Trump discussed with RFK Jr. potential role in second Trump administration: Sources
Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Nixon Library on June 12, 2024 in Yorba Linda, California. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke multiple times in the span of a few days this month, multiple people familiar with the conversations told ABC News, including an in-person meeting in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention where the two presidential candidates discussed ways Kennedy could be involved in a second Trump administration.
At least one idea floated, according to two people with knowledge of the talks, was for Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who speaks often about the perils of chronic disease, to oversee the Health and Human Services Department under a possible Trump administration.
According to one source, the in-person meeting, which took place the Monday of the convention, never reached a point where Trump and Kennedy had a deal in place for Kennedy to exit the race and endorse the former president in exchange for a role in the administration. Rather, it was an “informal,” “free flowing” conversation, the source said.
The two men initially spoke by phone on the evening Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, one source told ABC News, adding that they agreed on that phone call to meet in Milwaukee the next week.
The Washington Post first reported the existence of the conversations.
Two people familiar with Kennedy’s thinking told ABC News that the agreement to meet with Trump stemmed from Kennedy’s desire for national unity.
According to one of the sources, Kennedy has tried to connect with Democratic leaders regularly for roughly a year to try to discuss ways to “bring the party back to its roots,” but has not succeeded in having those conversations.
Kennedy, who initially ran for the Democratic nomination last year, pivoted to an independent run in October.
“President Trump met with RFK and they had a conversation about the issues just as he does regularly with important figures in business and politics because they all recognize he will be the next President of the United States,” Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez told ABC News in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, told ABC News in a statement that she was aware of Kennedy’s dialogue with Trump this month, and was supportive.
“I was aware of it and support American Unity and health. We are willing to speak with anyone on unwinding the corporate capture of our agencies,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to drop out of the presidential race by the end of this week, sources familiar with the decision tell ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that Kennedy plans to endorse Donald Trump — but when asked directly by ABC News if he will be endorsing the former president, Kennedy said, “I will not confirm or deny that.”
“We are not talking about any of that,” he said.
Sources cautioned the decision is not yet finalized and could still change, with one source adding that Kennedy’s hope is, in part, to finalize things quickly in order to try to blunt momentum from the Democratic National Convention.
One possible scenario being discussed is for Kennedy to appear on stage with Trump at an event in Phoenix on Friday, though the sources cautioned that Kennedy’s thinking could always change and sources close to Trump say no plan for Friday is finalized.
Kennedy’s campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox, emailed senior staff on Wednesday morning thanking them for their hard work — but indicated a decision on the way forward had not been made, a source familiar with the email told ABC News.
“There are a couple potential paths forward, not only two, and I can bear witness to the care, examination that Bobby has invested in the consideration of each,” Fox wrote, according to the source.
A spokesperson for Kennedy posted on X that Kennedy will “address the nation” live on Friday to discuss his “path forward,” but offered no specifics.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy told ABC News regarding the Democratic convention and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, “I think it was a coronation, it’s not democracy. Nobody voted. Who chose Kamala It wasn’t voters.”
He also complained about the way his campaign has been treated.
“She went in four weeks from being the worst liability for Democratic Party to the second coming of Christ without giving one interview, without showing up for a debate, without a single policy that anyone thinks isn’t ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not democracy.”
(CHICAGO) — When Kentucky state Rep. Rachel Roberts was first running for her seat, she was advised to not use a word common in political campaigns: “values.”
Roberts, now the only Democrat representing northern Kentucky in the state legislature, was running in a 2020 special election in competitive region of the state just outside of Cincinnati at a time when Republicans had a stranglehold on rhetoric on “freedom,” “patriotism” and the American flag.
“I’d get hammered,” Roberts said she was told. “The Republicans would say Democrats aren’t the party of values.”
Walking around the Democratic National Committee this week, things couldn’t be more different.
