(Headline USA) Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed this week that “emissaries” for former President Donald Trump asked him if he would serve as Trump’s vice president.
President Trump calls me an ultra-left radical. I’m soooo liberal that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer.
I am against President Trump, and President Biden can’t win.
Judging by his new website, it looks like President Trump knows who…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 15, 2024
“President Trump calls me an ultra-left radical. I’m soooo liberal that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer,” Kennedy tweeted on Monday.
The comment followed a series of attacks on Kennedy by a Trump-backing super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.
A new website launched by the group—called “Radical F***ing Kennedy,” in a play on the candidate’s initials—portrays Kennedy as a “radical liberal” and cites several policies he’s endorsed that align with the Democratic Party, including his support for the Green New Deal and his calls for reparations to black people.
In his tweet, Kennedy went on to argue that Trump’s team was attacking him because “Trump knows who actually can beat him.”
Trump’s campaign, however, denied that Kennedy was ever being considered for the role.
“@RobertfKennedJr … your [sic] a leftie loonie that would never be approached to be on the ticket..sorry!” tweeted Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign senior adviser.
LaCivita also shared a statement from January, showing that the campaign had put to rest any speculation about the coalition ticket shortly after the New Hampshire primary, when Trump continued to battle ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley for the GOP nomination.
“NO ONE from the Trump Campaign ever approached RFK jr (or ever will) – one of the most LIBERAL and radical environmentalists in the country,” he said at the time in response to rumors published by Fox News.
Re-upping this from January …was true then and it’s true now @RobertfKennedJr ….your a leftie loonie that would never be approached to be on the ticket..sorry! https://t.co/Kkti2GOIOS
— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) April 15, 2024
MAGA Inc. also responded to Kennedy, sharing a clip from a 2008 interview he did with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, during which he claimed “voter ID laws are racist,” according to the super PAC.
You are an ultra-left radical. Here you are on Rachel Maddow's show calling Voter ID laws racist. https://t.co/c5LQMGPOCj pic.twitter.com/zsQY2oUfKq
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) April 15, 2024
They also shared past social-media posts Kennedy made, including one in which he praised then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for banning fracking in the state, and another post in 2018, when Kennedy called the National Rifle Association “a terror group” after the Parkland school shooting in Florida.
On at least two occasions, Kennedy also vocally endorsed Hillary Clinton—first in her campaign for U.S. Senate, and later in the 2008 primary race against then-Sen. Barack Obama.
Unfortunately for him, Clinton not only declined to return the favor, but refused to acknoweledge him recently, telling Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon that those complaining about the lack of fresh options in the 2020 rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden should “Get over yourself. Those are the two choices.”
Though Trump has begun to attack Kennedy more directly, calling him the “most radical Left candidate in the race,” the former president has also encouraged Democratic voters to back Kennedy, arguing he is a “better man than Joe Biden.”
