What Exactly Is RFK Jr.’s Role In This Upcoming Election?

If you're versed in American political history, the initialism “RFK” should sound quite familiar to you. Robert Francis Kennedy (or RFK Sr.), a former United States Attorney General from the 1960s, was the brother of former United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). Both JFK and RFK were tragically assassinated, but the Kennedy family’s political legacy lived on. 

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., son of the late RFK Sr. and nephew of the late JFK, is an environmental lawyer who went on to get involved with politics – most notably launching his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential race in 2023 before ultimately dropping out due to campaign funds running out, ballot access being restricted, and voter support declining.

But make no mistake: RFK Jr. dropping out of this upcoming election does not signal the end of his political career. Here’s everything you need to know about him and how he’s continuing to make an impact.

Why Did RFK Jr. Run for President?

RFK Jr. cited three issues that inspired his presidential run: healing chronic disease, ending the war in Ukraine, and stopping censorship. As a man who would be considered left-of-center, RFK Jr. filed his candidacy under the Democratic Party, but he has maintained a stance of skepticism surrounding the Left’s censorship machine.

During the speech in which he dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed former President Donald Trump, he said the Democrats were determined to keep Americans from supporting someone like him who called attention to issues he believes they suppress – like vaccine safety, for instance.

“Governments and oppressors don’t censor lies. They don’t fear lies,” RFK Jr. said during the speech. “They fear the truth, and that’s what they censor.”

Though RFK Jr. is not anti-vaccine – and instead supports a healthy dose of skepticism over the necessity and efficacy of some vaccines – many in the Democratic Party have used his skepticism against him to insist he spreads health misinformation and propaganda.

But RFK Jr. has vaccinated all six of his children and has acknowledged the hundreds of millions of human lives saved over the past century due to broad vaccine coverage. Rather, his skepticism stems from a deep understanding of corruption within Big Pharma and regulatory bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

As we know, government agencies are intimately tied to the pharmaceutical industry, and this does lead to conflicts of interest where the agencies may downplay risks for certain treatments, medicines, and vaccines to protect the industry’s ability to churn out a consistent profit. And, as we know, the Democratic Party has fundamentally been synchronized regarding unwavering support for vaccines – even ones that did not follow the 10-15 year rigorous, multi-phase testing timelines that they typically undergo, like the Covid-19 vaccine. 

So RFK Jr. lost major points among his left-wing colleagues for challenging the public health narrative. Though his poll numbers reportedly reached over 20% in some cases, he said the Democratic Party not only manufactured pseudo-support for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign but also held a “palace coup” by placing Vice President Kamala Harris in the driver’s seat once President Biden admitted his inability to serve another term.

Already disillusioned by the Left for these reasons, RFK Jr. hit another snag in the road. According to him, the Democrats “deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.” He slammed the primary as a “sham” and said that “in the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it.”

The Democratic Party we know today is not the one his father or his uncle once led. So, RFK Jr. recently dropped out but made his dissatisfaction with the Democrats abundantly clear by endorsing former President Trump’s race against Vice President Harris.

Looking Ahead to RFK Jr.’s Future Political Career

Though we can’t trust the validity of polls, several battleground states show that President Trump and Vice President Harris are close in the race. So, RFK Jr. dropping off the ballot in these swing states poses the possibility for similarly disillusioned left-leaning voters to swing to the Trump camp and get him back in the White House. 

It’s not that simple, however. After endorsing President Trump, RFK Jr. initially tried to strategically remove his name from some states’ ballots while remaining on others to benefit the Trump campaign. But Democrats successfully kept him on the ballot in some states from which he requested to be removed, and he was removed from the ones he wanted to remain on. For instance, RFK Jr. wanted to remove his name from the North Carolina ballot, but the North Carolina State Board of Elections (run by Democrats) denied his request. 

While the New York Times stated that RFK Jr.’s Trump endorsement “is unlikely to change the nature of the race,” we know, based on the 2016 election, that anti-establishment sentiments cannot be casually waved off. If not for crunchy folk on the right and Hillary-hating Bernie Bros, President Trump may not have had such a strong turnout. So, by keeping RFK Jr.’s name on the ballot in battleground states, the Democratic Party benefits from a split vote among this cohort between President Trump and RFK Jr.

Nevertheless, RFK Jr.’s decision to stand down and suspend his campaign while boldly endorsing a controversial right-wing figure could also win him some brownie points in a second Trump administration. Some speculate that RFK Jr. might receive a cabinet appointment, especially after President Trump said of RFK Jr.’s endorsement: “I want to thank Bobby, that was very nice [...] That’s big. He’s a great guy, respected by everybody.”