The word “freedom” is on seemingly on the lips of every attendee and speaker — and the name of Beyonce’s hit song and now-campaign anthem. Audience chants of “USA!” puncture speakers’ remarks as they wave signs saying the same. Camo hats bearing the names of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pockmark the crowd. And musician Jason Isbell performed the country hit song “Something More Than Free.”
The convention marks a culmination of decades of Democratic efforts to take back patriotism after years of Republicans owning messaging around “freedom” and the American flag.
For years, the party lamented the domination Republicans held on symbols of patriotism, a monopoly that started in during the Reagan presidency and that Democrats couldn’t break.
“You had a Republican Party that in the 80s and 90s, seized the freedom mantle using guns. The Second Amendment was America’s first freedom,” said Jim Kessler, the co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. “Right to life was a version of freedom, too.” Where Democrats supported freedom was a license to behave poorly, like burning a flag.”
Now, after having been ceded to Republicans for decades “freedom” is the word bouncing off the walls of Chicago’s United Center. And Democrats are reveling in the reversal of their messaging fortunes.
“Reclaiming the flag and reclaiming freedom and democracy, I think that was a feeling broadly. But I think within the last several cycles, it became clearer how to do that in a way that had broad appeal and resonated with people,” said one Democratic strategist with ties to Harris’ team.
After decades being shut out from leaning into patriotism, Democrats said they were handed an opening by their sworn enemy — former President Donald Trump.
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, spurred by Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and led by his supporters, jolted the transfer of power from the former president to his successor. And the Supreme Court decision scrapping constitutional abortion protections allowed Democrats to go on offense on a culture war in which they’d long been in a defensive crouch.
All the sudden, Democrats said, democracy was teetering. Women’s bodily autonomy was at risk. And the battle for “freedom” was on.
“The Dobbs decision all of a sudden gave Democrats the opportunity for a reset button on that issue, on patriotism. And I think Donald Trump gave us the opportunity on Jan. 6 to start retaking those themes,” former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, D, said, referencing the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“The combination of Trump and January 6 and the Dobbs decision gave Democrats an opportunity to reset and say, ‘this is really what freedom means. That is not freedom, folks, that is oppression, that is autocracy. Freedom means liberty, and this is what we stand for.'”
Democrats didn’t storm the gates right away.
With President Joe Biden still as the party’s standard bearer, he and his campaign focused on a fight for democracy, while also pushing for codification of abortion protections — two issues that weren’t consistently and explicitly linked in campaign messaging.
But after the president ended his campaign and Harris rose as his replacement atop Democrats’ tickets, the messaging changed.
“Freedom” became her rallying cry — the climax of a push by Harris and the party at large.
“Democrats had been concerned about Republicans taking over these quintessentially American words for a while, ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,'” said Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director in the vice president’s office. “The Democrats were trying to figure it out. The vice president was very focused on how Democrats can recast this word.”
Now, “freedom” is being used as a catchall.
Beyond freedom to access reproductive health care and a democratic process, the message is being used by Harris to push for everything from freedom for students to go to school without being shot to freedom to “get ahead” economically and more.
“Are we fighting for freedom? That’s what I thought,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s women’s caucus. “Freedom is not drowning in medical debt. Freedom is earning the same salary as a man does for doing the same job…Freedom is about making our own decisions about our own bodies.”
To be certain, Democrats aren’t dominating the war over “freedom.”
Republicans still lean hard on patriotism, adorning their rallies and suit jacket lapels with American flags and turning Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” into a conservative hymn. And the party still is able to say it wants more funding for the military than its Democratic foes in Congress, who insist on matching boosts in Pentagon spending with rises in funds for other domestic priorities.
But for Democrats, just being in the fight for one of the most potent symbols in electoral politics is a breath of fresh air.
“I think the narrative has taken some of those words and said that they belong to Republicans, just like, apparently, red trucker hats only belong to Republicans,” Roberts, a delegate to the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic leader in the Kentucky state House, told ABC News. “And we are demanding, no, these are universal words.”
