For Donald Trump, the benefit of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement was obvious. The election has shifted dramatically in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris but remains close; picking up even a few percentage points of support from former Kennedy voters could make the difference.
For Harris, the benefit of not receiving Kennedy’s endorsement was similarly obvious. Kennedy is … strange. Even before announcing his long-shot bid for the presidency, he was known (or, if you prefer, notorious) for his anti-vaccine activism and baseless claims about health and food. If Harris were to accept Kennedy’s endorsement, she would, in effect, be accepting responsibility for that background — and anything else that unexpectedly turned up like a bear cub in Central Park.
Kennedy endorsed Trump on Friday. On Monday, there was already an example of precisely what Trump had gotten with his purchase.
No, not the Kennedy-cut-the-head-off-a-whale story, though that was (a gross) part of the political conversation. (It was battling for attention with the right’s discovery that Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, occasionally pets dogs that aren’t his own.) Instead, it was a reply Kennedy posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“We are going to stop this crime,” Kennedy pledged to user “Concerned Citizen.” The crime? “Chemtrails,” the conspiracy theory that the lines planes trace in the sky are not water vapor (which they are) but at least occasionally dangerous chemicals being released for some nebulously explained population-control effort.
“Chemtrails” are an old-school conspiracy theory, growing up in the same neighborhood as tinfoil hats and Bigfoot. It’s something that’s been debunked countless times. And here is the newest member of Team Trump assuring an anonymous social media poster that “we” — presumably meaning him and Trump or him and the Trump administration — will prevent this thing that isn’t happening from happening.
Two hours after Kennedy assured Concerned Citizen that Trump would address chemtrails, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted a lengthy interview with Kennedy in which the former candidate described the role he had been promised with Trump’s team.
“We’re working on policy issues together. I’ve been asked to go on to the transition team, to help pick the people who will be running the government, and I’m looking forward to that,” Kennedy told Carlson. So if you’re an expert on chemtrail prosecution, get your résumé ready.
In a Sunday interview on Fox News, Kennedy said that there had been no commitment that he would serve in a Trump administration. (He did tell Carlson that he’d happily accept a role running the CIA, though he admitted it was unlikely he’d be confirmed by the Senate.) But he was promised the opportunity to help shape what that administration would look like.
It’s very possible that Trump would renege on any agreement with Kennedy should Trump win. The former president has not earned a reputation as someone who sticks to his personal commitments. But it is also possible that Trump would be happy to have Kennedy advise his transition team or serve in his administration because Trump has similarly not earned a reputation as someone committed to staffing government with the best and most capable officials. You don’t have to take our word for that. Trump himself has often criticized staffers he once hailed, the shift following their departures from his team and, frequently, their willingness to criticize Trump.
It bears repeating that Trump came to the White House in 2017 from a decades-long career as the absolute authority in a private company, a place where people served at his whim and where fealty provided a path toward higher status. Before leaving office in 2021, Trump introduced a plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy, letting him fire more civil servants and replace them with people he himself had identified. The effort would build a more Trump Organization-like government. It would create a lot of positions to fill with loyalists, people selected because they demonstrated a commitment to Trump and who then get to do what they want with their power.
This is precisely the reason that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is important. Not simply because it articulates an extreme-right view of how presidential power can be deployed but because it was written by people close to Trump who would undoubtedly be tapped for roles in a second Trump administration. Nestled into government agencies, often without needing confirmation, they could implement their agendas — just as Kennedy, left to his own devices, could figure out whom to hire to tackle this chemtrail thing once and for all.
We can’t discount the possibility that Trump is using Kennedy or that, should Trump win in November, Kennedy’s input on hiring would be largely ignored. (And why not? What cost would Trump pay for doing so?) But we also can’t discount the possibility that a Trump victory would lead to a Kennedy-recommended head of the Food and Drug Administration tasked with removing “chemicals” from food (does that include dihydrogen oxide?) or a Federal Aviation Administration director whose mandate includes banning dihydrogen oxide emissions from airplanes.
We can’t discount the possibility, broadly, that a second Trump administration would mean a lot of people with similarly fringe ideas empowered to act on those ideas by a president largely indifferent to the machinations of government. In fact, we should probably expect it.