What the Heck is RFK Jr. Doing Now?
Last week, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. partially suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy. I was asked about Kennedy’s decision by Washington Post reporter Peter Jamieson given the (former?) candidates years of work as an environmental lawyer. In the last line of the article Jamieson accurately quoted me as saying, “I’m trying to understand the logic,” Rosenberg said. “And I can’t.” Ok, perhaps that’s not all that insightful…
But really, what could someone who claims to care about the natural environment as a major part of their career’s work be thinking in endorsing Mr. Trump? One can easily argue about Mr. Kennedy’s record as an environmentalist. But I don’t think it is arguable that Donald Trump has not interest or concern for environmental issues. And during his term as President his environmental record was in a word “awful”.
One possibility is that Mr. Kennedy has set aside environmental concerns because his extremist views on public health issues, particularly touting the dangers of vaccines despite the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, take precedence and align with Mr. Trump’s. But that isn’t even clear. Trump hasn’t espoused anti-vaccine views necessarily so much as denying any responsibility for the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, he took undue credit for the development of the Covid vaccine, one of the many disparaged by Kennedy.
And Mr. Kennedy also seems committed to encouraging public health through healthier diets. Not a bad thing though again his views are pretty extreme. But that in no way aligns with Trump’s widely known concerns or habits.
Actually, I think columnist Philip Bump has been clearest about this strange endorsement of Trump by RFK Jr. As Bump cogently put it, both Trump and Kennedy align in one key way of thinking about the world, and about themselves: “…that there is no expertise or authority that should be given deference over what you want or believe to be true.”
The Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 declared “post-truth” to be the word of the year. But, it is not lost on me that both Trump and Kennedy discarded evidence, truth and objectivity long before. Both have continued to elevate their own brand of narcissism that holds fast to, not the manipulation of facts and evidence but its wholesale disregard.
Perhaps that is the logic of Kennedy’s endorsement. In some sense that’s even sadder than no logic at all.
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