Analysis: RFK Jr.’s running mate drops the pretense about helping Trump

For as long as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been running for president, Democrats have cast him as a stalking horse for Donald Trump. But Kennedy has consistently denied playing the role of spoiler. When a Kennedy campaign official gave a detailed presentation laying out how he could help Trump, the Kennedy campaign distanced itself from her.

But now Kennedy’s vice-presidential running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has dropped any pretense. She indicated in a new podcast interview that the Kennedy campaign would prefer to help Trump than see Vice President Kamala Harris win the presidency. And she even floated the idea that she and Kennedy could drop out of the race to assist in that outcome.

Speaking on the “Impact Theory” podcast, Shanahan laid out two paths forward for the Kennedy campaign: trying to get enough votes to form a more robust third party, or dropping out to help Trump.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at,” Shanahan said. “One is staying in, forming that new party. But we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency, because we draw ... somehow more votes from Trump.

“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump, and ... explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

Kennedy’s campaign didn’t directly comment on whether it agreed with Shanahan’s comments. It instead pointed to an X post from Kennedy that said he was “willing to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.”

Shanahan’s unvarnished comments are the latest indicator of a fading and potentially dying campaign. But as much as that, they feed into Democrats’ long-standing allegations about Kennedy’s true motivations.

Shanahan’s comments also come, it bears emphasizing, shortly after it became evident that Kennedy was suddenly hurting Trump.

Shanahan said generally positive things about Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, despite Kennedy’s having said back in April that he “oppose[d] Donald Trump and all he stands for.”

She also played up the idea of Kennedy serving in the Trump administration and even of her falling back on a run for office in California. (Trump responded to Shanahan’s comments by telling CNN that he would entertain giving Kennedy a job in exchange for Kennedy’s dropping out and endorsing him.)

Needless to say, these are not generally the kinds of things you hear from a serious campaign that is full speed ahead. Merely airing them publicly is likely to give would-be supporters pause; one donor set to hold a fundraiser for Kennedy told ABC News he is now canceling the event.

Kennedy’s campaign has seen its support wane in recent months. And he was dealt a sharp blow when Harris joined the race, reducing the ranks of voters who dislike both major-party nominees (“double haters”). While Kennedy once polled in the mid- to high-teens - some of the best numbers for a non-major-party candidate since Ross Perot in the 1990s - he’s now averaging about 5 percent.

The other big shift has been in who he is pulling from. He previously drew about evenly from the Democratic and Republican tickets, despite his and his family’s ties to the Democratic Party and his earlier Democratic primary campaign.

But more recent surveys suggest the third-party factor has shifted against Trump. Harris actually gains ground when you include third-party and independent candidates, and Kennedy in particular draws significantly more from Trump.

One survey showed Kennedy supporters preferred Trump to Harris more than 2-to-1 when asked to choose. Another showed Kennedy pulling 23 percent of Republican-leaning independents, compared to just 8 percent of Democratic-leaning ones.

All of which suggests that if Kennedy does drop out, it could help Trump on the margins by pushing those Trump-inclined voters toward him.

(It’s worth noting that most major polls now are straight head-to-heads between Trump and Harris, so we have a pretty good sense for what a Kennedy-less race looks like.)

Shanahan, for her part, suggests that the motivation to help Trump has come about relatively recently. She blamed Democrats for stifling Kennedy’s campaign by keeping him off the debate stage and launching legal action against his campaign. More conspiratorially, she suggested they were “manipulating polls” somehow and “even planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it and to create actual legal issues for us.”

“They have, unfortunately, turned us into a spoiler,” Shanahan said. She added that “we are taking a very serious look at making sure that the people that have corrupted our fair and free democracy do not end up in office in November.”

That stated reason would be easier to square if not for the fact that Trump tried to overturn an election based upon lies and distortions. And just two weeks ago, Kennedy reached out to this supposedly nefarious and underhanded Harris campaign to discuss trading an endorsement of her for an administration job.

The Kennedy campaign seems to realize that it is listing badly, and they’re suddenly in the bargaining phase.

The Harris campaign had almost no motivation to cut such a deal. But Trump suddenly does.