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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: You Can’t Spell ‘RatF*cKer’ Without ‘RFK Jr’

Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: You Can’t Spell ‘RatF*cKer’ Without ‘RFK Jr’

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Bobby Kennedy Jr. is still talking. Up in the hills of Los Angeles, in a house studded with family memorabilia, the scion of the Kennedy clan and Democratic presidential candidate has been expounding for 90 minutes on everything from Latin American populism to the CIA, from cryptocurrency to the war in Ukraine. His phone is pinging with messages from politicians and Twitter celebrities, and he needs to jump on a flight to Las Vegas, where he’ll address a tech convention. But Kennedy waves off his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, as she pops into the living room to remind him he still needs to pack. He wants to talk about how people are finally listening to him. “I am constantly surprised by it,” Kennedy says of the attention to his long-shot campaign. “It’s just very weird.”

Weird is one word for Kennedy’s bid, which has won support from figures as disparate as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Alicia Silverstone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It’s a guerrilla operation staffed by longtime friends and colleagues from Kennedy’s many previous lives—as an environmental lawyer, prolific author, master falconer, Hollywood husband, and anti-vaccine crusader. So far, the candidate has spent more time chatting on podcasts and livestreams than visiting with voters. Instead of dropping in on New Hampshire coffee shops, he’s given a speech at a Miami Bitcoin conference, appeared on Twitter  Spaces with Elon Musk, and is slated to be interviewed on June 14 on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast.

More striking than the medium is the message—a kind of MAGA for Democrats that stands in stark contrast to the optimism that defined the campaigns of his father and uncle. Kennedy sounds simultaneously stuck in the past and jarringly online, his worldview dark and suspicious. He speaks about a time when the country’s waters were not polluted, pharmaceutical companies did not poison children, bioweapons did not threaten to destroy humanity, and people trusted the government not to lie to or silence them. “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”…

Just one more rich white dude, in mourning for a world which only ever sorta existed for the top few percent of white men with money…

The strategy that allies have landed on is to focus on podcasts and alternative media. Kennedy believes the 2024 election could be “decided by podcasts,” and he intends to use them to full advantage. “In the same way that my uncle sort of realized that television was a good medium for him in 1960, and Trump discovered that he could communicate with these large groups of people on Twitter in 2016,” Kennedy says, “I think podcasts are a good medium for me.”…

In the past few weeks, Kennedy has appeared on dozens of podcasts and online shows, holding conversations with actor Russell Brand, right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson, right-wing activist James O’Keefe, and Musk. “I’ll talk to anybody,” he says, although he recently crossed two names off that list: Steve Bannon and Jones. (“My marriage could not survive,” Kennedy says. “She would kill me.”) Figures on the right are especially attracted to Kennedy’s jeremiads against what he sees as an increasingly authoritarian government and his criticism of U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, which he calls “a setup by the neocons and the CIA.”…

So far, Kennedy has held only a handful of in-person events. Most of his campaign is online, where #Kennedy2024 has grown into one of the most confusing hashtags on the internet. At 2 a.m. on June 6, he posted a video of himself at the southern border in Arizona, criticizing Biden’s immigration policies. He has a TikTok account where he offers glimpses of his life or views on assorted topics. (One video instructed viewers how to catch crabs on the beach.) He’s been following the advice of Tinder founder Sean Rad, who Kennedy says has been advising his campaign, and his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox, an author and former CIA agent who has been running his digital strategy. “She said with TikTok, you want to put sort of unexpurgated, very raw footage,” Kennedy notes.

The candidate seems to be basking in a sense of destiny. “I’ve studied certain realignments that have occurred throughout American history,” he says. “And I think that’s happening now.” His vision is “the unification of left and right in a populist movement,” he says. “That would be unstoppable, right?” In the end, Kennedy’s long-shot candidacy may say more about the state of America in 2023 than it does about the man himself. What matters in the end isn’t whether people support his campaign, he says. It matters that they’re listening.

He’s WIN with the help of Joe Rogan, the dude who was gonna guarantee Bernie Sanders a landslide victory in 2020!

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    dr. bloor

    RFK Jr’s psychohistory is going to be great reading if anyone ever takes it on.  From afar, he impresses more as a “FYRE Fesitval for Kennedys” rather than politics in general.  He’s genuinely nuts in a way that totally outstrips everyone in the family tree.

  5. 5.

    Kay

    “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”…

    Yuck. Sappy, self centered nostalgia for some golden era that never was.

