Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Robert Kenny Junior claimed, who's going to be running this groundbreaking, once in a lifetime, once in a generation, independent campaign to challenge both parties. So for RFK Junior now to just abandon all the critiques that he was seriously making of Trump, now he just become a cog in the very duopoly and he claimed that he was running to dislodge.
You can't say this is an easy decision that mister Kennedy made and you can't say it was just an opportunist. Mister Kennedy went against some of this key advisor in this campaign over this issue. He has a real chance to get into it the Trump administration and bring a lot of these these policies and a lot of these principles that he that is volunteers, the supportive wants. The reality of it is is if you don't have a seat at the table at the ends, you might as well.
Stay at home.
Welcome to counterpoints. We have a great conversation lined up for today. We are joined by journalist Michael Tracy and Jeff Hutt, who was a national field director for the Robert F. Kennedy Junior campaign. First, welcome to both of you. Thank you so much for joining us.
Great to be with you.
Thank you too, It's a real pleasure.
I actually have a logistics question to start out with. So, Jeff, you're working for the RFK Junior campaign. Is that campaign? So he's off the ballot in the swing states, or he's trying to get off the ballot in the swing states. But now Democrats would love it if he would just stay on despite trying to kick.
Him off like a year earlier.
But he's still campaigning and telling people, or he's still telling people to vote for him in the non swing states. So or are you still on the campaign? Is there still a campaign happening? What's going on?
Okay? So to be clear, I was the former national field director.
I left in July of this year, late late June, after the Libertarian convention.
So the campaign has shut down.
It's there is still a volunteer effort going on in the background, but in terms of sort of a paid political effort to knocked doors and get out, no, there is not.
They've shut that down.
Why'd you leave after the Libertarian convention? And what happened at the Libertarian convention.
Well, we had it was a real missed opportunity on behalf of everybody. We had been talking to the Libertarians for several months leading up to that. Actually, some members of our staff had actually been, you know, trying to make inroads into Libertarian Party.
My pitch to the Libertarian Party had always been that.
Robert F.
Kennedy is a once in a lifetime candidate. We should knock down the door with him and all come through. So there was a lot of interest at the Libertarian convention. Unfortunately, at that time we had individuals in our campaign who were not that excited about being on the Libertarian ticket. I think some of those things have changed after the
Libertarian convention and we didn't get on their ballot. I realized at that time that we were not going to be on the debate stage, and I left the campaign to pursue some personal things, but I also knew that it was going to be easier for me to try to use my influence outside of the campaign. And since that time, yes.
Go ahead, I'm sorry, oh no, finished answer.
No, And since that time, I've been early on, I've been a proponent of mister Kennedy working with President Trump, and since leaving the campaign I've been talking to people behind the scenes and tried to make this happen.
Great.
Well, let's start right there actually with you, Michael, because what Jeff just mentioned was the once in a generation possibility that genuinely people really did see in Bobby Kennedy Junior. But you have since called RFK Junior's kind of flip flop on Donald Trump is probably the best way to put it. Given previous tweets, I think we have one of those we can put up on the screen, tweets and statements. Under no circumstance would I ever join up
on the Trump campaign. That's a tweet from May tenth, twenty twenty three. He said, just a quality speculation. There are no circumstances will I joined Donald Trump? On an electoral ticket, our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to government, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart. Now he has joined the Trump campaign to promote Donald Trump to campaign on behalf of Donald Trump and Tracy. You've since referred to this as a quote farce.
So walk us through your position on why this turn in sentiments from Bobby Kennedy Junior is a farce.
Well, I can also quote the founder of the Alliance Party in South Carolina, which actually just did remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. From its ballot spite Robert F. Kennedy Junior having previously accepted the presidential nomination for that minor party in South Carolina. Now, as we know, seemingly on false pretenses, which is that Abra F. Kennedy Junior claimed he was going to be running this groundbreaking, once in a lifetime, once in a generation, independent campaign to challenge both parties.
He would go around bragging that both Donald Trump and previously Joe Biden, when he was a nominee or the presumptive nominee, were both afraid of him and both regarded him as a spoiler.
I mean the polling was always a little bit mixed.
There were some indications that perhaps he did more disadvantage the Democrat, and other polling suggested he perhaps more disadvantaged
the Republican. It wasn't entirely straightforward, but the entire core premise of the Robert F. Kennedy Junior campaign starting in starting last October, when he at least ostensibly declared his quote unquoue independence and that he was going to have this earth shattering independent campaign that was going to make the biggest impact on the electorate since ross Paro in nineteen ninety two, and some polling did indicate that he was garnering more voter support than any third party candidate
since ross Paro in nineteen ninety two. The intent, he claimed was to challenge the two party system, and the founder of the Alliance Party in South Carolina, Jim Rex, told me yesterday that it wouldn't be too strong to say that many of the supporters of that party in South Carolina feel like they've been swindled because RFK Junior, now in retrospect, has proven that he was not intending
to move forward and fulfill that pledge. And when you accept the nomination for president of one of these small parties.
