An activist working for the campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr. has been fired after publicly admitting that the independent presidential candidate could help return former President Donald Trump to the White House.
In a video first reported this week by CNN, Rita Palma, at the time working to get RFK Jr. on the New York ballot, said that her primary goal was to prevent President Joe Biden from winning reelection. “If I wake up on Nov. 6 and Trump wins, I’m not going to be overly upset,” said Palma, who previously voted for Trump twice.
After the remarks attracted attention, the Kennedy campaign sought to distance itself from Palma, first describing her as a mere "consultant" who was not speaking on behalf of the candidate. But her views were not likely to have come as a surprise: As The New Republic noted, Palma attended the Jan. 6 insurrection, which she billed on social media as "99.9 peaceful," and was adamant that the 2020 election was "rigged."
Democrats have feared that the Kennedy campaign could indeed hurt Biden in November. Although the candidate has espoused a range of views that should make him more attractive to potential Trump supporters — from denying the efficacy of vaccines to portraying Jan. 6 rioters as political prisoners — his famous last name still has cache among left-leaning voters.
While Palma had previously been open about her fondness for Trump, Amaryllis Fox, the campaign manager for RFK Jr., claimed that she had misstated her job title and had subsequently been canned.
"We terminated her contract for misrepresentation immediately upon seeing the longer video in which she gave an inaccurate job title and described a conversation that did not happen," Fox said in a Wednesday evening post on X.