  6. 6.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Alison Rose: Thanks!!  I don’t know her.  Sounds cool.  Voice sorta reminds me of Andra Day (whose music I LOVE, and who I may have a bit of a crush on too)

  7. 7.

    Anoniminous

    Weird is one word for Kennedy’s bid

    Nay, “pointless” is one word for Kennedy’s bid.

  9. 9.

    kalakal

    @Gin & Tonic:

    “the next president will win because of podcasts”

    Pre-recorded radio broadcasts – the medium of the future!

    Maybe someone should tell him about TV – that has sound and vision

  10. 10.

    leeleeFL

    His Father is rolling over in his grave!  This putz needs a high colonic and a boot out the fookin’ door!   Asshole,!

  11. 11.

    Kay

    The Qanon people have a weird obsession with the Kennedys and they’re all anti vaxxers. Can’t they take this guy on the R side?

  13. 13.

    OverTwistWillie

    I mean maybe if Joe Sr. was alive, but he would be backing one of the not a crackpot of his progeny.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    All the comments from Republicans on Twitter are how much they like RFK Jr (because he bashes Biden) but how they’ll only vote for him in a D primary. They’re voting for Trump in the general.

  17. 17.

    hells littlest angel

    @Kay:

     

    “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”…

     

    You know, the one in which my father and uncle, among others, were assassinated.

  18. 18.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Kay: The America of my youth was fucking thankful for Salk’s and Sabin’s polio vaccines. Around that time, my sis was dragging one leg and my parents thought she had contracted it. I still remember lining up in the dusty schoolyard field for the sugar cube.

    RFK Jr. would condemn the world to suffer from an untold number of diseases because he’s a cracked up crank with a famous name.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    I genuinely loathe these people. When childhood disease epidemics come back (and it is “when”- there are more anti vaxxers than ever and none of them will vaccinate their children) I will hold them personally responsible. They’re killers. Fucking Joe Rogan sitting smugly on his piles of cash while he pumps out hour after hour of lies. He wil be directly responsible.

  21. 21.

    Kay

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    Oh, you should hear his idiot fans on Twitter- “he has a 160 IQ! He quotes philosophers! So brilliant!”

    I could throw up. Another wealthy dummy. What do they teach at pricey private schools anyway? Why are all of these people morons?

  22. 22.

    TEL

    Why is he being referred to as a “democratic” candidate? He’s a spoiler whose actual beliefs are way off from the Democratic party. Just because he claims environmentalism as part of his belief system doesn’t make him a Democrat.

  23. 23.

    Tony G

    @Kay: So … this pompous asshole wants to restore the “America of his youth” — the one that murdered his father and his uncle.  God, I hate this type of entitled Boomer — and I’m a Boomer myself.  It’s also cute that he blames his wife for not letting him talk to Alex Jones — as if a monster like Alex Jones is worth anything other than contempt.  What an asshole.

  24. 24.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Kay: The only chance Trump has of winning the presidency is by dividing the Democratic coalition, and RFK Jr is one of the many useful idiots being employed to achieve this end. Don’t Believe The Hype. The one republican candidate that I think has a genuine opportunity is Chris Christie because he can actually pretend to be a normal human being.

  27. 27.

    smith

    He seems to be aiming to capture those living in the weird twilight zone between the two ends of the horseshoe, the MAGA-tankie hybrids, I guess. That’s not a really densely populated area, as far as I can tell, except in some corners of the internet.

  31. 31.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Suzanne: Sure, but Christie’s a schoolyard bully that seems to be the only guy on the Republican side willing to punch Trump in the mouth. I wonder where was that guy in 2016? Things might have turned out differently. Then again, I don’t think Christie will cross the finish line because America hates fat people.

  32. 32.

    Renie

    No one would care about RFK Jr if his last name was not Kennedy. He’s just exploiting the memory of his uncle and father who would both probably be horrified at his political views.

  33. 33.

    Tony G

    @The Thin Black Duke: I sometimes (out of masochism) listen to the radio propaganda of Gary Null — another anti-vaxxer zealot and an ally of RFK Junior in the his quest to cause more suffering and death.  Null has nothing good to say about any Democratic Party politicians, but he has a lot of praise for Tucker Carlson and for Republican politicians who are against vaccines and covid amelioration efforts.  The anti-vaxxers are, with perhaps rare exceptions — right wingers.

  35. 35.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: That is RED FLAG language. No one who says that kind of thing should be anywhere near power.