You're effectively forging a contract with them of sorts, and he's abrogated that those various contracts, because remember, Robert F. Kennedy Junior had this multi fold strategy for how he was going to get on the ballot in fifty states plus the District of Columbia, which is in some cases, he was going to already pre existing minor parties in the various states and petitioning them to nominate him for president so then he could be afforded their ballot access.
So I also spoke to the head of a minor party in Michigan, head of the National of the Natural Law Party, that is, who similarly says, now he feels used, and he feels like Robert F. Kennedy Junior pulled a fast one on him by claiming that he was going to actually pose a bona fide challenge to the two party system, which yes, included the Republican Party and Donald Trump.
RFK Junior loves to bang on about how the DNC undermined him, and I don't necessarily dispute that there was an extensive effort to fund litigation by the DNC and DNC aligned groups to challenge his BALA status in the varied States. But that's nothing new for a third party candidacy. Maybe the vigor of.
It with RFK somewhat increased, but no, go.
Talk to Ralph Nader about all the hurdles that he encountered to get on the ballots and say two thousand and four or two thousand and eight. So for RFK Junior now to just abandon all the critiques that he was seriingly making of Trump, including accusing Trump of being a stooge of the military industrial complex in hak to corporate power arming Ukraine and bragging about it and being
unrepentant about that sinking relations with Russia. I mean, rf K Junior loves to also claim that one of the recents he now endorsing Donald Trump is because of the Ukraine War. You don't have to go very far to look up what r f K Junior was saying.
This is as of May.
RFK Junior said, quote, President Trump ragged about armoring Ukraine more than Obama did. He also walked away unilaterally from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Missile Treaty with Russia, destabilizing our relationship he also exacerbated tensions between Ukraine Russia that ultimately caused the war. So that's RFK Junior at least purporting to in part blame Donald Trump for causing the war.
What happened? What happened in interim?
So, Jeff, Jeff, what did happen? As somebody who followed this from the beginning, you know, RFK Junior starts running as a Democrat. In the middle, he's taking on the duopoly, extremely critical of Trump. By the end he's part of the duopoly. So what did happen?
Well, you know, I think so Kennedy came into the campaign with already a broad support base, and a lot of that broad support base had started around the medical freedom movement, the corporate the fighting corporate capture. So this movement had already people had kind of as soon as he jumped on the campaign trail, people had.
Jumped into back him.
At that time, there were a lot of Republicans, a lot of Libertarians, a lot of Bernie folks, a lot of Green Party folks, and they were all willing to run in the Democratic primary and when the Democratic primary and then go on to the presidential knowing that they themselves weren't a Democrat, but knowing that they were behind a cause that was greater, we couldn't the campaign, you know, the problems of the primary.
So mister Kennedy decided that he was going to run.
An independent run, and he did an independent run.
We set up fifty state structure.
We tried to get on the ballot and all those fifty states, and I believe at the end we will maybe New York and a couple other states are going to prove a little difficult.
But what he still did was what he still did was just incredible.
We got to a time where we started looking at third parties to augment the ballot access.
And this was our plan.
And all of these conversations that mister Tracya's talking about happened.
Early on in the campaign. First of the year.
The Alliance Party in South Carolina, which I was part of, happened, I want to say, in May or April. We were really trying to get on the ballot at that time. When that window closed for mister Kennedy was definitely when he didn't get on the first debate stage, when and Joe Biden had the disastrous debate, and then when Harris came on as sort of the coupdetas and replaced him. So the question is what mister Kennedy has a bunch of supporters who most dedicated supporters in the world that
I've ever seen. I've done campaigns a lot, so in terms of I understand the philosophical idea about what said and what's done, But what's mister Kennedy supposed to do. He has a group of individuals who are single or at least monolithic in terms of what they want to accomplish. He has himself right now a path to be able to bring those ideas and that those agendas that his community wants, and he's able to leverage them into the Donald Trump campaign.
So for me, Jacky, let me ask you about that actually, because it's not as though RFK Junior has just said what you just said, like, Hey, this is for the greater good. I have a pathway now to promote these ideas that are near and dear to my heart.
He's gone on too.
We can put this element up on the screen. He wrote almost an essay about what make America Great Again really means. He has been fawning about Donald Trump. He was on Talker Carlson Show recently, and that is a stark reversal from previous comments that he made about Donald Trump. So it's not just that he's saying this is for the greater good and I'm, you know, sort of doing that. Is that defense?
Boy?
I mean, is it really defensible going from we have fundamentally incompatible issues to this guy is actually great and a generational hero.
Well, you know, when you endorse somebody and you bring somebody on and there's a possibility that you're going to become able to work in somebody's White House, you want to see that person in the White House.
And I think what you heard in a lot.
