'Dynamic duo': Former Trump adviser hawkish on RFK Jr. as the former president's VP pick
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon claims that going into the 2024 presidential election, a unity ticket with former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "would be insurmountable."
Bannon told Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk this week that he would "love Kari Lake or any one of these powerful women" to be Trump's running mate, but sees "a very compelling reason" for Trump to instead join forces with Kennedy.
Kennedy, the 69-year-old son of assassinated former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of assassinated former President John F. Kennedy, announced his bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination last week.
While the latest polling data puts Kennedy at the back of the pack of Democratic candidates, his campaign is still fresh and may benefit from Americans' overwhelming aversion to seeing President Joe Biden run again.
TheBlaze previously reported that a recent NBC News survey of 1,000 adults, conducted April 14-18, found that 70% of respondents, including 51% of Democrats, said that Biden — the oldest president ever to take office — should not run for re-election in 2024.
An April 15 USA Today/Suffolk University poll indicated that 14% of Biden's 2020 supporters would vote for Kennedy.
If Kennedy is unable to seize the Democratic nomination, he may yet have a path to the White House.
"If you put Kennedy and Trump together, that's a dynamic duo," added Bannon.
\u201c"If we put together a unity ticket of Trump and Kennedy it would be insurmountable \u2014 we would bring over many of the populists on the Left." \n\nSteve Bannon joins @CharlieKirk11 to discuss the power of a Trump/Kennedy unity ticket in 2024 to take on the administrative state.\u2026\u201d— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@Real America's Voice (RAV)) 1682444217
The former Trump adviser suggested that many of Kennedy's stated aims may resonate with a "hard-core MAGA" crowd.
Kennedy claimed he would seek to "end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now – threatening now – to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country; to commoditize our children, our purple mountains' majesty; to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs; to strip-mine our assets; to hollow out the middle class and keep us in a constant state of war."
According to his campaign website, Kennedy seeks to "roll back the secrecy, end the surveillance, stop the censorship, and make government transparent"; "end the foreign wars, bring home the troops, and devote the freed-up resources to revitalize America"; and "end the censorship and surveillance, reduce incarceration, and respect the rights and dignity of all citizens."
He has drawn heat from Democrats and the liberal media over his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines and pandemic restrictions, reported USA Today. Kennedy has similarly hounded Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Despite the media repeatedly accusing Kennedy of being an "anti-vaxxer," the Democrat indicated in 2017, "I am and have always been pro-vaccine. I want safe vaccines, robust and transparent science, and honest, independent regulators. And I want thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative, out of vaccines. I’ve been fighting to get mercury out of fish for 30 years, but no one calls me ‘anti-fish.'"
Lisa Parshall, a political science professor at Daemen University, told Newsweek that Bannon's proposal of a unity ticket is just intended to make trouble for Democrats.
"Trump's supporters are trying to give oxygen to RFK Jr.'s candidacy as a way of pestering Biden by encouraging any potential challengers," said Parshall. "I read Bannon's suggestion as in that same vein. There was a flirtation between RFK Jr. and the Trump administration around vaccinations and conspiracy theory, and Bannon is apparently claiming credit for encouraging his run."
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