The Best People

 Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  MAGA people (e.g., Hegseth) have replaced the normals (e.g., Mattis) that populated the first Trump administration.

Jessica Glenza at The Guardian:

Donald Trump nominated Casey Means, a wellness influencer and medical doctor with an inactive license for US surgeon general this week – his second nominee to serve as “the nation’s doctor”.

Trump abruptly withdrew his first nominee, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, before her Senate confirmation hearing, amid criticism from the right and confusion about her medical credentials.

His new nominee, Means, is a 37-year-old Los Angeles-based medical entrepreneur who shot to prominence in right-leaning wellness circles by criticizing mainstream medicine and advocating for a healthier food supply.

...

 “We should not toss out the window everything Casey is saying, but I would proceed with caution given her training,” said Prof Gabby Headrick, as assistant professor and director of nutrition programs at George Washington University’s Milken School of Public Health.

“Typically and historically, the person appointed to that role and confirmed is someone who has an active medical license, someone who has completed residency, and has held a leadership role in a medical institution. Casey Means does not have the resumé … She also is not trained in nutrition.”

Means also faces opposition from the far right. Activist Laura Loomer, who was critical of Trump’s first nominee, is skeptical of Means – calling her “unfit” for surgeon general and promoting events with Means’s critics.

Loomer previously described Nesheiwat as “a pro-Covid vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case”. Covid vaccines and the technology that underpins them have become a target of right-leaning politicians.

Paul Schwartzman, Spencer S. Hsu and Jeremy Barr at WP:

Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host chosen by President Donald Trump to become interim U.S. attorney in D.C., is the archetype of what he has shown to prefer in his appointees: combative, camera-ready and loyal enough to have sought to discredit the results of the 2020 election that he lost.

Yet Pirro, a former New York judge and prosecutor, also possesses enough political baggage that she is sure to provoke fierce partisan debate if Trump nominates her as the permanent leader of the nation’s largest U.S. attorney’s office.

Less than 24 hours after Trump announced Pirro’s appointment, hailing her as “incredibly well qualified,” Democrats and Republicans staked out vastly divergent positions on her looming arrival in Washington. She’ll replace the president’s first interim choice, Ed Martin, who is departing after 15 turbulent weeks in office.

Rich Shapiro at NBC:

Long before she was a Fox News host who pushed pro-Trump election conspiracy theories, Jeanine Pirro was an ambitious New York politician whose career stalled after she was recorded plotting to bug her then-husband’s boat to catch him in an affair.

The revelation rocked Pirro’s campaign for New York attorney general nearly 20 years ago, resulting in days of front-page headlines in the city’s tabloids (“BUG THIS LOVE BOAT!” blared the Daily News cover).

The conversation took place in 2005 between Pirro and the former commissioner of the New York Police Department, Bernard Kerik, a close ally of Rudy Giuliani’s.

“What am I supposed to do, Bernie? Watch him f--- her every night?” Pirro said, according to a transcript obtained by WNBC-TV’s Jonathan Dienst in 2006. “What am I supposed to do? I can go on the boat. I’ll put the f-----g thing on myself.”

Peter Aitken at Newsweek:

Pirro is the 23rd current or former Fox News employee Trump has recruited for his administration since taking office earlier this year. However, his relationship with the network runs far deeper and longer than just this year nominees.

During his first administration, Trump regularly called Fox News hosts live on air to have impromptu, off-the-cuff interviews. He also allegedly would consult any number of hosts off the air, including Fox News powerhouse Sean Hannity.

Trump, however, decided to elevate that special relationship in his second administration by appointing hosts, many of whom have only ever had glowing praise for Trump during their broadcasts, to key Cabinet positions and high-profile roles. Comedian and TV host Bill Maher quipped on Friday night during Real Time with Bill Maher that "I've heard of state-run TV; this is TV run state."

RFK Jr. Strikes Again

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Erika Edwards and Brandy Zadrozny at NBC:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to hand over multiple sets of vaccine safety data to a discredited researcher with a history of spreading misinformation that vaccines cause autism, according to two sources familiar with the plan. Both learned about the matter during recent meetings at the CDC but were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

David Geier, who shows up in the Department of Health and Human Services’ directory as a “senior data analyst,” will reportedly analyze the data. Geier has repeatedly claimed that vaccines cause autism — a link that’s already been fully debunked.