Of the early speech that he said is there's definitely places where they disagree. They don't disagree on anything, and if you want to know, there's gonna have to ask mister Kennedy himself. But there's areas disagreement. But he's he's all on board because he realizes that the only window, the only pathway for him at this time and to represent the ideas and what his volunteers want is for him to help mister the President Trump out and win
the White House. In terms of I understand philosophically that there's maybe this idea about what you're supposed to do and what you're not supposed to do in politics. But the reality of it is is if you don't have a seat at the table at the end, you might as well stay home.
So, Michael, what about Robert F.
Kennedy Junior, in other words, has become a Republican functionary by putting out these embarrassing little poetic platitudes about what he claims the true meaning of MAGA is. I mean, it's incredibible to me that anybody could read that little
essay of his and actually be impressed by it. I mean, I've never seen a more ridiculous collection of cliches, especially when you contrast it with what Robert F. Kennedy Junior was saying as of a couple of weeks ago about Trump, which is that not only was Trump's first term a dramatic failure, including on the central issue that supposedly galvanized RFK Junior's initial supporters around skepticism of vaccines and COVID policy.
RFK Junior was going around declaring that Trump invented lockdowns and was unrepentant about it, and also that he was the one who was behind the production of the mass vaccine program operation warp speed. That's not my singular issue, but if it's yours, then that's a pretty that's pretty difficult to reconcile. And so Robert Robert Kenny Junior screwed over so third party candidates.
Yeah, what do you think about that?
Third parties that he claimed running to enhance their viability, And nobody seems to want to necessarily probe what caused that shift other than oh, now he has a seat at the table. Well, that's just him saying his own self advancement and self empowerment always took premium over what he was purporting to stand for for the past ten months, which is that he was going to forge this groundbreaking new independent movement that turned out to be false.
So yeah, Michael, let him.
You appreciate it now, it's not you know, the pathway that mister Tracy puts forward is that at this point, like Kennedy just goes away into obscurity and all this effort that was put forth. No, you can't say this was an easy You can't say this is an easy decision that mister Kennedy made and you can't say it was just an opportunist. I mean, he really went up against his family. He went against family members. I mean, mister Kennedy went against some of his key advisor in
this campaign over this issue. And I think the best people to decide if this is a right move or not is his volunteers and his supporters. And Pauline has showed that over about sixty percent of his supporters are going to stick with what if he would have dropped out, would have gone over to Trump. And I'm thinking from what I've seen through the different social media, through the different interactions I have, that there's even going to be
more than that. So the people who really care about this decision, Kennedy supporters, they're going to turn out and vote for Trump and they're okay with this. So once again, I think this philosophical decision that the discussion that we're having about what he should or shouldn't do. I mean, I think he's going out on the limb, going against his family a lot of times, going against the party. He's not going to get invited to cocktail parties anymore.
None of his friends are either no Christmas dinners and things like that. And he's really taking this what is I think a brave I know, politicians, this is a brave and difficult thing he's doing.
It's not that easy to support Trump.
And I think a lot of his support for Trump really has to do with the fact that he believes in his supporters. He has a very close relationship with him, and he wants to see their ideas and they're what they want push forward in a Trump administration. Otherwise, all of this effort that volunteers and folks have put on for you know, a couple of years now just goes in the waist span of a wastepan of history.
Two. Michael, I mean, there are two ways to look at Donald Trump. On the one hand, he's the guy who said he was going to drain the swamp and then put the CEO of Exonomobile at the head of the State Department and brought in Steve Mnusian and Cohne and all of those guys. On the other hand, there are some areas where he actually does threaten the swamp. But I know that you know, the way you see Donald Trump is basically he's bringing the swamp back. To
Ryan's point, he's part of the duopoly. Essentially, if you look at how Jared Kushner used his time in the White House, there's significant argument for that, no question about it. He does have a lot of billionaires backing him, no question about that either. So why is it that this RFK Junior argument that Donald Trump actually you know, longtime history of skepticism of vaccines going.
Back literally years.
Why is it that there isn't a significant chance for Bobby Kennedy Junior to advance these genuinely anti establishment causes through the Trump administration. Why is he essentially just rolling over for the duopoly and becoming a part of the system that he decried.
Well, I can't get inside his brain, nor would I want to. I might get brain worms. But I mean, all you have to do is go back and check what RFK Junior himself said about Trump to verify this critique that you're saying is fairly commonplace about Trump.
RFK Junior pilloried.
Trump for filling his administration with corporate lobbyists, including appointing as his defense secretary the chief lobbyist for raytheon and so on and so forth. That was part of the whole argument that RFK Junior at least claimed he was making in service of his challenge against the two party system. Your other guest hasn't addressed a single one of these
inconsistencies or about faces. They're just kind of a gets glossed over, and people can extol RFK Junior's supposed bravery because, as the head of the Alliance Party in South Carolina explained to me, there is a bit of a divide among the volunteers and supporters, at least as far as he's been able to perceive it.