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance speaks during preparations for the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum July 16, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In a notable moment from Sen. JD Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention last week, former President Donald Trump’s newly picked running mate took aim at President Joe Biden’s support of the Iraq War.
“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” Vance told the Milwaukee crowd, adding, “When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”
But in 2010, Vance himself expressed support for the war.
“I supported the Iraq invasion on the merits,” Vance wrote in a 2010 article for “FrumForum,” a conservative website run by David Frum, now the senior editor for The Atlantic, according to a post reviewed by ABC News.
Vance, who served as a combat correspondent with the U.S. Marines in Iraq in late 2005, is the first veteran on a presidential ticket since 2008.
In the FrumForum article, dated April 12, 2010, Vance discussed the complexity of the war in the wake of Wikileaks releasing a video of an Apache helicopter gunning down a group of Iraqi civilians.
“We can legislate laws of war and refine rules of engagement, but war will always be a grisly business,” said Vance, writing under his previous name, J.D. Hamel, which he also used during his military service. “I’m not a peacenik, and I supported the Iraq invasion on the merits, but it’s folly to send troops to do the toughest job and then be shocked by the attitude that some show while doing it.”
Vance previously went by Hamel, his mother’s husband’s name, before later taking the name Vance, the name of his maternal grandmother.
In the piece, Vance also criticized then-President George W. Bush for failing to “emotionally prepare the American people for war.”
“Of all of President Bush’s mistakes, his failure to emotionally prepare the American people for war is perhaps the most severe. We ought to demand the best of our troops, and do whatever necessary to rectify mistakes, but the American people are too often confused or shocked when things like this happen,” Vance wrote. “Maybe we wouldn’t be if we understood the monumental difficulty of our task.”
Vance’s time writing for “FrumForum” — whose editor, David Frum, is a vocal Trump critic — has garnered scrutiny since the Ohio senator accepted the nomination as the Republican vice presidential nominee.
Vance’s stance on the Iraq War appeared to turn more critical in the years following his 2010 article. In a 2016 op-ed in The New York Times, he lamented that Republicans, in 2008 and 2012, “ran candidates who refused to rethink the Bush foreign policy that led to Iraq.”
“With the Islamic State on the rampage, Americans today look to a Middle East that is humiliatingly worse off than the way we found it,” Vance wrote.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundations 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit in April 2023, Vance said that when he was a high school student, just prior to enrolling in United States Marine Corps in April 2003, he believed “what we would do in Iraq was transform it from a horrible dictatorship into a flowering democracy.”
“I also hate to say not just that it didn’t happen, not just that some of us were wrong, myself very much at the top of the list, even though I was only a high school student,” Vance said last year, “but the people who were most wrong suffered no consequences.”
Last year, Vance called the Iraq war an “unforced disaster” in a social media post.
“Twenty years ago we invaded Iraq. The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans. It destroyed the oldest Christian populations in the world. It cost over $1 trillion, and turned Iraq into a satellite of Iran. It was an unforced disaster, and I pray that we learn its lessons,” Vance wrote.
In a statement to ABC News, Vance spokesperson William Martin said, “Like thousands of young men at the time, Sen. Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps near the start of the Iraq War. He ultimately came to the same conclusion as millions of other Americans: that the war he served in was a massive mistake.”
“Too few leaders in Washington learned that lesson, but President Trump knew it from the very start,” the statement continued. “Together, they will implement an America First agenda that actually serves our national security interests and avoids the foreign policy disasters that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have overseen for the past four years.”
Throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he did not support the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, despite previous public statements to the contrary. In an Howard Stern interview that briefly touched on the subject, Stern asked Trump, “Are you for invading Iraq?” to which Trump replied, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly,” referring to the 1990 Gulf War.
Trump, however, told NBC News in 2016, “I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq.”
“You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004 … I was against the war in Iraq. I said it’s going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It’s been a disastrous war,” Trump said, pointing to a comment he made over a year after the war began.
