campaign. On Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump. Kennedy plans to remove his name from the ballot in ten battleground states but remain an option in safe Republican and Democrat states to give his supporters in noncompetitive states the option to vote for him without playing spoiler. Kennedy has already taken action to remove his name from the ballot in Arizona and Pennsylvania, but election officials in Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin said it is too late for him to take his name off the ballot. 

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and the son of former Sen. Robert Kennedy, launched a primary challenge to President Joe Biden last June, then pivoted to an independent campaign in October. Though he routinely polled at 10% or more as a third-party candidate, his poll numbers have steadily declined since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the Democratic ticket. The Kennedy campaign has struggled to remain financially viable, with recent reports suggesting it was nearly out of money. Kennedy said his decision came after determining he had no “realistic path to electoral victory,” as well as internal polling that showed his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. 

You can read our past coverage of Kennedy’s candidacy here.

Kennedy cited three “great causes” for his decision to endorse Trump: free speech, the war in Ukraine, and “the war on children.” He said Trump is the only other candidate in the race “willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech and our constitutional freedoms, clean corporate influence out of our government, or defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism.” He also accused Democrats of being “the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money” and said his candidacy was undermined by “relentless, systematic censorship and media control.”

After announcing the suspension of his campaign, Kennedy appeared at a rally with Trump in Glendale, Arizona. The former president called Kennedy “a man who has been an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share,” and he promised to work with Kennedy to establish a panel to investigate the increase in chronic health conditions and childhood diseases if elected president. Trump and Kennedy have warmed to each other in the past month, and Kennedy said he was “surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues.” Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, suggested that Kennedy could serve as Trump’s health secretary, though Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance said that there was no quid pro quo deal for Kennedy’s withdrawal.

Five of Kennedy’s family members released a statement after the announcement, calling his decision to endorse Trump “a betrayal of the values that our father and family hold most dear.” Kennedy acknowledged the difficulties his endorsement of Trump would cause his wife, children, and friends but affirmed the “certainty” he felt in his choice. 

Today, we’ll explore arguments from the right and left about the impact of Kennedy’s decision. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right believes Kennedy’s endorsement will benefit Trump on the margins.
• Some suggest Democrats drove Kennedy out of the party. 
• Others say the Kennedy-Trump alliance is a sign of a broader political realignment in the U.S.

In The Washington Examiner, Brady Leonard argued “RFK Jr. and Trump offer a good fit.”

“A Trump-Kennedy partnership makes electoral sense. Trump has previously expressed interest in bringing Kennedy into his administration. Both men have also been viciously attacked by the Left. Both value individual liberty far more than Vice President Kamala Harris, and both view the so-called deep state as the enemy and are skeptical of America’s interventionist foreign policy,” Leonard wrote. “The pair do have profound policy differences, namely, Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his choice to empower COVID-19 task force leader Dr. Anthony Fauci. With the pandemic, lockdowns, and forced vaccinations in the rearview mirror, perhaps Kennedy views other issues facing the nation as more pressing.”

“Jill Stein and Cornel West are nonfactors, and the Libertarian Party nominated a left-winger who poses little to no threat to the GOP, making Kennedy the only wild card in this race. Trump’s electoral ceiling is 46.9% of the popular vote, which he took in his 2020 losing effort against Biden. Kennedy’s 3-5% would almost certainly flip most, if not all of the battleground states in Trump’s direction,” Leonard said. “A Trump-Kennedy alliance would be a natural progression, and if the GOP’s tent is big enough to house both Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), surely there is plenty of room for Kennedy.”

In The New York Post, Jonathan Turley said Kennedy’s decision shows “how Democrats drive away their own voters.”

“Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump,” Turley wrote. “Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch.”

“It is not clear whether the red pill/blue pill pitch will be enough, or whether Kennedy’s endorsement will turn the critical votes in swing states. However, the DNC showed how Democrats make Republicans. The unrelenting identity politics and claims of defending democracy (while opposing democratic choice) only reaffirmed for many that there is no longer a big tent in the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy,” Turley said. “There is a serious question whether John F. Kennedy would recognize or support the current Democratic Party. It now rejects many of his core, mainstream values.”

In The American Spectator, Scott McKay wrote “this is no longer the presidential race you think it is.”

