Former President Donald J. Trump is ramping up his attacks on independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a new poll shows overlap in his core supporters.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, on Friday night in a series of posts on his social media platform The Truth called out both Kennedy and his running mate, wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer and investor Nicole Shanahan. targeted.
“RFK Jr. is a Democratic Party 'plant,' a radical left-liberal installed to help re-elect Crooked Joe Biden, the worst president in American history,” Trump wrote.
Trump, who had privately discussed the idea of Kennedy as his running mate, echoed what Democrats have been saying for months about Kennedy's candidacy: that it could sway the election. He also seems to be trying to come up with a new nickname that makes fun of himself.
“A vote for Junior is essentially a wasted protest vote that could swing either way, but would only swing against Democrats if Republicans knew the truth about him.” he stated.
Kennedy fired back Saturday in a post on his own social media.
“When a frightened man posts on social media, he risks verbal abuse that makes him sound unfazed,” he wrote to X. “President Trump's tirade against me is a barrage of barely coherent, wild and inaccurate claims best resolved within the United States,” a presidential debate tradition. ”
Mr. Kennedy also tried to persuade the former president.
“Instead of dropping poison bombs from the safety of your bunker, let's listen to President Trump defend his record mano-a-mano to me with respectful and witty arguments,” he wrote. .
Mr. Trump also slammed Mr. Kennedy's running mate, Mr. Shanahan, who donated $2 million of the $5.4 million Mr. Kennedy raised in March. Until last year, she was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Trump called her “the vice presidential candidate no one has ever heard of” and disparaged her business credentials.
“Her job was to operate on my husband's wallet!” Trump wrote in the post. “She's much more liberal than Junior, and not a serious person. Only a pot of cash will help her get her no-chance candidate on the ballot…”
Trump's outbursts signaled a possible change in strategy by the former president, and for months Biden's Democratic allies and political observers have been pushing for the liberal heir Kennedy to join the campaign. It has been suggested that there may be benefits.
However, several recent opinion polls have reversed that scenario. Among them: a study released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University showing that Mr. Kennedy's supporters are more likely to support Mr. Trump in a binary race. 47% of respondents said they would vote for Trump, while 29% said they would vote for Biden.
In a hypothetical five-way race that included third-party and other independent candidates, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden were deadlocked at 37%, while Mr. Kennedy received support from 16% of registered voters.
Two other recent polls by Marist College and NBC News showed Mr. Biden faring better in a multi-candidate race featuring Mr. Kennedy.