...

Geier’s hiring was first reported Tuesday evening by The Washington Post. It was unclear Wednesday whether the plans had since changed. Neither HHS nor Geier responded to requests for comment.

A growing measles outbreak is spreading in at least three states: Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. As of Wednesday, 377 cases had been confirmed in those states — the vast majority in unvaccinated children in Texas. It’s the largest measles outbreak in the U.S. since 2019. Two people have died, including a 6-year-old girl.

More here. 

The Best People

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for the nation’s top health post, has repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years.

In at least 36 appearances, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines, despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the use of vaccination to protect people from deadly infectious diseases and refuting any ties to autism, The Post found in a review of more than 400 of Kennedy’s podcast appearances, interviews and public speeches since 2020.

Kennedy, who is scheduled to face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, criticized vaccines more broadly in at least 114 appearances, calling them dangerous, saying the risks outweigh the benefits and making misleading claims about vaccine safety testing or discrediting vaccine efficacy.

Holy sh*t. Senator Bennet absolutely annihilated RFK Jr. and exposed him for what he really is—an anti-vaxxer crackpot and grifter. In the pre-Trump era, this would have been the end of his nomination, and he would have withdrawn immediately.pic.twitter.com/Mmu6Ic23Vn

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 29, 2025

 

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp

— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Brett Forrest, Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Feng at WSJ:

To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records.

Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized.

Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.

The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.

...

Gabbard’s relative inexperience in national intelligence, as well as her past support for regimes in Russia and Syria, has raised concern among some national-security officials and lawmakers. Gabbard served two years on the House Homeland Security committee.

Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power in recent meetings with Senate Republicans. GOP lawmakers are expected to support her nomination.

Trolling Trump with the Medal of Freedom

 Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Our next book will look at the 2024 election.

Biden is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Hillary Clinton and George Soros.  If that were not enough Trump trolling, he is making posthumous awards to Robert Kennedy and George Romney. Michael Shear at NYT:

His decision to give the medal posthumously to Mr. Kennedy could be read as a rebuke to Mr. Kennedy’s son, a member of perhaps the country’s most famous Democratic family. The decision by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to endorse Mr. Trump during the campaign — despite denunciations from most of his relatives — helped lead to Mr. Trump’s choice of him to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

The White House noted that the elder Mr. Romney, a Republican, had been the chairman and president of American Motors Corporation and had later served as governor of Michigan and as secretary of housing and urban development. But he was also the father of the younger Mr. Romney, the only Republican to vote twice to convict Mr. Trump after his two impeachments.

The award for Mr. Romney echoes Mr. Biden’s decision this week to award the Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, to Representative Liz Cheney, who led the effort to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions during the assault on the Capitol in 2021.

An Anti-RFK Coalition?

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  In 2024, RFK Jr. initially looked as if he might be a consequential independent candidate. But after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, his support collapsed.  He pulled out and endorsed Trump, who is nominating him to head HHS.

 RFK Jr. will probably win confirmation on a party-line vote. But if he doesn't, his downfall could result from a coalition of vaccine supporters, Republicans who oppose his stance on abortion and regulation, and farm-state senators who object to his plan to stop high-fructose corn syrup.

Mary Kekatos at ABC:

Ever since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, he has been vocal about his plans to "Make America Healthy Again."

Kennedy has vowed to crack down on dyes in the food industry and to reduce pesticides in the farm and agriculture industry.

He has called for restrictions on ultra-processed foods as part of an initiative to address the high rates of chronic disease in the United States, and he's said more research needs to be conducted on vaccines.

"I think where you would see the challenges would be on allocation of money," Shana Gadarian, a professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York, told ABC News.

"If all of a sudden HHS is now in the business of passing more regulations on the food industry, on agriculture, we might see that a Republican Senate majority and a Republican House is less interested in allocating a budget to HHS that then would be under a different leadership," she continued.

Spoilers

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  In 2024, RFK Jr. initially looked as if he might be a consequential independent candidate. But after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, his support collapsed.  He pulled out and endorsed Trump.

Aaron Blake at WP:

The impact of independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspending his presidential campaign Friday and endorsing Donald Trump remains to be seen.