“Kennedy hasn’t become a conservative. He’s still very much an outsider figure in American politics, and furthermore, he leans left on most issues — the ones where he and Trump have found common cause are only ‘conservative’ in the sense that they’re issues that the Democrat Party has run so far away from the national mainstream that a liberal like Kennedy can only find an alliance with Republicans,” McKay said. “Kennedy’s three issues are good ones to run against Democrats on. While none of the three are as compelling with voters as immigration and the border, inflation and the economy, and crime and public safety, the things Kennedy identified in his speech work to Trump’s advantage.”

“This election will be a referendum on the Deep State and the corrupt, hyper-mendacious ruling class in this country which has run up $35 trillion in debt, plunged us into wars not in our interest, shredded our civil society, destroyed American childhood and declared war on reality itself in pursuit of some top-down utopian vision imported here from overseas,” McKay wrote. “Kennedy’s endorsement makes this very clear: Like Trump or not, he is your only alternative to that ruling class… So whether you like Trump or not, you can either get behind him or you’re with the ruling class.”

What the left is saying.

• The left argues Kennedy’s conspiratorial beliefs fit well within the MAGA movement.
• Some doubt that Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump will impact the election.
• Kennedy’s family says he has betrayed their values. 

In The Atlantic, John Hendrickson wrote about “why RFK Jr. endorsed Trump.”

“Kennedy’s evolution from member of a Democratic dynasty to a soldier in the anti-democratic MAGA movement will no doubt confuse casual observers. Trump once called Kennedy the ‘dumbest member’ of his famous family, and Kennedy once suggested that Trump was a sociopath. The main reason for Kennedy’s conversion may be pure desperation. This summer, Kennedy made overtures to both major-party candidates; only Trump reciprocated,” Hendrickson said. “But the Trump-Kennedy pairing makes a certain kind of sense. To be sure, Kennedy doesn’t share Trump’s anti-immigrant sentiment, nor does he lean on white-identity politics or nationalism. Instead, it’s Kennedy’s conspiratorial, anti-establishment, burn-it-down ethos that makes him fit into the MAGA universe.”

“Three key factors forced Kennedy’s withdrawal. The first and most obvious was money. Despite tapping Nicole Shanahan, the wealthy Silicon Valley businesswoman, to be his running mate, Kennedy’s fundraising had recently dried up… The second factor was ballot access. Nick Brana, the campaign’s ballot-access director, told me that, as of today, the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket was certified in only 22 states,” Hendrickson wrote. “The third factor was perhaps the most obvious: His core proposition had become moot once Biden dropped out… After Harris took Biden’s place as the nominee, she began to win back some of the disaffected Democrats, independents, and undecideds who had ‘parked’ their support in the Kennedy column.” 

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore called Trump and Kennedy a “coalition of vengeful whiners.”

“Kennedy’s reasoning was relatively clear, if not necessarily compelling. He said he had broken with Democrats over the ‘existential issues’ of ‘censorship, war, and chronic disease.’ But it’s that first item he dwelled on in talking about his former party, accusing them bitterly of working with big tech to warn people of his anti-vaxx views during and since the COVID pandemic, and rigging the 2024 primaries to keep potentials rivals like Kennedy out while ‘hiding the cognitive decline’ of President Biden,” Kilgore said. “As for whether Trump will act on the prime concern of the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket… RFK Jr. seems to be relying mostly on blind faith.”

“And so, this deeply alienated man will form a strange partnership with the Republican candidate for president based mostly on a common sense of grievance with Democrats and other elites, and a common lust for vengeance,” Kilgore wrote. “And it is not at all clear how many of his remaining supporters will follow him over the brink into MAGA-land, which some correctly perceive as a place where environmentalists and those who fret about military spending… and childhood health are often treated as hippies and suspected Marxists.”

In The Los Angeles Times, Max Kennedy said “ignore my brother Bobby.”

“I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump. I think often about my father and how he might have viewed the politics of our time. I’m not sure what he would have thought about TikTok or AI, but this much I know for sure: He would have despised Donald Trump,” Kennedy wrote. “Trump was exactly the kind of arrogant, entitled bully my father used to prosecute. Robert F. Kennedy’s life was dedicated to promoting the safety, security and happiness of the American people… Trump is the enemy of all that. The only thing he seems to be for is himself and, disturbingly, autocrats such as Vladimir Putin, whom my father would have regarded as an existential threat to our country.