On the one hand, you have people who have like.
A cultish devotion to RFK Junior, who will follow whatever he does and don't care about any inconsistencies or the fact that he had winked another segment of support his supporters for another for a year or so by claiming he was running this fake independent campaign. And on the other hand, you have people who actually foolishly believed RFK Junior's own rhetoric and thought that this was going to be one of the most formidable independent candidacies since Ross Perot.
So they got screwed over.
They were obviously mistaken in their belief in the sincerity of his rhetoric, because now he just become a cog in the very duopoly that he claimed that he was running to dislodge. So I don't know what RFK Junior thinks in his own mind that he can accomplish. I just can look at his own rhetoric and statements, and there's no real way to discern any kind of consistency in those statements other than self advancement.
And yes, he does.
Seem tethered to at least some principles, like you know, food security and removing toxins from food. Okay, I mean I don't disagree with that on principle. I don't think
really many people do. But in terms of other flagship issues that he claimed that he was campaigning on, like opposing the military and the industrial complex and so forth, in fact, he's now granting some degree of credence or validity to Donald Trump as an avatar for carrying forth those issues on the basis of virtually nothing other than that he met with Trump in I think it was Minnesota and then Florida, and they had a cheery conversation and they decided that no, they liked each other, or
they could have a nice gab fest. I mean, where's the substantive departure on any of this, it doesn't really make much sense. But then again, our chedunior only has a natural stature because people have cultish devotion to the idea of the Kennedy dynasty, and this bogus mythology that he peddles around his deceased uncle and father as though somehow it became credential to become president that your father and uncle were killed.
I never really understood that.
And also now he's actually disempowering and misdirecting whatever energy actually did exist within the electric to challenge the national security state, the military industrial complex, the so called deep state, by claiming that Trump is a vehicle for doing this, when there's no indication at all that Trump actually wants to do oversight or actually erode the power in any way of the national security state. He just wants it more in hock to himself as far as anybody can ascertain.
So yeah, it's not just that this didn't accomplish anything. I mean, obviously I did accomplish what turned out to be the ultimate objective on our of f case part, which is to bring disaffected, independence or hazily ideological voters
into the Republican fold. So if you're Timothy Mellon who dumped twenty five million dollars into RFK Junior's campaign while simultaneously dumping I think fifty million or more into the Trump campaign, then your cynical strategic calculus worked out swimmingly because now you were able to use your apparent tactic of using RFK Junior as a proxy Republican for the past year and a half out to.
Be the ultimate objective.
I think the other guest is a Republican himself, Jeff, that you're on some Republican council. So if your ultimate objective is to elect a Republican and re elect on Holald Trup, I could see why you'd be celebrating this.
Let's get it works out for your partisan advantage.
Let me get Jeff to respond either to that or to something else that you raised earlier, which was this contradiction between the single issue for many of RFK Junior voters of quote unquote medical freedom contrasting conflicting with Trump's record of operation or speed, you know, the production of the vaccine, and you know, being the guy who maybe he was more skeptical than Fauci about some of the lockdowns,
but he was the president during these lockdowns. So how how does a Kennedy supporter and how does Kennedy himself square that circle?
I think it's I think it's pretty easy. You know, if you look at the two parties and you look at across the states, what states went on the you know, major lockdown and what states didn't, I think you'll see a divide between Democrats and Republicans. And now you have a vice president candidate that really played, you know, real strong on the war on COVID in terms of mandates and you know, is actually pro mandates and pro shutdown and things like that. So for me, I think it's
a pretty simple kind of movement over. Nobody really acted well during Trump, none of our elected leaders. I have local officials who are my good friends, and they didn't elect They didn't act well either. But the idea is that, you know, Trump seems to have come across, he seems to have understood where he went wrong. And there is this belief that once you put Kennedy into the Trump administration, maybe not a not a you know, a seat or something like this, that you will have this influence and
Kennedy can have influence in the Trump administration. And you've already seen, I think on the telephone call that mister Kennedy's son put out, you always see there's a there's already a sense of natural affection with Donald Trump.
Uh.
I'd like to answer the question. No, I was really happy. I thought there was no there was no sort of talk in the campaign early on about Republicans. And I think, if you will, there was some instances where our campaign staff, especially our national our upper level campaign staff, that the idea of us being Republican was just repugnant to him. And a lot of the a lot of the campaign has riled against it. And I like to say the idea that mister Kennedy is an opportunist.
You know, the twilight of your life.
What you decide to do is wreck your relationship with your family, run your social structure, you know, your social sittings, put your marriage in jeopardy with your wife because you want to run for office, and then your doors to that office, indoors to making that change are closed on you, not of your own doing, mostly, and then what choice of a politician are you left for your for your movement or what your folks want to do.
What's your choice.
Your choice is to find the best path forward to make it, to make those reality.
And you know, I mean this has happened.
