Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign on Friday and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump, has a long history of criticizing the man he now supports, including calling Trump a “threat to democracy,” and, as recently as July, a “terrible president.”
For years, Kennedy has repeatedly condemned Trump, referring to him as a “bully,” who appealed to “bigotry,” “hatred,” “xenophobia” and “prejudice.” Among the chief attacks Kennedy has leveled at Trump through the 2024 campaign is to accuse him of corruption for turning his administration over to corporate lobbyists and special interests and failing to “drain the swamp” as he’d promised.
But on Friday, Kennedy was full of praise for Trump, saying that while he and the former president “don’t agree on everything,” they do share similar isolationist views on US foreign policy, government censorship, and the need to address chronic disease in America.
“Don’t you want a president who’s gonna protect America’s freedom? And is gonna protect us from totalitarianism?” Kennedy said at a Trump campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, as part of his endorsement.
For his part, Trump has a history of disparaging Kennedy, calling him “the dumbest member of the Kennedy clan” and “Democratic plant” and “radical left liberal,” in posts on Truth Social.
But on Friday, Trump had only nice things to say about Kennedy, calling him “an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share.” Never one to forget a slight though, Trump did note on Friday that Kennedy “also went after me a couple of times, I didn’t like it.”
On Sunday, Kennedy tweeted that Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” recalled “a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself.”
A Kennedy campaign spokesperson did not return CNN’s request for comment.
That’s in sharp contrast to how Kennedy has talked about Trump in the past, including accusing him of discrediting American democracy and saying that his late father, former US Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, would have disapproved of Trump.
“I think he would be disappointed in the direction that this country is going today,” Kennedy said in 2018 at an event in Philadelphia, adding, “Everybody knows the difference between leadership and bullying.”
“President Trump has not only brought this country into disrepute around the globe, but he has also brought into disrepute the entire American experience with self-governance,” he continued.
At the same 2018 event, Kennedy suggested Trump’s leadership had damaged American attempts to spread democracy worldwide.
“If you live in China today, and you’re looking at what’s happening in the United States, why would you ever say, we wanna switch our system for that system, which can produce that kind of buffoonery at a high level,” added Kennedy. “I think President Trump is purposefully and systematically encouraging tyrannical governments around the world.”
Speaking with Yahoo Finance in January 2020, Kennedy made similar comments.
“Well, I think the problem is, number one, he’s a bully. And you know, I don’t like bullies and I don’t think – America – that’s part of America’s tradition. I think in many ways he’s discredited the American experiment with self-governance,” Kennedy added.
In August 2016, during an interview with Larry King, Kennedy expressed deep concerns about Trump’s rise to power, calling it “scary.” Kennedy noted the potential harm of leaders who exploit these darker elements of society.
“The easiest thing for a political leader to do is to appeal to our bigotry and our hatred and xenophobia and prejudice, and point to people who are unlike us and say they’re the ones who are damaging our country,” he said.
Throughout much of his 2024 presidential run, Kennedy repeatedly attacked Trump.
Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett in April, Kennedy said Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election were appalling and a threat to democracy – though he argued President Joe Biden was a bigger threat, blaming Biden for what he labeled an effort to “censor political speech” after his Instagram account was banned in 2021 over vaccine misinformation by Meta.
“I think that is a threat to democracy, (Trump) overthrowing — trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy,” Kennedy said. “But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy? And what I would say is … I’m not going to answer that question. But I can argue that President Biden is because the First Amendment, Erin, is the most important.”
“I’m not going to defend President Trump on that, and it was appalling. And there’s many things that President Trump has done that are appalling,” he added.
He accused Trump of corruption in office in turning over his administration to special interests.
“Despite rhetoric to the contrary, President Trump has a weakness for swamp creatures, especially corporate monopolies, their lobbyists, and their money,” he tweeted in June. “After promising to drain the swamp, instead, he hired swamp creatures to regulate their own industries. Operation Warp Speed and the lockdowns were the most devastating impact of President Trump’s weakness, but not the only one.”
“Trump promised Americans he would ‘drain the swamp’ when he was president. He didn’t do it,” Kennedy tweeted in April.
Just a month ago, he attacked Trump’s appointment of lobbyists to his administration.
“There’s words, and then there’s actions… and when it comes to Trump, they simply don’t match,” he wrote in July.
And speaking in an interview on Breaking Points in July, Kennedy harshly attacked Trump for his time in office.
“I think Donald Trump was a terrible president,” Kennedy said. “I think a lot of the rhetoric that he talks about, I agree with, I think we need to wind down – you know, the swamp. But he wasn’t doing that. I don’t think he’s capable of governing of meeting the expectations and fulfilling the promises that he raises with his rhetoric.”
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