It’s more likely to be a boon to Trump than to Vice President Kamala Harris, given Kennedy was drawing significantly more votes from the right and from would-be Trump supporters. But Kennedy’s share of the vote was at about 5 percent and falling.

One thing that’s relatively evident, though: To the extent the remaining third-party and independent candidates pull votes and even potentially play spoilers, it appears more likely to be at Harris’s expense.

Kennedy’s exit leaves three significant names below Trump and Harris on at least some state ballots: Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver and independent Cornel West.

All three come from left-leaning backgrounds. Stein and West are both generally further to the political left than Harris. Oliver’s potential appeal is harder to define, as it often is with Libertarians. But he’s a former Democrat and left-leaning Libertarian who defeated a more right-wing candidate at May’s Libertarian National Convention.

RFK Out

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  In 2024, RFK Jr. initially looked as if he might be a consequential independent candidate. But after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, his support collapsed.  Yesterday, he pulled out and endorsed Trump.

I am sharing a personal statement that my family and I have made in response to my brother’s announcement. pic.twitter.com/j7vTTabNYZ

— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) August 23, 2024

I imagined I had a story in that time that RFK Jr telephoned me to chew me out for a story - and I gradually realized he had confused me for somebody else. THIS on the other hand is a STORY.https://t.co/eP2zhhMgjb

— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 24, 2024

Machiavellian AF. pic.twitter.com/ptnT6J9USt

— DrJackBrown 🌊 (@DrGJackBrown) August 24, 2024

 

RFK Jr posted a lengthy tweet in May stating “Trump scammed American workers.”

The tweet listed several reasons for not supporting Trump and ended with RFK Jr stating:

“If you think a second Trump term would be any different, you are engaging in wishful thinking.” pic.twitter.com/5zVgui7AIl

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) August 23, 2024

Here's how Trump really feels about RFK Jr:

"I'd even take Biden over Junior...His Views on Vaccines are fake, as is everything else about his Candidacy." pic.twitter.com/Qdo9CM853c

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) August 24, 2024

Third Party Slump

 David Weigel at Semafor:

“The biggest factor that was unique to this election cycle was a deep distaste of both candidates, which opened the door to elevated third-party voting even in a time of record polarization,” said Lakshya Jain, an elections analyst at Split Ticket. “Kamala Harris’ ascension seems to have completely changed this dynamic.”

Kennedy’s support took the hardest hit. Before Biden dropped out, he was polling as high as 22% in a three-candidate test. Post-switch polling has put him in the mid-single digits nationally and in swing states, at the same time that a Democratic campaign to remove him from state ballots was scoring wins. On Monday, a New York judge ordered Kennedy off the state ballot, ruling that he maintained a “sham” address in the state; Kennedy said he’d appeal and file a separate federal lawsuit, which he hoped would “preempt” ballot challenges.

Michael Scherer and  Josh Dawsey at WP:

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought a meeting last week with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to discuss the possibility of serving in her administration, perhaps as a Cabinet secretary, if he throws his support behind her campaign and she wins, according to Kennedy campaign officials.

Harris and her advisers have not responded with an offer to meet or shown interest in the proposal, say people familiar with the conversations.

The Kennedy outreach, made through intermediaries, follows a meeting in Milwaukee last month between Kennedy and Republican nominee Donald Trump to discuss a similar policy role and endorsement that resulted in no agreement. In those discussions, Kennedy spoke about advising Trump in a second term on health and medical issues.

RFK Jr. and the Bear

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies tried to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote. The tactic might be backfiring. RFK seemed to be pulling votes from both sides, but after this bizarre story about the bear, it is hard to see how he can keep voters who would otherwise go to Harris.  If you're an RFK voter who thinks it is okay to prank the NYPD with a dead bear, your second choice is probably Trump.

 Clare Malone at The New Yorker:

One day, in the fall of 2014, Kennedy was driving to a falconry outing in upstate New York when he passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road. He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

After the outing, Kennedy, who was then sixty and recently married to Hines, got an idea. He drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist. The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the N.Y.P.D. “This is a highly unusual situation,” a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times. “It’s awful.” In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of J.F.K.’s granddaughters, a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, “People are crazy.”