It's not like the first time this has happened in political history. I mean, you look back at the populist movements of the late eighteen hundreds and this thing sort of happened where you had candidates and you had supporters of one party who trashed another party who ended up coming together in these coalition governments.
And as much as it is, this is a coalition government.
So I kind of I reject the idea that one Kennedy ever wanted to go as a Republican. I mean, you could see it was just he was strained when he had to come out and say it too, that there were people within his campaign that wanted him. I mean, I was, I was big on I personally was big on.
The Libertarian Party. And I'm trying to get in the middle here.
And other way.
They go, yeah, I'll make it.
Other way.
Yeah, I appreciate it takes it takes a village. I was, you know, I was, I was big. We were we I mean, there was a lot of people who came into this with a lot of experience. But the fact of the matter is that the doors for mister Kennedy closed. He had, uh, mister Trump offered him opportunity. Mister Kennedy also talked to the Democrats, and he has a real chance to get into a Trump administration and.
Bring a lot of these a lot.
Of these policies and a lot of these principles that he that is, volunteers as supporters wants.
So it's not goo ahead, yes, ma'am.
Well, I was gonna say, Michael respond to that. So if we take this argument that you know, this is a broken two party system, all of us probably agree with that. If we take that argument and say there's an opportunity to make one of the parties slightly better, is there a moral argument for doing what RFK Junior is doing?
A moral argument, I'm not sure.
I could just evaluate what RFA Junior has actually done, which is he's squandered what he was previously claiming insistently was the most formidable third party or independent run in decades. Now he's allowed that to all be subsumed into the Republican Party, one of the two party duopoly parties that he claimed that he was running to dislodge. Again, if you're a Republican like our other guest here, I could see why you'd be happy about this outcome because perhaps
you were always inclined. And he said that he was in favor of some collaboration with Trump and RFK Junior from the beginning. So I mean, if the rubber hit the road, or you said you said something to that effect so you can explain it to us, then.
I mean, would you have voted for RFK Jr.
Against Trump, say, if you were living in a swing state or you that committed to him.
I mean, if you're saying that.
Door close, okay, okay, very good, then so uh if you say the door was going to close or the door had closed on RFK Junior, how did the door close exactly?
You claim? Because because he was excluded from the debates.
RFK Junior was previously accusing Trump of colluding against him.
To exclude him from the debates.
He filed an FEC complaint against Trump, Biden, and CNN saying they all had worked in concert to illegally exclude him of the debates. Now he's sick of fantaly cozying up to Trump and for trying to pretend that ever happened, and a lot of the cult and many of the cultish supporters are willing to join in his effort to memory hole what happened, you know, a month or two ago, because now they're just becoming partisan cheerleader Republicans. And if that's your mo o gout, you know, have at it.
But you know, if you actually, you know, we're had the misfortune of believing this guy's own rhetoric, then I guess the fault is your own. And yeah, opportunism. This guy has been an opportunist for decades. He hadn't sought office prior to this run. I think I when he first announced his campaign in April of last year, I went and just dug a bit through the archives. I don't think anybody has ever endorsed Hillary Clinton more times in total than RFK Junior, probably including Bill Clinton. He
you know, would speak at every Democratic convention. He was a hardcore russiagator during.
Trump's first term.
He has this messianic worldview that he claims derive from the Kennedy legacy about interventionism abroad. You can go find opez that he wrote during Trump's term denouncing him for.
Sidling up to autocrats like Putin or Kim Jong un.
And now he's done this totally one eighty and he hardly even is pressed to explain it because I'm sorry.
I know we're on alternative media right now, but.
Much of alternative media has just brown nosed RFK Junior because they're so irrationally enthused by this phony mythology around his dopey, overrated family. Where RFK Junior in his speech and announcing me he was going to endorse Trump's and the Democratic Party under my father and uncle was the party of peace and free speech and transparency.
Are you kidding me? JFK was a hardcore militarist.
He actually ran to the interventionist right of Richard Nixon in nineteen sixty. He tried to do regime change in Cuba.
He was obsessed, along.
With his brother, who is his hatchetman as Attorney General, with assassination campaigns abroad a coach K. RFK Junior has tried to RFK Junior has incessantly invoked the legacy of this family to claim that he's carrying.
Forth this anti establishment, anti.
War mantle, and everybody just gobs it all up because they don't look at him with any degree of scrutiny, because they're also impressed that he happens to be the progenity of this supposedly martyred family dynasty. I mean, it's actually insulting to one's intelligence if you actually know a
single thing about what the Kennedy's actually did empower. Another irony is that the people who were enamored of camelot, you know, the Kennedy sort of estate, and like this mythology around them, they used to beat their standard fair liberals and an RFK Junior's tactic, which obviously made some inroads, was to claim, actually he's going to marshal this camelot legacy to challenge the so called establishment.
The Kennedy's embodied the establishment for decades, and you know, JFK.
