Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appears to be pulling voters from major party candidates President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Kennedy, 70, a longtime environmental lawyer, sat down on June 4 with USA TODAY Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire and New Hampshire election reporting fellow Margie Cullen to discuss his ambitions for the race, whether he’ll make it on every state ballot and what his father would think of his campaign.
More:Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t see himself as a spoiler for Democrats or GOP
Below is a transcript of that conversation that has been lightly edited for clarity. Context has been added to some claims.
Wire: I’m going to start with probably the question you’ve gotten the most from people: an independent candidate has never won. What makes you think you’re different and not just a spoiler candidate as some people have said?
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Kennedy: I think that we’re in a different time in history than we’ve ever been before. I’m running against the two least popular candidates who have ever run for president. I’m running at a time when between 70% and 80% of Americans, depending on what poll that you follow, doesn’t want a contest between President Trump and President Biden. In polls that pit me against either candidate, I beat them both. There’s three polls that have done this. The biggest poll is the Zogby poll, which is the biggest poll done during this election, it’s 10 times the size of almost any other poll. 26,000 respondents were surveyed, and I beat Biden in a head to head race 39 states to 11. So in a landslide. I beat President Trump, but [by] a much, much narrower margin. In both cases, President Biden, whether I’m in the race or out, cannot beat President Trump. I, I stay in the race, President Biden loses. If I get out of the race, he loses even worse, he loses two more states, Maine and Virginia. So what I’ve said to President Biden is that I will do a spoiler agreement with you. And let’s co-fund a national poll in October. And whichever one of us does worse against President Trump, that one will drop out, and I’m happy to abide by that poll.
According to pollsters, the Zogby poll, commissioned by the Kennedy campaign, has flaws in the sampling and premise that make it unreliable.
Wire: But this is not going to be a two man race, you pointed to polls that pit you against two of them-
Kennedy: What I would say is there’s never been an independent candidate that we know of, that’s run before, that’s been able, that in head-to-head races, would be beat both other candidates. My challenge over the next five months, is to persuade Americans to vote out of hope, out of inspiration, rather than out of fear. In every poll, I beat President Trump and President Biden in terms of favorability.
Oh, there is a big, big majority of Americans who would want to vote for me, but the reason they’re voting for President Trump or President Biden in the current polls is because they’re so terrified of the other candidate: that if Biden gets elected, it will be the end of the Republic, if Trump gets elected, it will be the end of the Republic. And so they’re voting out of fear. And my job is, my challenge is, to persuade Americans to vote out of hope rather than out of fear.
Cullen: Along with that, you’re on less than a dozen state ballots right now. So is there a path to the presidency if you don’t get on the ballot in every state, or on the ballot in enough states to have a chance of reaching that 270 Electoral College votes?
Kennedy: We will be on the ballot in every state by mid-July. We’re on the ballot in seven states now. And in another 10 states we have enough signatures to get on the ballot, but we’re withholding them for strategic reasons that are obvious. And we will, but we’ve got the four hardest states already. Those are states that everybody said we could not get, which is Texas, California, Florida and New York. The other ones are pretty simple. And the rate that we’re getting on, that we get signatures, the return on effort, all the people who are professionals in this area say they’ve never had an easier task of getting signatures.
For example in New Hampshire, we got 5,000 signatures in a single day. 3,000 are required. We have not filed in New Hampshire, again, for strategic reasons. We’re going to file at the last minute because the DNC is going to try to eliminate our signatures and challenge them and we want to give them less time to do that. But Maine, we have until August to get 4,000 signatures. I think we’re more than halfway there. And that’s an easy task for us. In New York, we were required 45,000 signatures, we got 137,000. And we threw out 37,000. So we really got over [170,000]. And in Texas, we were required to get about 113,000, we got quarter million. So we’re beating out all the metrics, and we’re doing things that the DNC and the RNC designed these rules to make sure nobody could do, but we’re doing it anyway. And we’re doing something that all the pundits, almost all of them said we wouldn’t be able to do.