RFK Jr, in an attempt to get ahead of a forthcoming New Yorker story, says in a new video that he dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park and made it seem like a bicyclist did it.

The video is filmed with Roseanne Barr. pic.twitter.com/ajzbGzkuvg

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 4, 2024

RFK Jr. and Ballot Access

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The the 2024 race has begun. So has the debate over debates.

:Katherine Koretski at NBC:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first reaction to this week’s debate agreement between President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and CNN was to accuse them of “colluding” against him. But within hours, the independent presidential candidate changed his tune: He was going to try to win a one-month sprint to meet CNN’s criteria and crash the stage.

The question is whether both Kennedy’s ballot-accessballot-access machine and the state government offices that will process his petition signatures are capable of moving quickly enough to get him on enough state ballots by mid-June to meet the debate criteria — and what exactly the cable network’s criteria, which have been used for autumn presidential debates for decades, mean in a different context at the beginning of summer.

Kennedy’s campaign has long aimed to get on the ballot in all 50 states before Election Day, but the debate accelerated its timeline because one of the criteria for participation is being “on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency prior to the eligibility deadline” a week before the debate.

JJessica Piper at Politico:

A major cash infusion from his running mate helped Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s longshot presidential campaign substantially ramp up spending on ballot access in April.

An $8 million donation from Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan helped the Kennedy campaign spend $6.5 million in the month of April, up nearly 50 percent from March. A firm that works on ballot access accounted for more than one third of the monthly expenditures, according to a campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission Friday evening.

Dems Fight RFK Jr.

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote.

 Elena Schneider at Politico:

The coalition of Democratic groups that pressured No Labels out of the 2024 contest is now turning its sights on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Billboards funded by the Democratic National Committee have begun popping up outside Kennedy’s events. Trackers paid for by American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, are following him with cameras. And another super PAC, founded exclusively to take on third-party threats, is message-testing ads on Kennedy in coordination with Future Forward, the flagship pro-Biden super PAC.

It’s a widespread effort among Democratic donors and strategists to neutralize Kennedy’s third-party threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection.

And Biden’s allies are now considering going even further, with a coalition of major Democratic groups privately discussing running a negative ad campaign against Kennedy.

Talks are preliminary, and the size and scope of the campaign — and even if it will go forward — remain unclear. But should it get the green light, the effort would likely be spearheaded by Future Forward; Clear Choice, another super PAC founded to stop third-party candidates; and American Bridge, another Democratic super PAC, according to two people involved in the effort who are not authorized to talk about it publicly.

If they cannot keep him off the ballot, they might try to drive antivax Trump voters into the RFK camp.

 

Joe Biden should run some ads about how he and Donald Trump don't agree on much, but they do agree that the COVID-19 vaccine Trump shepherded to completion and Biden successfully distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans was a modern miracle that saved lives. https://t.co/aUof7YrgN2

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 30, 2024

RFK & AIP

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote.

Jenavieve Hatch at The Sacramento Bee:

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that he has officially made the California presidential ballot after the far-right American Independent Party offered to nominate him as their candidate.

Kennedy, who announced Bay Area tech entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate last month, celebrated the AIP nomination Monday in a five-minute YouTube video.

He acknowledged that “ironically” the AIP was originally the party of segregationist and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, “but it’s had its own rebirth before I came along.”

The AIP’s contemporary platform is staunchly conservative — its members are strong proponents of small, limited government and taxation, Christian conservative values, the Second Amendment and secure borders. In California, there were 825,981 AIP voters as of October 2023 — just under 4% of the state’s registered voters.

The counties with the highest percentage of AIP voters are rural Lassen, Modoc and Calaveras counties.

 From the latest available platform of the AIP:

The Protection of Life, and the Duties and Rights of Families

We believe in protecting all human life however weak, defenseless, or disheartened; we endorse the family as the essential bulwark of liberty, compassion, responsibility, and industry; and declare the family's right and responsibility to nurture, discipline, and educate its children. We maintain that all humans are persons from the beginning of their biological development and especially deserve our love and nurture when they are weakest and most dependent.

Marriage Between a Man and a Woman

We insist that marriage is between a man and a woman and assert the role of the law in establishing and reinforcing the mutual rights and obligations of that God-ordained contract.