You know another thing that really bothered me in particular is that, Look, if you've read about the Vietnam War, which I have maybe others haven't, you know that JFK actually introduced combat troops to Vietnam for the first time. He authorized the CIA to take on a combat role in Vietnam. He expanded the powers of the national securities that he did not diminish them, including goes on this
whole in pedals this nonsense. This is the topic. The topic is the talking is the fund about the topic is the fundamental fallaciousness and incoherence of RFK Junior's campaign, as evidenced by his misuse and phony invocation of his family legacy, which people use to shower him with praise to this day and now are following him into the fold of the Republican Party response, fake presentation.
So so.
If if RFK Junion, if rf K Junior was going to drop out, and he was going to give a simple endorsement, say like a Pete Buddha Judge endorsement of Biden in twenty twenty, I'd kind of understand where some of this was coming. It would be a it'd be a meaningless endorsement, and because it would have zero impact on the election. But Kennedy is bringing to the Republic,
to the Trump administration, which is a Republican administration. He's bringing a constituency and he's going to deliver the White House for Trump. And if you look at the numbers across the across the Swing States, his numbers of supporters in the Swing States show that clearly that he's going to be able to make more Trump more competitive than the swing states. And also the interesting thing about polling
says across the nation. I mean, if if you know, if Trump and President Trump and mister Kennedy were really serious about going after this, I mean they should. Mister Kennedy, I believe, should come off the ballot in Oregon, should come off the ballot in Colorados, to come off the ballot in New Mexico, and they should full court press this thing. And yes, I do think we talk about is he selling out a message?
Is he selling out of people? No, he is.
He is going to be the deciding factor in bringing Trump uh, bringing Trump the election. And I don't know if you've ever worked in politics on sort of.
A campaign level. I'm not a pundit.
I'm more of just a political geek. So my job is just to get my candidate where they need to go. But if you've ever worked on it, there is no more power that an individual has than if you're the one who delivers the office for the person running for who's running for the you know, running for the office in the first place. So he, mister Kennedy and mister
Kennedy supporters. Just by what they do and how they turn out the vote, they're going to be a major They're going to be a major part in this new administration if Trump wins. And you talk about you can't really trust Trump. I mean, I think in terms of constituencies, if you look at twenty sixteen, if you like this
or not, but it's the truth. I mean, the evangelicals really came out and they put some a lot of ideas and a lot of sort of things that it was difficult for a lot of evangelicals to endorse Trump and to vote for Trump. But what did Trump end up doing for them? He delivered three Supreme Court justices that ended up sending the abortion issue back to the States, which is a which is a conservative viewpoint.
It met what they want.
So Trump has it as a track record of delivering for those constituents who helped him deliver.
Let's say this comes to pass, there's a a bunch of RFK junior turnout in the swing states and they do lift Trump over the finish line, he becomes president. Again, what would the prior we know what the evangelicals wanted and they got it, what would what would what would the similar thing be for RFK.
I missed a little part of that, but I'm not too sure, you know, I've I've heard there's a lot of people in the sort of the internet world who talk about how they like them to be part of the CIA because he can look at the you know, the assassinations and this is that. I don't know what he would like to do, but I can tell you from his volunteers and folks that I've talked to, they would love to see him in something like health and human services where he can have an impact on things that.
Are important to us.
And and I would like to a lot of the things that his supporters are into are sort of this third wave of politics, regenerated farming, medical freedom, health and our food, things like that.
So I cannot speak for mister.
Himself, and I don't know what hit the conversations that him and President Trump would have, but I'm personally i'd love to see him in a position in health and human services.
I mean, from from my own perspective, agree like the thing that's most interesting to me about him is the you know, his elevation of the problem of toxics in the in the food supply and in the environment, and the regenerate farming is awesome all that stuff, but is it isn't it a isn't it a problem? Kind of inherent to RFK Junior that we don't know the answer to that, and it's all and they're they're about to start printing ballots like.
Sort of a gamble.
Shouldn't we know, like which element of his eclectic politics is going to be the thing that he pushes in a in a Trump administration, if this group of people is going to go out and help push him over the top.
When you say we are you talking about.
Everybody like me and you, all of us, just like we know what the evangelicals wanted. They wanted Roby Wade overturned, and they wanted you know this, this literal list of justice has slapped onto the Supreme Court, so they would.
I don't know, I mean, we don't know it.
Yeah, that's a game with it.
Yeah, And that gets the core of the incoherence of the rfk K campaign. I mean, you can't pinpoint what exactly he would be receiving in exchange for him abandoning every declaration that he had been making for the past ten months. And claiming he was running this unbelievably earth shattering third party campaign by using his overrated family name to galvanize disaffected podcast voters from across the political spectrum.
You could just speculate you can trust him by saying he had all these fruitful conversations with Trump and it turns out they agree on more than they disagree, and now RFK Junior understands the true meaning of Maga and can give us all these weird spiritual poems about the meaning of Maga, and then you can be contented with that.