Cullen: In New Hampshire, just to follow up quickly since I’m from the New Hampshire paper, when did you get those signatures in one day? And also I know the filing period – it only starts today and ends next Friday. So will you file next week?
Kennedy: In New Hampshire? Yeah, we’ll file next week. We got them all on a single day on primary day. Oh, and you know, it was snowing that day, if you recall. So it makes it more difficult because you have to ask people to take their gloves off and to stop in the middle of the sidewalk when the snow is coming down on them. And you have to make sure that their hands aren’t cold so that they sign their signature legibly. And so under those very difficult circumstances, we were still able to get the signatures in a single day, all of them – double what we needed practically.
Wire: What are the big differences between you and Biden and you and Trump? What makes you appealing to folks?
Kennedy: I think a number of things, but if you look at President Biden and President Trump, everybody would remark that they’re very different candidates, and that their dispositions are different, their personalities, the way they interact with the world. Ideologically, they’re very, very different, their rhetoric, their style. But if you look at actually the issues that they’re arguing over is a very, very narrow Overton window. And it’s mainly culture war issues, its guns, its abortion, its trans rights, it’s border security, and are all important issues. But they’re not the really existential issues that most Americans are really deeply concerned with right now, the fact that we have these historical inflation rates, young Americans can’t get into a home and neither of these candidates have a plan for getting them into a home.
They presided over this situation that we’re in right now where they can’t afford a home. Neither candidate can talk about the debt, which is one of the biggest issues, it’s $34 trillion. And we’re now paying more or are servicing that debt than for our military budget. Within five years, 50 cents out of every dollar that we collect in taxes will go to servicing the debt. Within 10 years, 100%. So it’s existential. And President Trump can’t talk about it because he ran up the bulk of it. He ran up $8 trillion of debt during his four years in office. After promising he was going to balance the budget. And that’s more money spent than every president combined from George Washington to George W. Bush, 283 years of American history. President Biden is racing to catch up with him in his four years, he’s now adding every 90 days a trillion dollars to the debt, and it’s utterly unsustainable and, I’m the only one with a plan for fixing it.
The two of them presided over the chronic disease epidemic, which was the greatest expense. It’s now $4.3 trillion. It’s five times the military budget. And neither of them has ever spoken of it, neither of them has a plan for dealing with it. I have a plan for ending it overnight. They need everyone talking about the forever wars, because both of them have been supporting and feeding the forever wars. I have a plan for winding down the forever wars. Neither of them have a plan for ending the toxic division in our country, which is more poisonous and more dangerous than any time since the American Civil War.
Wire: Can I talk to you about that division for just a moment. You mentioned that you appeal to voters on both sides. But what do you think it is that makes you appealing when your policy stances don’t really fit in either party’s normal platform? So what is it about you that you think people find the most appealing?
Kennedy: What I said when I announced a year ago is that I was going to avoid the little culture wars issues that keep us all at each other’s throats. And instead, I was going to focus on the values and the issues that keep us all together. And over the past year, I think I’ve kept that promise. And I’ve identified all of these issues that Americans are deeply concerned about. But the Republicans, Democrats don’t talk about that. They’re not part of the debate. And those issues, again, there’s the chronic disease epidemic, there’s the fact that kids can’t get into houses, there’s the national deficit, there’s the polarization, there’s the issue of AI and blockchain, which are again, these are the industries that can pull us out of this, of this debt crisis.
But, and President Trump and President Biden have them driven out of the country. It’s very important to have them here, but it’s also important to regulate them so they don’t become tools for government or corporate suppression of Americans, but they’re instead tools that give us power over our government. On issues like the environment they both, President Trump and President Biden, are focused on one aspect of the environmental issue that is the most divisive, which is climate change.
Wire: I hear what you’re saying. But you’re focusing a lot on the other candidates, and I would love to hear why you think you’re the right person.