  36. 36.

    James E Powell

    figures as disparate as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Alicia Silverstone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

    All right-wing cranks. Not at all disparate.

    And why would anyone want support from Alex Jones? Does he also have the support of Elizabeth Holmes?

  38. 38.

    Gvg

    It almost sounds like he is trying to rewrite history and ignore his fathers murder. I don’t think he actually likes democrats or politics, he has just been taught he should. I can bear his dislike due to trauma, but I think he would be happier if he just dropped out and quit living in that name. He is really nuts. Not going to get votes. Pitiful.

    I don’t expect him to even manage being a spoiler and think it marks Bannon as a loser that he was backing this guy. Mark who pays attention to this guy, they are not going to be the important ones in theGOP.

    All the antivaxers are a problem. People seem to want to believe that shit right now. The arguments are stupid. You have to want to believe.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    @The Thin Black Duke: Eh, the MAGAts elected TFG, and he’s not 238 pounds. I’m not sure his weight is the critical factor.

    Christie isn’t going to win because he isn’t a good fit for the mood of the GOP electorate right now. They really want to humiliate liberals and Christie doesn’t scratch that itch for them.

  41. 41.

    hueyplong

    @Suzanne: You’ll have a tough time identifying a MAGAt who thinks Trump is overweight. I’d guess half (or more) of them think he has six-pack abs.

  42. 42.

    kalakal

    “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,”

    This, fuckin this.

    It’s not your country you dipstick. There are 330 million people in this country but what counts is your feelings, you who due to being born to immense wealth, connections, and privilege generally has decided that you have the answers to the crises of the 21st century. And utilizing all the opportunites available to you have equipped yourself for the task by learning falconry.

    He is a shallow, preening egotist, educated far beyond his capacity for rational thought, capable of uttering nothing but trite platitudes, a true intellectual soulmate for Jordan Peterson. His only ‘contribution’ to society is to enable the preventable death of millions through his arrogance.

    If his surname were “Smith” his opening line to any conversation would be “Do you want fries with that?”

  44. 44.

    Tehanu

    It makes me so sad. His father must be spinning in his grave. And with all the money the Kennedy family has, I can’t understand why Bob Jr. didn’t get better psychiatric help for the traumas of seeing his uncle and his father murdered.

    @Kay: ​
      Couldn’t agree more. Too bad we can’t just put them into iron lungs and ask them how they like it.

  45. 45.

    Atticus Dogsbody

    “I am constantly surprised by it,” Kennedy says of the attention to his long-shot campaign. “It’s just very weird.”

    A surprising moment of self awareness.

  46. 46.

    Lyrebird

    @kalakal: ​
     

    THANK YOU Kalakal sir! (I think, or ma’am! Or other preferred mode of address!)

    WHen I read “my country” from that dangerous deceiver,
    I thought the same thing, but couldn’t find the words.

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    @Renie: It might depend on which decade of their political views they retained.

    American Experience:

    In the 1950s, Robert Kennedy, like most Americans, despised communism. At the time, the Soviet Union was “Enemy #1.” But RFK honed his anti-communism working side-by-side with the nation’s leading red-baiter, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.

    A Kennedy family friend, McCarthy vacationed with the clan on Cape Cod, and even dated two kennedy sister, Pat and Jean. When Bobby needed a job in 1952, after working on his brother Jack’s successful Senate campaign, his father Joe Kennedy picked up the phone. By January, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had a new lawyer.

    He would last barely six months, done in by a rivalry with McCarthy’s chief deputy, Roy Cohn, as well as disenchantment with their overzealous style. But the months with McCarthy would follow Kennedy for the rest of his life, helping define the “Bad Bobby” that many liberals could never quite forget.

    Though Kennedy had long since moved on, he found McCarthy’s death in 1957 “very upsetting.” In historian Ronald Steel’s words, “for him the errant senator was a kindred spirit — one engaged, as he was himself, in the struggle against evil.”

    People are complicated. Politicians, especially. Decent ones live and learn and change their views when presented with evidence.

    RFK, jr. is a crank and a crackpot. But he’s not going to affect the election, I don’t think.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    Ken

    @Kay: When I hear “the America of my youth”, I recall a study that found that “the good old days” for about 90% of people worked out to their grade-school years — you know, when Mom and Dad provided everything, and your biggest worry was getting your homework done.