It seems a little bit foolish, especially if you were believing what RFK Junior was saying uncritically as of like a month ago, which turned out to be a total fabrication.
And don't take my word for it.
I know our other guest is trying to reflect the sentiments of the portion of RFK Junior's voter base that
is pleased by this development. But there's another portion, some of whom I've just been speaking to and reporting on as of the past day, who told me that they believe they have been swindled by RFK Junior, who has violated this kind of a covenant or agreement or a contract with those third parties whose nomination he accepted on the understanding and the commitment that he would be seeking the presidency and running a viable third party campaign.
To the very end, he's proven that now that that was false.
So if you're going to say, oh, maybe RFK Junior is going to be in the administration, look, I don't doubt that Trump wants to throw a bone to him and try to siphon off his electoral support to whatever
degree is possible. But even before Trump came into office in twenty seventeen, he met with RFK Junior in Trump Tower as president elect, and RFK Junior came away and said, look, Donald Trump says he wants to work with me on some sort of vaccine oversight program or some you know, low level bureaucratic panel, and I'm happy to work with them.
That didn't come to pass. But if the end result of this supposedly historic third party independent campaign that was going to challenge the duopoly has now if the end result is simply that RFK Junior might be installed on some FDA panel to analyze, you know, the toxicity of soil, I mean, look, I don't necessarily denigrate that as a valid pursuit, but it's not in keeping with these sweeping themes that RFK Junior was using to promote himself and
past himself as this unprecedentedly formidable third party or independent candidate who was going to galvanize all these independent and disaffected voters, when now he's just encouraging them to become maga Republicans.
I mean, if.
People in his family or in his social cohort are offended by this, I think they're correct too, as long as they're not offended to it because they just hate anything associated with Trump reflexively, but because it shows that RFK Junior is willing to just throw into the garbage.
Can any of.
His purported principles if circumstances modestly shift and pretend that he wasn't just denouncing somebody who now he is enthusiastically endorsing.
It doesn't even explain this supposed change of mind. I mean, if you just kind of irrationally give yourself over to whatever change of mind that a political figure makes, then it shows that you're incredibly credulous and willing to believe anything, which is why I'm surprised that some of the more cultish devotees of RFK Junior or are following in this path.
But if you think of yourself as more of a critical thinker who's like challenging the establishment, and that's why you were supposedly enamored with RFK Junior, and now he wants you to just to become a.
Card carrying Republican. I mean, give me a break.
I mean, this is this really should be insulting to anyone's intuligence. But it gets to the core theme of RFK Junior's campaign from the beginning, which was always insulting, which is that he's going to be the torch bearer for the supposedly anti establishment Kennedy legacy, which was always a farce.
There was no anti establishment candidate Kennedy legacy.
It was just apparently a self promotional venture on rf case part so he could get on an FDA panel.
Ultimately, really, I.
Mean next next to it, it could be Tracy versus like Oliver.
Stone or Oliver Stone.
I mean, that movie was integral in furnishing some of his bogus Kennedy mythology that puts him out as this like savior figure of America who was martyred and needs to be avenged, And unfortunately RFKA Junior was able to continue on those ridiculous themes.
Well.
And on that note, Jeff, let's give you the last word here with also the I'll toss the last word to you with the question of is there also a danger if you're somebody who you know opposes the duopoly, opposes the broken two party system. Is there a danger to someone who was formerly or who still says they're a torch bearer for that cause dragging people into the Republican Party? Is there is there anything about that that
concerns you? And you just give us your general sort of wrap up thoughts as well.
Okay, I'm a big proponent of third party politics and that's that's the reason I'm into this campaign. So I personally, so I don't think that he is dragging I don't think he's dragging people into the Republican Party. I think a group of his supporters are going to vote for Donald Trump because they want to see mister Kennedy in a position within a Trump White House to.
Make movements and to push their agenda. So does this.
Mean that four years from now that these say, if the Democratic Party doesn't change, or the Democratic Party doesn't have a has a different a candidate, they're not going to vote in that.
No, these are true. These are true independents.
There is no third party in the United States.
They're probably the way that they've.
Demolished the fusion voting laws over the last ten twenty years. They'll probably never be another third party again until one of these two parties, either the Republican.
Or the Democratic Party's fall.
What a better way to crush the duopalty duopolity than bringing out than having a crushing defeat for a Democratic presidential candidate in this election and causing real change in the Democratic Party understanding that this pathway that they're on is not a good pathway. And if you would look at if you're in mister Kennedy spot, and you look at the primary, you look at the law fair that's been waged against them, and you look at some of
the other things, I think it makes sense. So No, I don't think this is in any which way a hurting the independent party. I would imagine that this is a good philosophy that I would encourage other third party third party candidates to do.
In the future.
If we were having this conversation, say, you know, two thousand and one, we would have been telling a lot of people would have been telling Ralph Nader he should have dropped out and endorse the Democrat, and we wouldn't have tru we wouldn't.