Kennedy: If you ask Americans, what they really care about − those are the issues, the little issues that President Biden and President Trump are using the culture war issues or issues that Americans can get excited and inflamed and they activate the base. Most Americans are more deeply concerned with whether their kids are going to get into a house, they’re concerned with the cost of $4 eggs, $4 milk, $6 gasoline. And President Trump and President Biden do not have an answer for that. It’s the issues at the core of people’s concerns about what’s happening to America today, winding down the military, ending inflation, ending this chronic disease that is now debilitating 60% of our kids, almost everybody in our country knows kids who are affected. They’re not even talking about them. No solutions, it’s not even on their debating screen. And yet, when I talk to Americans, it’s their principal concerns. I think President Trump, President Biden are missing that because they need to inflame their base. They need to get people frightened. They need to keep people angry. And I’m trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to bring people together and get them to look calmly at how do we rebuild America?
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 40% of school-aged children and adolescents have at least one chronic condition. While estimates vary, there is no evidence that the majority of children in America have a chronic illness. According to a study by the National Library of Medicine, an increase in ADHD diagnoses could represent an increase in recognition.
Cullen: Changing topics a bit: What do you think of Trump’s conviction, should he drop out? Should he exit the race?
Kennedy: You know, what I’ve said from the beginning is I think that conviction is going to backfire on the Democratic Party. I think it’s a bad strategy for the DNC. I think the DNC feels like it doesn’t have a candidate who can win in a fair election. So their strategy is to try to get rid of their opponents using the courts, including me. They’re trying to get rid of me by challenging my ballot access, which is not very democratic. And I think the strategy of using Democratic prosecutors to discredit or to convict Donald Trump is going to backfire. I’ve said that from the beginning, and I think the events have validated that. President Trump, I think within 24 hours, they may have gotten $200 million in small donations. I think that both candidates, incidentally, are doing that. They’re weaponizing the court system for political purposes.
My father, his first week in office at the Justice Department he called all the division heads, he called all the bureau chiefs and he said, there’s one rule here, we never politicize this department. Americans need to have faith that their judicial system and their regulatory and enforcement agencies are, are colorblind when it comes to partisanship. And President Trump laid the precedent by promising to lock up Hillary Clinton to appoint a special prosecutor to put her in jail. This is the kind of thing that happens in third-world countries and banana republics. That happens in tyrannical countries. It happened in Britain prior to the revolution when the king would put his political opponents in Parliament in jail in order to stop them from coming to Parliament. And the framers were very conscious of that. And I’m also conscious that we want a country where people believe that the rule of law applies to everybody. But there’s a delicate balance. I was a prosecutor, I was a prosecutor in New York, and there’s a delicate balance. And these kinds of cases where you need to be conscious of the optics, about whether that case is going to be perceived by a large block of the American public as politically motivated. And I think in this particular case, which was, there was a lot of indicia that suggested that is what happened. There was the prosecutors had originally rejected the case, it was rejected by federal prosecutors, in 2016, and the current district attorney who brought the case ran on a platform that he was going to prosecute President Trump. So it was politicized from the beginning. And I think it’s not only undemocratic, but it also is just going to backfire on the DNC. And I think it’s going to make our country more polarized. Even if the DNC succeeded in doing this, what do they get in the long run? They get a result where half of the country is so angry that they’re going to be ungovernable. And is that something we really want? Or shouldn’t we be concerned about America and not just winning a political contest? Shouldn’t we be concerned about trying to bridge the gap between Americans rather than further inflame it? And I’m no fan of Donald Trump’s by the way, that’s why I’m running against him.
Wire: You mentioned your father, which kind of segues into, obviously, we saw 15 prominent members of your family endorse Biden. But I’m wondering, what do you think your father would think about you running for president?
Kennedy: Well, obviously, I think my father would strongly support me. I can’t think of a single issue that my dad felt strongly about that I wouldn’t check the same box. I think all the issues that I’m running on are issues that he felt deeply about, about ending war, the addiction to war, about standing up for the First Amendment, the environment, about ending this corrupt merger of state and corporate power that has transformed our agencies into sock puppets for the industries they are supposed to regulate.