The Individual and Common Defense

We assert the absolute, concurrent Second Amendment guaranteed individual right to self defense against impositions by other citizens or our government, coupled with a strong common defense, a common defense which requires a national sovereignty not damaged by imprudent or un-Constitutional treaties.

The RFK Effect

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote. The tactic might be backfiring.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

A trio of recent polls shows that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s independent candidacy may be hurting former President Trump more than President Biden.

Why it matters: President Biden says his polling numbers are moving in the right direction. They look even better when the latest results for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are factored in.

By the numbers: Biden and Trump are tied 46%-46% in the latest Quinnipiac University national poll.

• Throw RFK in the mix, and it's still tied 37%-37%.
• But force RFK voters to choose and they break 47%-29% for Trump.
• That dynamic is consistent with two other polls — a Marist survey on Monday and a NBC News one on Sunday — that show Biden's margin increasing when RFK and other third party candidates are included.

RFK Jr's Family and Associates Are Against Him

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote. Biden supporters have noticed.

Kevin Liptak and Michael Williams, CNN:

President Joe Biden received the formal endorsement of more than a dozen members of the extended Kennedy family on Thursday, aiming to harness the legacy of a storied Democratic family while implicitly underscoring their near-universal rejection of a third-party challenge mounted by one of their own, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The broader Kennedy family has mostly shunned RFK Jr.’s campaign, calling it “dangerous,” even as the candidate himself looks to capitalize on his last name and family history.

But Thursday’s event in Philadelphia - the same city where RFK Jr. announced his independent bid for the presidency in October - nonetheless highlights the threat Kennedy poses to Biden as he seeks to win reelection in a race where even a low-performing third-party candidate could act as a spoiler.

Aaron Pellish at CNN:

Environmental groups are condemning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid and his environmental policy in new efforts on Friday, portraying him as a candidate who will increase the chances former President Donald Trump is reelected.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate advocacy group where Kennedy previously served as senior attorney for 28 years, is planning to run a full-page advertisement in newspapers through its political arm in six battleground states on Sunday. According to a copy of the ad obtained by CNN, the group is calling on Kennedy to drop out of the race to prevent him from being a spoiler for Trump, who they call “the single worst environmental president our country has ever had.”

“We have spent our careers fighting to protect the planet and its people. As current and former leadership and board members of the NRDC Action Fund, as well as former colleagues of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we have one message for him: Honor our planet, drop out,” the ad reads.

“In nothing more than a vanity candidacy, RFK Jr. has chosen to play the role of election spoiler to the benefit of Donald Trump – the single worst environmental president our country has ever had,” the ad continues.

RFK and Other Stalking Horses

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden. Trump forces are exploiting that sentiment.

Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Rebecca Davis O’Brien at NYT:

Allies of Donald J. Trump are discussing ways to elevate third-party candidates in battleground states to divert votes away from President Biden, along with other covert tactics to diminish Democratic votes.

They plan to promote the independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a “champion for choice” to give voters for whom abortion is a top issue — and who also don’t like Mr. Biden — another option on the ballot, according to one person who is involved in the effort and who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.

Trump allies also plan to amplify the progressive environmental records of Mr. Kennedy and the expected Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, in key states — contrasting their policies against the record-high oil production under Mr. Biden that has disappointed some climate activists.

A third parallel effort in Michigan is meant to diminish Democratic turnout in November by amplifying Muslim voters’ concerns about Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump allies are discussing running ads in Dearborn, Mich., and other parts of the state with large Muslim populations that would thank Mr. Biden for standing with Israel, according to three people familiar with the effort, which is expected to be led by an outside group unaffiliated with the Trump campaign.

Many of these third-party-boosting efforts will probably be run out of dark-money entities that are loosely supportive of Mr. Trump. Both the Trump campaign and the main super PAC supporting the former president, MAGA Inc., are already aggressively framing Mr. Kennedy as a far-left radical to draw potential Democratic voters away from Mr. Biden.

 Andrew Kaczynski,at CNN:

A New York-based campaign official for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who raised the possibility that voting for the independent presidential candidate would help Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden previously promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and attended “Stop the Steal” rallies after the election, including the rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, that preceded the deadly riot at the US Capitol.