Have had Bush.
So this idea of endorsing a candidate, especially at this time, and you know, the presidential not as the primary, I think it really gives an independent movement. It gives an independent candidate a lot of political leverage. And I've heard a lot what he said. Philosophically, I understand that, you know, maybe maybe some fundents have a problem with it, maybe some folks have a problem with it, but I see it on and I don't think they're politician at all.
I think the volunteers are the most some of the most brilliant, well rounded, achieve volunteer base that I've ever worked with. But yeah, I mean, I think this is a boss move on Kennedy, And you know, mister Tracy and I just really disagree on what this outcome is. And I do expect Kennedy to be Kennedy and his support and his supporters to be the key thing that you know moves Trump across the finish line, and when's the election for Trump?
So well? Have actually a quick final point, yeah, quickly.
I mean the Republican Party is also regularly engaged in law fair to Steiny, independent or third parties like Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party. So that's not unique to the Democratic Party. Yes, they've been more vigorous this cycle, combating RFA, your Cornell West and so forth, but it's not in no way unique to the Democratic Party. So to say that the best way to topple the duopoly is to empower one prong of it, that's amazing pretzel logic.
But that's what you get when you're talking to a campaign.
Office and this is what happened.
Ridiculous decision. And one other.
Thing, I mean one other thing, one other thing.
I'm not pissing on history. I'm saying that the republicandidates.
The end of the end of the end of party systems in America has normally happened when one party has had a disastrous election and they changed the end of the Whig Party, the end of okay, Well, okay.
Well we'll see if we'll see if the Democratic Party is okay I'm sure come twenty twenty five, if Trump wins, the Democratic Party on a nationwide basis will dissolve itself.
Yeah, that seems really feasible. Anyway.
I did want to just note that one of the reasons that our chedutor claims that he is he's aligned with Trump is on the issue of free speech. And I'm not defending at all the record of the Democratic Party as of late on issues of speech with the First Amendment, and it's been abysmal, But the Republican Party, including Trump, have been fanatical over the past ten months and trying to purtail and punish and penalize a speech
that's critical of Israel. And I can see why RFK Junior excludes that consideration from his calculus, because his fanaticism around Israel is roughly comparable to that of Donald Trump. So I'm sure they bonded over that in their little soires down at mar Alago.
So congratulations to that word.
Last ten seconds, Kennedy, derangement syndrome is real.
I want to end up.
I'm not deranged.
I'm trying to be rational and just not a fanatical cult devote of the guy.
This is the guy who this is the guy who came out early on in the campaign and said that Kennedy was a bad candidate because of the way he talked, and people get yeah.
I did note that the guy my issue was not a voice. I didn't bring that up.
He does sound like he's garbling rocks, which seems like a potential communicative impediment. But I mean, that's just you trying to say that I have some like psychological malfunction.
In my analysis, supporters have psychological malfunction.
So I guess what's good.
For these I said, there's a portion that have a cult following.
That's what the third Party came actually, since South Carolina said to me directly, since.
Our closing here is just off the rails anyway. I actually, I actually do think the voice was a like actual substantial problem for him in the race.
Did Jeff do you know what do you know, Jeff?
Do you know what was up with that?
Like? What was there was that diagnosed? Or what's what the situation is that?
So you know he had a I don't know, there was something that happened medically that happened to him where his voice got really bad some time before the election. He went he I believe he went to Japan and he got some shots to try to fix it, and some people they they fix and and.
They uh and and they didn't it would.
I mean, it corrected its some, but it's still I admit it's it's difficult.
Yeah, you know, I listened to him so much.
You get to the point where you can't hear it, and when you're talking to him one in person, it really doesn't come.
Across at all.
All right, Well, my issue is not his voice, and it was his misappropriation of his Tony family legacy.
All right, reason running we could go for my issue.
All right? Well, Journalist Michael Tracy and former National Field Organization organizer for the RFK Junior campaign, Jeff Hutt, thank you so much for joining us.
We appreciate it.
Thank you, guys. I appreciate y'all. I love y'all's program.
Well, thank you so much for tuning into that really interesting debate. It's worth saying. I think we probably all agree, all four of us would agree that this is a consequential voting block our FK junior voters, given what happened with Jill Stein and just how the math works out
in those blue Wall States, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. We know he's going to be on the ballot in Michigan, Wisconsin as of right now, not getting his name off the ballot, So how people decide to vote based on RFK Junior, the previous support for him actually will matter.
I learned stuff from that conversation. That's all I ask for, It's all we have, right. I thought that was actually interesting. Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, a couple of different viewpoints argued out, it's a good more he asked for exactly.
It's always good when there's real contrast, and that is what we hope to do on counterpoints, especially on these Friday debates.
Name kind of gives it away.
I guess.
Yeah, we're not subtle.
So we hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend and we will see you back here on Wednesday with more counterpoints.