People have different opinions, and they’re entitled to those. When Lincoln died, Seward, who was Secretary of Defense, was in the room when he died said he belongs to the ages. I think the same is true of my father and my uncle, they belong to all Americans and Americans are entitled to have their own version of who my father and my uncle [were], of what they would do on certain issues. And I enjoy hearing those debates all the time. I differ with a lot of people but I spent a life trying to understand my father, reading all the books about my dad, talking to people since I was very, very young and I think I have a really clear understanding of where he came down on issues and I’m very grateful that I share his beliefs and I share his values. And I’ve tried to live my life with the same kind of commitment to the same values.
Cullen: Could you clarify your position on abortion for us? I know it’s a hot button issue. And in the past, you kind of walked back on a national abortion ban. So just wanted to clarify.
Kennedy: I’ve been arguably the leading advocate in this country, for bodily autonomy, for medical freedom, for keeping government out of medical decisions of individual Americans. And so my position has been until recently that abortion should be the woman’s choice up till right until the ninth, the end of the ninth month. Incidentally, I took that position believing after a lot of discussion that there is no woman who would want to get pregnant, and then carry a baby nine months and get that baby aborted in the last, week of pregnancy. Why would that ever happen, and my understanding was the only reason that would happen was because there was some kind of medical necessity, either the baby was going to live a short and agonizing life and then die because of a disease, a genetic disease, or because the mother’s life was at risk.
And in those cases, I think is more important than ever to keep government out of the decision. That was the position that some of the advocacy groups took, that there were basically no elective abortions in the ninth month. I was shown a lot of data that showed that actually there are a fair number of elective abortions in the last month.
And so I am, in reaction to seeing those data, I changed my position, because I think when it comes to elective abortions, once the baby reaches viability, that the state does have an increasing interest in protecting that life. And I went back to the Roe v. Wade position, which is that in the last trimester, after viability in other words, that the states do have a right to protect the child. And my position has been to try to reduce the number of abortions. My policy is called “More Choices, More Life.” We found that 52% of abortions are linked to women who do not feel that they can afford the child, they’re the product of affordability decisions.
And we have a program to try to make sure that a pregnancy has never terminated because of concerns about affordability of that child and part of that is to use some of the money from winding down the Ukraine war and the military commitments abroad to make sure that we have childcare for every child in this country and that’s important for our economy too in rebuilding our economy. Childcare investments create 18 jobs for a million dollars spent. Investments on military create two. All of my investments, my government programs are going to be about enlarging our economy, creating more jobs in order to get ourselves out of the debt crisis.
According to a 2023 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that analyzed abortion data in the US in 2021, 0.9% of abortions are performed at over 21 weeks. 93.5% of abortions are performed at 13 weeks or less.
Wire: You talked about going back to the Roe v. Wade standard, there are some in Congress who would like to go to either a nationwide standard or to let states do anything they want past a certain number of weeks. Do you lean one way or the other? Do you think that we need a national standard so people can have the same access to health care in one state as they do in another?
Kennedy: My position is the same as Roe v. Wade, that I would give national protection to make sure that it’s a woman’s choice, always a mother’s choice up until viability and then at viability recognize that the states have increasing interest in protecting the life of the child.
Wire: You said earlier this year that the Trump team had asked you about being their vice president, they’ve pushed back on that. I was hoping you can maybe help give some clarity to that. Did that conversation occur? And who did you talk with in the Trump world?
Kennedy: We were approached multiple times by multiple people. But it’s not an argument I care to win. It’s just a fact. And in fact, The New York Times has also talked to some of those people. I don’t know if they talked to the same people we did, but they have confirmed that that happened. I don’t care whether people believe it or not. I didn’t say it to make a point. I was just telling something that was true. I have no interest in defending that. It just happens to be true. President Trump knows it. I know it. And that’s, you know, we may have to leave it like that.
Wire: It’s interesting, you talked about polling with in terms of Biden, because it seems at least from social media postings and press conferences that former President Trump is a lot more worried about you. Why do you think that might be?