If RFK Jr. were to have a role in President Trump’s potential administration, there’s a high chance it would be focused on health policy. Obviously, as an environmental lawyer and activist, he could also play a part in environmental policy (especially pollution and water safety), but his views differ from the MAGA movement on climate change. While this is all speculative, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that RFK Jr.’s criticism of the health agencies in bed with Big Pharma could lead to him in an advisory role for reforming public health institutions or even chairing a commission on vaccine safety. 

In the 1960s, during the JFK and RFK Sr. days, America only spent about 5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health. But, by 2021, our spending had increased to over 18% of the GDP while our health outcomes appeared to be getting worse. 

“Every American has a family member or friend with one or more chronic illnesses. The Medicare and Medicaid budgets are now five times larger than our military budget,” RFK Jr. said in his Trump endorsement speech.

Since the early ‘60s, obesity rates have tripled. RFK Jr. flagged this, as well as the fact that juvenile diabetes was “practically non-existent” when he was young. But today? One out of four young adults and adolescents are prediabetic, and that rate is expected to increase. Over one in three American adults has prediabetes, and over 10% have either type 2 or type 1 diabetes. He also pointed out that, if you include obesity, 60% of Americans struggle with chronic illness.

Metabolic health is no joke, and these figures should come as a major wake-up call to all Americans to clean up their health using productive, time-tested methods rather than depending on Big Pharma.

Furthermore, RFK Jr. has questioned the “explosion of neurological illnesses” and how this relates to environmental factors such as vaccines or chemical toxins. Pesticides, plastics, and other industrial pollutants have increased as our nation industrialized, but RFK Jr. has argued that regulatory agencies aren’t actually doing enough to protect Americans from harmful levels of exposure and that industry manufacturers aren’t conducting sufficient research into their multi-faceted effects on the human body.

Men like RFK Jr. drum up bipartisan support for a health-positive future in America. In June, Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina-Luna proposed legislation to ban controversial food dyes like Red 40 and Yellow 5 and 6 and high-fructose corn syrup in American food production.

“Don’t you want healthy children?” RFK Jr. asked the crowd during his Trump endorsement speech. He slammed the proliferation of products like ultra-processed grains, seed oils, and processed sugars. “Don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? Don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? That’s what President Trump told me that he wanted.” 

The party he once belonged to has politicized health and wellness, deeming fitness culture and proper nutrition as right-wing propaganda and purporting the myth that people can be healthy at any size. Americans who don’t want to feel like crap on the daily and who resonate with this messaging from RFK Jr. can feel more confident that, if he’s involved with the Trump administration, their vote is going to the right candidate.

Several left-leaning (or politically neutral) social media influencers have gone viral for supporting RFK Jr.’s positions on public health. As reported by The Daily Wire, this includes influencers like Courtney Swan, who operates the nearly 400k follower-strong Instagram account @realfoodology, or Max Lugavere, who boasts over 1 million Instagram followers and is a New York Times best-selling author and popular podcaster.

Swan told The Daily Wire that RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump was a “huge turning point” for her. “I’ve been a voting liberal my entire adult life,” she said. “I voted blue my entire life.”

But when RFK Jr. stood with former President Trump, Swan said she “full blown sobbed” because she had been waiting for her “entire adult voting life for a presidential candidate to acknowledge how sick our country is.”

While Lugavere has not endorsed a particular candidate, he did tell The Daily Wire that RFK Jr.’s campaigning on behalf of the chronic disease epidemic gives him “optimism” that mainstream lies about health will get “more significant attention.”

“I’m going to vote for the party that makes those issues a priority,” he told The Daily Wire. “I’m definitely partial to whatever party puts more emphasis on the fact that we do have more agency in regards to our health, specifically lifestyle, nutrition.” 

Conservative Americans may want to be wary of blindly supporting RFK Jr.’s full ideology since he has quite a radical environmental track record, among other far-left positions. He once called for governments to give a corporate “death penalty” to those who suggest climate change isn’t an existential threat to humanity and wanted to introduce many new government programs for things such as “the transition of industry to zero-waste cycles and clean energy sources.” He has attacked the necessary usage of fossil fuels, coal, and nuclear energy and would support striking military spending to redirect funds toward social welfare programs. 

Nevertheless, he has gotten in former President Trump’s ear about how our current health narratives put the entire country at risk and drive up disgusting amounts of healthcare costs. As such, RFK Jr. should earn some honest recognition from those of us who aren’t blissfully ignorant of America’s many spiraling health crises. We have yet to see how RFK Jr.’s political career will play out after leaving the Democratic Party. Still, one thing is for sure – he has a unique opportunity to rally support for a newer, health-conscious conservative voter.