Rita Palma, who has identified herself as the Kennedy campaign’s state director in New York, also repeatedly called Trump her “favorite president,” according to tweets along with comments she posted on the conservative social media site Parler that have since been made private.

According to a KFILE examination of those now-private posts, Palma also posed for a photo at the former Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, alongside Sidney Powell – the pro-Trump attorney who pleaded guilty in Georgia’s election subversion case.

In February 2021, Palma tweeted her support for Trump as a presidential candidate in 2024 and even asked whether he could run for a third term in 2028 – which is not constitutionally allowed as a president can serve only two full terms.

Useful Idiots

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy. 

 Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn at WP:

In an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment, Kremlin-linked political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions, according to a trove of internal Kremlin documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.z...

One of the documents reviewed by The Post called for the use of Trump’s Truth Social platform as the only way to disseminate posts “without censorship,” while “short-lived” accounts would be created for Facebook, Twitter (now known as X) and YouTube.

Alexandra Marquez at NBC

GOP Rep. Mike Turner on Sunday said that Russian propaganda has taken hold among some of his House Republican colleagues and is even "being uttered on the House floor."

"We see directly coming from Russia ... communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor," Turner, the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."

"There are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not," he added.

Turner's office did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for clarification about which members of Congress he was referring to.

His comments come on the heels of remarks House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Michael McCaul made this week about how Russian propaganda has taken root among the GOP.

McCaul, a Texas Republican, told Puck News that he thinks "Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base."

RNC Chair Michael Whatley says the quiet part loud on Maria Bartiromo's show and portrays Ukraine as an "aggressive" adversary of the US pic.twitter.com/CS6B5tiK4h

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2024

 Ally Sammarco at Los Angeles Magazine:

Then, in an interview with Twins Podcast, F. Kennedy Jr. parroted Russian propaganda almost word for word when discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that Putin just wanted to "de-Nazify" Ukraine.

"Putin said 'Look I don't want to go into Crimea. Let's negotiate a peace,’” Kennedy said. “Alright, and the three things he wanted — he wanted to keep NATO out of Ukraine. That was number one. He wanted to de-Nazify the Ukrainian government."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish.

Putin said in televised remarks in February 2022 that his goal was to "seek to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."

NEW and very disturbing:

Straight out of Putin’s talking points and out of RFK Jr.’s mouth — here he is saying Putin merely wanted to “de-nazify” Ukraine. Literally pure Putin propaganda for the invasion and war of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/sE9yxk3sQL

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) April 5, 2024

Marjorie Taylor Greene once again does Putin’s bidding:

“This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians...Russia is not doing that. They are not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.” pic.twitter.com/QEMYN1BLDn

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) April 8, 2024

RFK Jr. Ballot Access and Veep Money

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

Peder Schaefer at Politico:

In the past week the Democratic Party and other outside groups have put together a team to oppose third-party and independent candidates, a sign that Democrats are ready to fight back against candidacies they perceive as spoiler threats, like Kennedy.

The effort is staffed by longtime operatives like communications consultant Lis Smith, who helped guide Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, and Dana Remus, who until recently served as Biden’s White House counsel, underscoring the seriousness of the concern.

The Democratic National Committee calls Kennedy a “stalking horse” who will increase Trump’s chances of winning in November. They point to significant contributions from Timothy Mellon, a Trump mega donor, to American Values 2024, and to lingering concerns that in 2016 third-party candidates may have tipped the presidency to Trump.

While Democratic attention was initially directed toward the wide array of third-party contenders, such as independent Cornel West and the No Labels coalition, Kennedy has become the focus of more energy as of late.

Geoffrey Skelley at ABC:

At this still-early juncture, just one minor candidate or party has qualified in enough states to theoretically win the presidency with 270 of the Electoral College's 538 electoral votes (note our publication's name). So far, the Libertarian Party looks likely to appear on at least 37 state ballots worth 381 electoral votes, having made the ballot in 36 states, according to Ballot Access News, and submitted petition signatures in Ohio. (Because many states won't confirm qualification until later this year, we're including cases in which a party or candidate has submitted qualification signatures or claims to have enough backing to qualify, as long as such claims can't be contradicted by available data. In a few cases, qualification might not actually happen.)