    For the remaining 10%, it was somehow before that. Maybe they were remembering when all they had to do was squall and someone would shove a nipple in their mouth.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @Atticus Dogsbody: A surprising moment of self awareness.

    Though not quite enough self-awareness to go from “The amount of attention is weird” to “like someone told (or paid) them to do it”.

  51. 51.

    Jackie

    @Another Scott: RDK Jr is enjoying the fickle spotlight now. I think a year from now he’ll be gone and forgotten.

    As will be Pudd’n Boots.  It’d be nice to see how everything looks a year from now!

  52. 52.

    Bostondreams

    @Tony G:

     

    apparently she is quite comfortable with his views from what I have read. He’s ‘just asking questions.’

  54. 54.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Most telling no one in his very large family (siblings and cousins) are supporting this loon

  55. 55.

    anastasio beaverhausen

    His antivax stance alone rates a hard NO from me.  As a physician, I have seen vaccine resistance result in tremendous morbidity.  Google herpes zoster ophthalmicus and ask yourself why you wouldn’t want to get vaccinated against this virus. And the COVID deniers were even worse.  You know who took him down in a recent interview, in my opinion?  Smerconish.  Not a doctor, but obviously had done his research and had several valid counterpoints to RFKjr’s superficially scientific blather.

  56. 56.

    different-church-lady

    unlikely coalition of true believers, cynical right-wing personalities, and contrarian tech bros

    Nothing unlikely about it.

  57. 57.

    Chris Johnson

    I would just watch the exact mechanisms by which this guy finds support.

    ‘cos he seems like just another Potemkin candidate, just like Trump. Of course he’s kind of amazed at any support he gets. He’s not really at the center of the web that’s producing the support. It’s that Russian internet stuff, through its mechanisms, that’s producing the support. Another longshot opportunity for Putin. Worked once, didn’t it?

    I’m gonna say if Russia gets a second American President in office, gathering up secrets in ‘beautiful mind’ boxes and wrecking the joint, but this time it’s the OTHER party, I will literally stand and applaud and call it a hat trick (and then, jump off an effing cliff, because w t F).

    But that trick requires that nobody know how it is worked, and it’s too late. That ain’t working twice. I think they were trying valiantly to have enough people inside the Bernie campaign way back when (also, surprised at how well he did!) but Bernie is just not as kooky as that, Bernie’s a straight up politician and he backed Hillary and Biden and the people that snuck onto his staff went away again and are doing their own antivax kookiness or whatever.

    This one’s dumb enough to be entirely co-opted. He’s another Potemkin candidate. Part of that strategy is trying to get lots of people to do that, including ones who don’t know that’s what they’re being. This one is obvious.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay: ​
     

    “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”…

    He and I are almost exactly the same age. I remember that golden age (yes, I’m being sarcastic) where women, if they weren’t satisfied with being homemakers (‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen’), could be teachers, secretaries, nurses, or stewardesses. And black people had better know their place and not get too uppity.

    Sheriff Jim Clark and his goons beat the shit out of peaceful black marchers in Selma, Alabama in 1965. That’s when he and I were eleven years old. Maybe he wasn’t reading the papers or watching the news yet. I was.

    That was the America he was brought up in. He was fourteen when his father was assassinated, and his father wasn’t running for President in order to preserve the status quo of an idyllic world. His father was running because so many things needed changing. He should have at least been aware of that much at the time, and he’s had 55 years to fill in the gaps. Which he clearly hasn’t done.

    What a worthless person, just on this alone, without going into everything else that this dickweed has wrong with him. Fuck him.

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Chris Johnson: The larger part by far of Sanders voters have entered the Democrats’ big tent. Some rag-tag elements have not, and they will give Kennedy a base of support. I don’t think he has a very high ceiling, though.

    I notice Kennedy is making hay out of appearances on friendly podcasts. He may not show so well if and when he takes hard questions from real journalists.

  61. 61.

    BellyCat

    @Geminid: He may not show so well if and when he takes hard questions from real journalists

    And who are these real journalists?

  63. 63.

    Searcher

    Can I also bring up that RFK Jr is sixty flicking nine years old?

    Listen, I am resigned to Biden; he’s doing a fantastic job despite his age in a political situation that is almost impossible.  And RFK Jr is a kook of the highest caliber who’d never get my vote.

    But goddamn, how is fucking DeSantis the only sort-of candidate who will be under seventy at the time of the election?

  64. 64.

    jimmirabob

    “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”…

    “I…my…me…I…my…I……”

    Another white privileged genius narcissist that’s just on the edge of declaring “I am the only one.” No thank you.