“Yet my brother now endorses Trump. To pledge allegiance to Trump, a man who demonstrates no adherence to our family’s values, is inconceivable to me,” Kennedy said. “It feels especially hypocritical that Bobby, a genuine environmentalist, has thrown in with the most anti-environmental president in our history, who promises to ‘drill, baby, drill’ if elected… Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be motivated to write something of this nature. With a heavy heart, I am today asking my fellow Americans to do what will honor our father the most: Ignore Bobby.”

My take.

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• Kennedy’s impact on the presidential race was already declining before this decision. 
• Some of Kennedy’s comments about changes in the Democratic Party are salient, but it’s difficult to see how he would achieve his stated goals through Trump.
• Kennedy ultimately succumbed to the same pitfalls that have doomed other third-party candidates in the U.S.

Let's start with the headline question: Will Kennedy dropping out meaningfully change the race?

A few weeks ago, we published a piece suggesting that RFK Jr. could be the most important factor in the 2024 election. Suffice it to say that piece hasn’t aged so well. Shortly after we published it, Biden's disastrous debate upended the entire race, then someone attempted to kill Donald Trump, and then the Democrats changed their nominee to Vice President Kamala Harris. All the while, Kennedy's poll numbers were steadily falling.

Now Kennedy’s impact is looking much narrower — but it could still end up being critical. Given how close the polls are, a 1-2% shift in any swing state could throw the race to Trump. Based purely on what the polling has indicated so far, Trump usually gets a bump when Kennedy is removed from the ticket and the race moves to a head-to-head. Take Arizona: Biden won by around 11,000 votes in 2020, and Kennedy polls at 6% there. With him dropping out and endorsing Trump, even half of those voters following his lead could throw the entire state.

And it's not just Arizona. In a survey of seven battleground states by the Cook Political Report, Trump was the second choice for 45% of Kennedy voters in swing states, while Harris was the choice for just 26%. Again: These margins will matter in November.

The more interesting question is whether Kennedy telling voters to cast their ballots for Trump will actually matter. Everything about this race is unusual, but a Democrat-turned-independent endorsing the Republican nominee is especially novel. How seriously can voters take Kennedy's backing, and how loyal were they to him in the first place? These are questions I can't confidently answer right now.

In announcing his decision, Kennedy gave his standard stump speech. As usual with him, some of it was a strong, biting criticism of the Democratic Party: It's become more censorious, more captured by corporate interests, less focused on the working class, and less anti-war than it has been in the past. He's also good at identifying real problems that major politicians are ignoring, like chronic health issues among children and the increased instances of autism (and no, that’s not just because of changes in diagnosis). His identification of root causes for those issues often veer off into fantasyland, but the passion with which he speaks reaches millions of people for a reason. 

Still, there are a couple things about what he's doing that are pretty nonsensical. First, even if you subscribe to Kennedy’s worldview entirely, I find it peculiar that the candidate he’s backing to reign in "big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money” is... Donald Trump? If Kennedy is worried about things like Big Pharma pushing drugs to market that aren't safe, or major food producers over-using pesticides and other chemicals to maximize profits, it is rather difficult to imagine a world where Trump is the president to step in and fight on his behalf. 

Remember: Core pillars in Kennedy’s ideology are environmental issues, like removing pesticides from food, which he hoped to do by “weaponizing” regulators. Whatever you think of former President Trump, he does not have any tangible track record that would indicate a desire to put the vice grip on corporations and address the issues Kennedy made a centerpiece of his campaign. 

The second nonsensical aspect of Kennedy’s announcement is that he is only sort of dropping out. He’s attempting to remove himself from swing state ballots to help Trump, while remaining on the ballot in safe states, and he’s even floated the idea that he could still eventually win the election in the event Trump and Harris tie at 269 electoral college votes. But, actually, that doesn’t seem possible. The House of Representatives breaks a tie by casting votes from its state delegations for any candidate who receives electoral college votes. If Kennedy wants to win a contingent election in Congress, he’ll have to get at least one electoral vote; and remaining on the ballot in only the least competitive states is probably the worst way to do that. 

