Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential election because he doesn’t think Kamala Harris would be a “worthy president.”
Speaking to Chris Cuomo in a NewsNation interview Tuesday, Kennedy was asked why he hadn’t remained neutral after deciding to suspend his own independent bid for the White House. The former Democrat quickly threw his support behind Trump, a man he had reportedly described as a likely “sociopath” and the “worse [sic] president ever.”
“It became clear to me, Chris, that I was not going to be allowed on the debating stage, which was really my only path to victory,” Kennedy said. “I was already being boycotted by all of the mainstream media, by the liberal media.”
Kennedy said he’d only had “two live interviews on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC” over the course of 17 months, so he “couldn’t reach that audience.”
“I had no way to grow, and our polling was showing that if I stayed in the race, Vice President Harris would win, and I did not want that outcome,” Kennedy said.
“I don’t think that Vice President Harris is a worthy president of this country,” he continued. “I think we need to have a president who can give an interview, who can articulate a vision, who can put together an English sentence, who can articulate and defend her policies and her record, and who can engage in a debate—and regular debates, unscripted appearances.”
Kennedy’s unequivocal support for Trump—which he agreed had made his wife, Cheryl Hines, “very uncomfortable” and which drew outright condemnation from many in the Kennedy clan—came after reports that he’d discussed endorsing the former president in exchange for a position in his new administration.
“We’re not talking about a particular position for me in the government,” Kennedy said when asked about the matter on Tuesday. “What the agreement was about […] is about a unity party, about unifying our party over certain objectives, and this will allow me to continue to disagree with President Trump on issues that I don’t agree with him on, and him to disagree with me.”