Who will be Trump’s Vice President pick? Will it be Nikki Haley, despised by the MAGA base but potentially acceptable to the Establishment? Will it be Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders or South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, in an attempt to win over women? Or perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy, to reward his loyalty on the campaign trail? According to a recent report in the New York Post, it could be none of the above: the Trump campaign has allegedly reached out to RFK Jr. about his being Trump’s 2024 running mate.
Reporting on that, the New York Post claimed that former President Trump’s 2024 team reached out to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team shortly after the JFK nephew announced his bid for the presidency, in April of 2023.
In its report on that, the NYP quoted “one person familiar with the matter” as saying, “Trump operatives expressed an interest in Kennedy early on, but it was all premature.” Continuing, that individual added that the overture came “right out of the box when Bobby announced.”
Mr. Kennedy, for his part, was apparently uninterested at the time and has continued to maintain that he would not want to be Trump’s Vice President. Further, Mr. Kennedy’s move from running as a Democrat to running as an Independent likely shows he sees a path as a non-aligned third-party insurgent rather than a player in either of the current parties.
Similarly, senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita refuted the NYP’s claim. Posting on X about the NYP report, LaCivita said, “This is 100% FAKE NEWS – NO ONE from the Trump Campaign ever approached RFK jr (or ever will) – one of the most LIBERAL and radical environmentalists in the country. For all the fake news- update your stories.”
However, the individual quoted in the original NYP report then went on to add that though that overture might have come too early in the race, a Trump-Kennedy run is still far from being impossible. In fact, the insider was quoted by the NYP as saying, “Anything’s possible. I wouldn’t write it off by any means.”
Further, on the Trump side, Steve Bannon has insisted that a Trump-Kennedy ticket would result in a massive landslide. In a 2023 episode of his War Room podcast, for example, Mr. Bannon claimed, “If somehow it worked out [that] you could get Kennedy as a running mate — and I don’t know, that is far from even technically can happen because of the structure of the Democratic and Republican parties and ballot access and all that — you could get 60 percent or higher in the country and win a massive landslide.”
During that episode, Mr. Bannon also said, “We stay maniacally focused in the general — particularly as, remember, the firestorm of the lawfare will start next spring with him.” Continuing, he went on to add, “If you can walk through that, which you can do — you can walk through that fire … and I think get 55 percent or more of the country.”
Watch a member of Trump’s team talk about his VP decision here:
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