The Libertarians are in this position because they're arguably the most well-supported minor party nationally, with about three times as many registered voters as the next-closest third party, the Green Party. For their part, the Greens look to have access in about 21 states, having recently submitted signatures in South Dakota. No Labels, the bipartisan group behind this cycle's most-ballyhooed third-party bid, seems on course to overtake the Greens: Overall, the organization claims to have qualified in 18 states, while Ballot Access News noted that the group had completed its registration or signature drives to qualify as a party in at least four other states — this despite No Labels's insistence that it's not a party. Meanwhile, the conservative Constitution Party has also made 12 state ballots and looks to have met the signature requirement for a 13th in North Carolina.

Beyond these party or quasi-party organizations, Kennedy's campaign has officially made the ballot in one state — Utah — and claims to have qualified in three others, while an allied super PAC claims to have sufficient signatures for Kennedy to make the ballot in four more. For his part, West claims to have made the ballot in four states so far.

Ballot access efforts take money.  RFK Jr. picked a running mate who has money: Nicole Shanahan.  Teddy Schleifer reports at Puck:

Shanahan, by all accounts a true believer in Kennedy’s third-party cause, discovered the candidate in a now familiar, almost stereotypical way. According to associates, her evolution away from the political mainstream began while researching her daughter’s autism diagnosis. Shanahan was consumed, she has said, spending more than half of her time investigating the condition and talking to scientists. (Connections between vaccines and autism have been repeatedly debunked.) In the end, her curiosity led her to Kennedy, an environmental lawyer now better known as one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates.

There was also her divorce, finalized last year, which gave her a checkbook without interference from Bayshore. In mid-2022, she started a new family office, Planeta Management, which gave the $4 million check to the super PAC. And presumably that’s just a taste of the capital Shanahan has at her disposal. The terms of her divorce settlement with Brin haven’t been made public, but as I’ve reported, some R.F.K. allies had been told cryptically in recent weeks that they wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore—intimating the arrival of some serious cash. Presidential and vice presidential candidates aren’t limited in their self-funding.

Still, there’s the question that everyone is asking: How much capital does she really have to commit to their joint bid? My sense, for what it’s worth, is that I’d be surprised if she put in $50 million—but wouldn’t be surprised by $15 million. Perhaps that’s why a Kennedy campaign aide called me late Monday night to ask if her divorce settlement was a public document.

The money, of course, also accelerated her entry into Kennedy’s inner circle. Shanahan did not know Kennedy well before she made her first donation in mid-2023, I’m told by a source familiar with the relationship. But over the course of that year, Shanahan—enticed by R.F.K.’s appearances on various podcasts—began making connections with Kennedyworld, which was elated to welcome a hyper-connected Silicon Valley impresario.

 

Third Party Update

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

 Peter Hamby at Puck writes on the CA Libertarian convention and the prospect that RFK Jr. could win the party's presidential nod:

That prospect crashed into reality the following day, when convention organizers ran a presidential straw poll. Out of 95 votes cast, [Lars] Mapstead won. [Michael] Rectenwald came in second. Kennedy came in dead last in the straw poll, earning only a single vote.

...

Of course, Kennedy was merely testing the waters in Costa Mesa. He isn’t officially seeking the Libertarian nod. But given the resistance to his candidacy from the convention-goers, his path to get on ballots everywhere has essentially reset to where it was before the weekend. Kennedy’s team is confronting a patchwork of ballot-access laws that are different in every state.

Some states require tens of thousands of validated signatures, which is a heavy lift for even the most well-funded candidates from the two major parties. Kennedy, at least, has money to count on. Thanks to his family name, Los Angeles connections, and small-dollar online support, Kennedy is raising a respectable amount of money for a gadfly candidate. He ended the fourth fundraising quarter last year with $5.4 million in the bank. But the Kennedy campaign continues to burn through cash, spending heavily to collect ballot access signatures. A super PAC backing his campaign is also working to secure ballot access for Kennedy, but that effort is likewise facing a legal challenge from the Democratic National Committee over claims of improper coordination.

