Trump Adviser: “Bobby’s Going to be on the Campaign Trail”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 25, 2024) — In a “Fox & Friends” interview shortly after 7:30 a.m. EDT Sunday, Trump senior campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski, who early on helped to steer the candidate’s successful 2016 presidential run, said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will “be on the campaign trail” with Trump in the 71 days left until the November 5 general election.

Politically active since his undergraduate years, Lewandowski, 50, was recently brought in to the 2024 Trump effort.

The interview quickly turned to Kennedy, who entered the race as a Democrat and later refiled as an Independent after he was prevented, along with other Democrat presidential challengers, from participating in debates and achieving ballot access. In some cases, the Democrat National Committee chose to forego presidential primaries altogether, effectively handing the nomination unchallenged to Joe Biden.

Ironically, after “winning” approximately 14 million primary votes, under intense pressure from fellow Democrats given recent polling, Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, whose name appeared on no primary ballots.

Harris accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) Thursday night but after nearly 40 days of Biden’s withdrawal has not conducted media interviews or issued any policy statements on her campaign website.

Last week it was rumored Kennedy would suspend his campaign and endorse Trump, a prediction which came to pass on Friday afternoon at a scheduled appearance in Arizona.

His speech announcing the suspension of his campaign and support for Trump focused on what he sees as censorship of his and other voices and of the Democrats having conducted “a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.”

He also criticized his former party of attempting “to throw President Trump in jail.”

Kennedy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., who was assassinated in 1968 during his own presidential primary run and while serving as a U.S. Senator from New York. RFK’s brother, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in November 1963 while traveling in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Of the installation of Harris as the Democrat presidential nominee, Kennedy opined:

This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose when they don’t know whom they are choosing, and how can this look to the rest of the world? My father and my uncle were always conscious of America’s image abroad because of our nation’s role as the template for democracy, the role model for democratic processes, and the leader of the free world, instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for vice president Harris based upon nothing, no policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in highly produced Chicago circus.

…How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answer.

They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters. What most alarms me isn’t how the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates.

Regarding any position Kennedy might have in a second Trump administration, Lewandowski said nothing has thus far been “promised.”

Although areas of disagreement exist, Kennedy said, he and Trump are aligned on issues including “ending the Forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the US intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections.”

Though Trump and Kennedy had been critical of one another in the past, later that evening Kennedy appeared at a Trump event in Glendale, AZ, where the two embraced and the audience appeared enthusiastic.

In keeping with Kennedy’s announcement on Friday that his name will remain on some state ballots for November, Lewandowski said California will be one of those states given that the campaign believes it is not competitive there.

Kennedy had explained that he was removing his name from state ballots in which he could prove to be a “spoiler.” At the time of his address Friday afternoon, he had asked to withdraw from the Pennsylvania and Arizona ballots despite his campaign’s hard-fought efforts to gain ballot access.

He did, however, encourage supporters to vote for him if they wished. “…my name will remain on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or vice president Harris and red states, just the same will apply. I encourage you to vote for me, and if enough of you do vote for me and neither of the major party candidates win 270 votes, which is quite possible. In fact, today, our polling shows them tying at 269 to 269 and I could conceivably still end up in the White House in a contingent election.”

“In honor of Bobby,” Trump said at his Friday rally he would establish a commission to gather information on presidential attempted and successful assassinations.