    And, also too, it’s “the America in which I was brought up.” Sheesh, what kinda schooling did this guy get?”

  65. 65.

    jimmirabob

    @BellyCat: ​

    “And who are these real journalists?”

    Mehdi Hasan comes to mind. Or Maddow. Damn, now my low IQ’s showing.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @jimmirabob: I’ve been reading one of Mehdi Hasan’s books and now I feel like I would get some real sadistic pleasure out of hearing him eviscerate RFK Jr. on air.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @jimmirabob:

    Another white privileged genius narcissist that’s just on the edge of declaring “I am the only one.” No thank you.

    Yup.

    Supposedly he’s playing down the anti vaxx rhetoric but I don’t think the rebranding as a “populist” will work. He compared vaccines to the Holocaust in January of this year. He also believes that 5G is a plot by Bill Gates to control people. That was in January 2023 too.

    He’s rebranded in the last 6 months, exactly.

  68. 68.

    Bill Arnold

    @TEL:

    Just because he claims environmentalism as part of his belief system doesn’t make him a Democrat.

    He is not a real environmentalist. He was instrumental in the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant(s), and the power was replaced by plants that burn natural gas. There are consequences; additional human deaths (like 10^4 +), additional species extinctions.

  70. 70.

    Matt McIrvin

    As I said, I think Cornel West is a bigger threat, because I see the “white progressive frustrated with ordinary politics” bloc starting to trumpet him already. Black people won’t vote for him though.

    I haven’t noticed anyone supporting RFK Jr. His brand is antivaxxerism, and the Republicans have that territory already. The people who might cross over to vote for him in a Dem primary are behind Trump or DeSantis.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Nuclear power frustrates me because it’s one controversy where my position honestly approaches “both sides/root for injuries”.

    The nuclear industry has a bad track record of lying about shit when it comes to safety and environmental impact. That’s real. Nuclear plants are great for carbon footprint but they’re not free, environmentally speaking. They produce warm water that can be environmentally disruptive, uranium mining and processing has a lot of issues, etc.

    The thing is, when it comes to safety/environmental impact per kilowatt-hour, nuclear is effectively forgiven of many sins just by producing so much energy. And it genuinely is low-carbon. In 1978 it was not obvious that that was a more important consideration than other things, but now it is. That’s huge.

    But the reason we’re not building out nuclear massively today is actually about scale and money. A nuclear plant’s optimum size is very large and your expense is almost all up front. The huge cost of that means that the plant needs to run for many decades to make it worthwhile. And that slows down technological progress. The experience curve is not great. I’ve been hearing about amazing things from the next generation of nuclear plants since I was a child, and I’m still waiting for them.

    Nuclear fusion, if it ever became anything like practical, would be even worse in this regard, incidentally.

    Renewables are exploding because they’re at the other extreme–for all their drawbacks, you can iterate rapidly on solar and wind, and the experience curve is ferocious. In the 20th century, photovoltaic solar energy was prohibitively expensive and now it’s cheaper than coal power. Intermittency is a challenge, but storage and smart-grid tech is advancing rapidly too, if not as fast as the generation tech.

    There are loud online nuclear advocates who have responded to this basically by claiming it’s a conspiracy. Nukes are so expensive because the tree-huggers are plotting to make them expensive. Renewables are a plot by the natural gas industry because “every watt of solar has to be backed up by a watt of natural gas” (not even true any more, as far as I can tell).

    It’s not true. It’s an inherent scale and economics thing. We could probably bring the cost down from where it is, but we’re not going to build plants without proper containment, that’s not going to happen.

  72. 72.

    Dopey-o

    @Kay: Oh, you should hear his idiot fans on Twitter- “he has a 160 IQ! He quotes philosophers! So brilliant!”

    I also have an IQ of 160, but I haven’t sleepwalked back to 1962. I’m woked. I can also discuss Wittgenstein, Plato and Aristotle. Vaxxed x 5. Vaxxed my kids. Convinced my RWNJ brother to get vaxxed.

    BTW, an IQ test doesn’t measure intelligence, it simply measures how well you do on IQ tests.

  73. 73.

    StringOnAStick

    @Dopey-o: Exactly.  My IQ is the same as yours but my main ability has always been being really good at taking tests.  I have a near photographic memory, so IQ tests are a walk.  Everyone assumes high IQ means killer scientist or engineer, which isn’t true at all.

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