Tara Palmieri at Puck:

So it’s finally put up or shut up time for No Labels—the disorganized dark money group that counts Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, and Harlan Crow as donors—to execute its quixotic plan to assemble a unity-ticket to challenge the increasingly inevitable disappointment of a Trump–Biden rematch. Over the last two years, the third-party group has raised tens of millions on the assumption that No Labels and its opportunistic C.E.O., Nancy Jacobson, could recruit a viable candidate—Larry Hogan, say, with Joe Manchin as V.P. Sure, No Labels has been able to get their name on the ballot in 16 states. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to find that dream ticket, which will prevent them from ballot access in many others.

So on March 8, just three days after Nikki Haley is set to be demoralized in 16 states on Super Tuesday, No Labels is handing over the power to their 800 delegates to make a choice about whether to move forward, and with whom. Their ideal candidate, of course, has been Haley, herself.

In fact, No Labels emissaries have been trying to persuade Haley through back channels, but she’s emphatically resisted. Joe Lieberman, who sits on the board, has told donors that the organization has three strong options, including a Republican governor, but he won’t share names. So far, No Labels has also flirted with total non-starters like Chris Christie and Hogan and Manchin, until they got turned down. (Hogan is now running for Senate in Maryland.) It’s hard to see anyone leaving their party to run as a spoiler, and No Labels had made it clear they need a Republican on the top of the ticket so as not to hand the election to Trump.

 

Third-Party Stumbles

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Larry Hogan gave up a brief No Labels flirtation to run for the Senate. It is dawning on people that a No Labels candidate would serve to elect Trump. At TNR, Greg Sargent reports:

Around six months ago, when speculation raged that Senator Joe Manchin might join a third-party presidential ticket on behalf of the centrist group No Labels, he privately consulted with Richard Gephardt, the former congressman who has taken up the cause of stopping No Labels in its tracks.

Gephardt showed Manchin private polling that he’d bankrolled himself, illustrating that such a bid could only help Donald Trump beat President Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Gephardt reminded Manchin that even third-party bids that win real public support have routinely failed to garner many, or even any, Electoral College votes.

In short, Gephardt pointed out, a third-party bid could never succeed on its own; it would mostly take votes away from Biden. Manchin absorbed the argument, the person says, and then expressed an acute worry: Above all, Manchin said emphatically, he did not want to become the person who handed the presidency to Trump.

That argument finally seemed to prevail with Manchin last week, when he announced that he will not be part of any third-party ticket after all. Manchin declared that he didn’t want to be a “spoiler,” having apparently realized that by far the most likely consequence of such a bid would be a second term for Trump, as he began to fear six months ago.

RFK Jr. has staffed his campaign with people who lack relevant experience.  It is going poorly. Diana Falzone at Mediaite:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is in disarray amid an exodus of campaign workers who say disorganization, lavish spending, amateurish leadership, and a severe disconnect between the campaign and the candidate’s values have led the long-shot bid for the presidency astray.

Fourteen members of Kennedy24 have resigned since the start of the year, including 12 field staff and two main staff, according to multiple sources who spoke with Mediaite on the condition of anonymity. One source close to the campaign pinned the turmoil on two leaders: Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, campaign manager and Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, and Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who serves as the campaign’s communications director.

The source described Fox Kennedy and Bigtree as “self-serving” operatives who were “making decisions based on their own personal advancement opportunities, and not acting in the best interest of the candidate.”

 

RFK Ad

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.

Erin Doherty at Axios:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apologized to his family Sunday night after a super PAC backing his presidential bid ran a Super Bowl ad that mirrored a 1960 presidential campaign ad for his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy.

Why it matters: The ad was an extraordinarily expensive investment and generated online buzz for the long-shot presidential candidate who is seeking to boost his national name recognition.

The latest: "I'm so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain," Kennedy wrote on X Sunday evening.Kennedy said the ad — which remained pinned at the top of his X page Monday morning — was made without "any involvement or approval" from his campaign.

Between the lines: Many members of Kennedy's family have condemned his decision to run as an independent presidential candidate, fearing that he could siphon off votes from President Biden in the general election.Bobby Shriver, the son of the former president's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, said after the ad aired on Sunday that his mother "would be appalled by" the health care views of RFK Jr. "Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA," Shriver posted on X.

 

Learn more: https://t.co/4YjLwreZN9 pic.twitter.com/JLEPW7H901

— American Values 2024 (@AmValues2024) February 12, 2024