Of course, any discussion of Kennedy's decision must include a note that his endorsement for either candidate might be conditional on him landing a cabinet seat. There’s a good deal of reporting out there that suggested Kennedy was “for sale,” approaching both candidates with the carrot of an endorsement in exchange for a position in their prospective administration. Perhaps, from Kennedy's view, Trump's record on some of his top issues is irrelevant if he gets a seat at the cabinet table. But again, Trump is the kind of pro-business, anti-regulation candidate who has always been resistant to using the government to check corporations — and I have no idea why Kennedy imagines that will change now.

Ultimately, Kennedy’s campaigns struggled to get past many of the same issues that past third-party challengers have faced: He was unable to get consistent media coverage, he didn’t have the ground game to get on all the ballots he needed to, and the sum of his views contained too many fringe positions unpopular with the major political tribes to pull significant support from either main candidate. His endorsement of Trump might change the race on the margins, but the opportunity for him to fundamentally challenge the status quo has come to an end.  

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Your questions, answered.

Q: Former GOP Rep. George Santos has now been officially found guilty. Good. But sentencing isn't scheduled until February 2025. Why such a long delay for sentencing?

— Chris from Burgaw, North Carolina

Tangle: It seems absurd, I know. The sentencing hearing is nearly half a year away, which is just a little bit less time than had elapsed between when he was charged with fraud and when he accepted a plea deal. But there are two good reasons for the delay.

First, the sentencing hearing has to fit into the court’s schedule. Since the court does not know if a sentencing hearing will be necessary until a verdict, nor does it know how long the hearing will last, the court’s docket for the time following the trial starts to fill up. For that reason, there’s always some delay between a guilty verdict and a sentencing hearing.

Second, the legal teams have to prepare for sentencing, and the court has to prepare a hearing. For more complicated or high-profile cases, a good deal of time is usually required for sentencing preparations — Sam Bankman-Fried (of FTX) had his hearing five months after his conviction, and Elizabeth Holmes (of Theranos) had hers scheduled for nine months after (and that was later delayed even further). Sentencing for fraud cases can get complicated, and criminal defense lawyers can spend as much time preparing for sentencing as they do for trial (if not more).

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Under the radar.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the U.S. government's response to Covid-19 under the Trump and Biden administrations, was just released from the hospital after battling West Nile virus, which he believes he contracted in his garden. The virus is commonly spread through infected mosquitoes, and there is no vaccine or treatment for the disease. West Nile infects several hundred to several thousand people in the U.S. each year and has been circulating at higher rates this summer than was expected. 216 cases have been reported in 33 states so far this year. NBC News has the story.

Numbers.

• 9.6%. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s polling average nationally on June 23, 2024, according to FiveThirtyEight.
• 4.6%. Kennedy’s polling average on August 23.
• +10%. Former President Donald Trump’s polling increase in a head-to-head race with Vice President Kamala Harris after Kennedy was removed as an option, according to an August Reuters/Ipsos poll.
• 36,000. The approximate number of individual donors to Kennedy’s campaign through July 2024, according to Politico. 
• 1,000. The approximate number of Kennedy donors who had also made contributions to Trump’s campaign.
• 100. The approximate number of Kennedy donors who also made contributions to President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. 
• $15 million. The approximate amount that Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan donated to his campaign.
• 5%, 4%, 4%, and 4%. The percentages of registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, respectively, who said they supported RFK Jr. in an August 2024 poll from The New York Times/Siena College.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just covered the first Republican primary debate.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the ad in our free newsletter for Brad’s Deals.
• Nothing to do with politics: Germany says there is ‘no deeper message’ to its warship playing Darth Vader’s theme while traveling down the Thames River.
• Thursday’s survey: 1,011 readers responded to our survey about the Democratic Party platform with 60% saying the party is headed in the right direction. “Right directions for the wrong reasons. Disingenuous values,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

In recent years, heavy levels of rain have contributed to the creation of potholes in Long Beach, California. “I love rain, but I hate potholes,” said Eric Lopez, Long Beach’s Director of Public Works. Employees from Public Works have been working six days a week to repair the potholes. Thus far, 28,000 of the 63,000 potholes have been repaired. Additionally, crews hope to improve the sidewalks, curbs, and gutters in an effort to prepare for the 2028 Olympics. NBC Los Angeles has the story. 

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