Kennedy: I take more votes away from President Trump than from President Biden. In our own polls, about 57% of my voters, if I leave the race will vote for President Trump. And in the big national poll that Zogby did it confirmed that that President Trump actually if I drop out, he wins two extra states, he wins Maine and Virginia. I think initially that he was much more welcoming to me, but I think he’s looking at the same numbers as we are. In terms of the Democrats. I think they’re mounting a much more aggressive campaign to keep me off the ballot than the RNC is and it’s been publicized that they have a hit squad of people that’s run by Mary Beth Cahill [who] used to be my uncle Teddy’s Chief of Staff and by Lis Smith and a number of other I would say veteran political, I don’t know why you’d call them but people who are experts in negative research and in making sure that opponents are discredited or gotten off the ballot and they’re putting a lot more money.
We see them in court a lot more than we see the Republicans. President Trump has been much more vocal and a lot of his allies in the press are now coming after me. But I don’t think the RNC has mounted the kind of campaign that the DNC has actually to try and make it so I can’t run it all. And President Trump to his credit has said, although in private discussions his representatives told CNN to keep me off the debating stage, in public announcements from President Trump himself and from his team, they say that they’d welcome me on the debating stage, whereas President Biden has been, has uniformly said he won’t debate if they let me onto the stage.
Wire: I would love to ask you one more question before we let you go. I’m wondering if there are any hard feelings from your attempt to run as part of the Democratic Party. Has that changed your opinion of the party?
Kennedy: Hard feelings? It’s not what happened to me that’s changed my impression of the party, I think what everybody sees is that it’s become the party of war, it’s become the party of censorship. It’s kind of abandoned the middle class, it’s become the party of this new oligarchy of tech billionaires and I think this happened across the board with both political parties, since the Citizens United case, which was in 2008, when this tsunami of corporate money started pouring into the process. This election is going to cost them $10 billion. Well, you’re not going to raise $10 billion from the little people and so the little guy in this country is now, I don’t think, even a participant on any level in the political process. It’s all about money now.
And it’s not just the Republicans, which is kind of where the division used to be. Now you look at who the Democratic Party donors are, it’s BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, it’s the defense companies, it’s the pharmaceutical companies. And that’s who runs the DNC. So I don’t by the way, I don’t walk around embittered about stuff, I don’t cart resentments around, I think that those are corrosive. And that’s like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. Resentments tend to hurt the people who are caring them. So I just take life as it comes.
But I can see that the party has changed very much from the party that I grew up with. And I think that the major driving force in that is this Citizens United case, which is very, very difficult for us to get away from. Ultimately, we’re going to need a constitutional amendment, because I don’t think it’s compatible with democracy. I think we’re headed towards kind of an oligarchy, a feudal model in our country, and a corporate Kleptocracy, I would say, or plutocracy, which is kind of the war, a permanent war party, run by billionaires, and I don’t think that’s compatible with America’s role as the exemplary democracy around the world.
While corporations can donate to Democratic groups and candidates, the Democratic National Committee and other organizations are not bound by that funding.
Wire: Well, Margaret, do you have any other questions?
Cullen: Just one last quick one. If you find yourself behind the polls, would you drop out? Are you trying to make third party candidates more viable?
Kennedy: I mean, I’m trying to win the election. I think what’s interesting about my polling that everybody has picked up on, all the people who have looked and looked at cross sabs is that the people who are voting for me, the extent they are Democrats and Republicans is pretty even. I may have a slight edge of the Republicans over Democrats right now. That may change who knows. But the big bulk of my supporters are people who had withdrawn from the political process. And it’s a large group of people. And we see that every day at my rallies.
I hear it when I walk through an airport, when I walk down the street, people saying I’ve given up on politics until you came along. And, our donor base, our people we’re able to look at this and see most of them have never given to a political campaign before. I think my presence in the race is important. I think we can win the race. And I think it’s important that Americans feel that its potential for democracy to work for them, and they don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils. They don’t have to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they don’t like because they hate the other guy worse. I think it’s important to give them an alternative where they can continue to have hope for our democracy, and vote out of inspiration rather than fear.
Wire: All right, well, thank you so much for your time. We really do appreciate the chance to sit down with you is there anything else you think we should know we didn’t ask about?
Kennedy: That’s up to you. There’s a lot I think you should know but maybe another time.
