Robert F Kennedy Jr was asked if he would be vice-president under Donald Trump hours after the former president survived an assassination attempt in July, it has been revealed.
The startling proposal was made as part of a frantic bid to reach out to Kennedy, who was staging an independent bid for the presidency, in the name of “national unity” following the failed attempt by a lone gunman, Thomas Crooks, to kill Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July.
Kennedy reportedly rejected the suggestion from Calley Means, an entrepreneur who sometimes advised him on chronic diseases and was acting as an intermediary, according to the New York Times.
But he later called Means back to say he would be prepared to talk to Trump.
The revelation is contained in a Times story exploring the rapprochement between two men who had previously been at loggerheads – and explaining how Kennedy, a former Democrat, came to abandon his presidential effort and endorse Trump as the Republican nominee for president.
The timing of Means’s call – just after Trump had been wounded by a would-be assassin – appeared to be inspired by the fact that Kennedy’s father, Robert F Kennedy, and his uncle, John F Kennedy, had both been killed by assassins, and the assumption that he would identify with Trump’s plight.
It is unclear whether Trump was genuinely considering choosing Kennedy as his running mate at that stage. Days later, at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, he announced JD Vance as the vice-presidential nominee.
But as recently as April – at a time when he was lambasting Kennedy as “a radical left Democrat” – Trump was apparently also considering him as his vice-president and musing about he liked the sound of a “Trump-Kennedy” ticket. His campaign even conducted internal polling on its potential electability, according to the Times.
Kennedy, too, had reportedly been contemplating an alliance, with some advisers mooting the possibility of him being Trump’s running mate.
“A Trump/Kennedy ticket would cause Pfizer’s stock to plummet, the corrupt media conglomerates to go into hysteria, and would guarantee a win in November,” Link Lauren, a communication strategist in his campaign wrote in an email to Kennedy and some of his top aides in January.
Kennedy, however, dismissed the idea, calling the vice-presidency “the worst job in Washington”.
Kennedy’s return call to Means on the night of Trump’s near assassination led to another phone conversation with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing former Fox News presenter and vocal Trump supporter.
That led to a phone conversation between Trump and Kennedy – which was recorded and partly leaked by Kennedy’s son during the Republican convention – and then subsequent meetings between the pair, including one at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
Reservations were reportedly voiced by Kennedy’s wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, a lifelong Democrat, who apparently told her husband that Trump was “untrustworthy”.
Nevertheless, the contacts culminated in Kennedy’s announcement on 23 August that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump, who has since appointed him to his transition team amid speculation that he could be part of a future administration, perhaps as health and social services secretary.
A key driver of Trump’s charm offensive were concerns that Kennedy’s populist message – particularly on vaccines, about which he has peddled conspiracy theories – threatened to woo voters who were more inclined to vote Republican than Democrat, particularly in battleground states where the outcome is on a knife edge.
Since endorsing Trump, Kennedy has sought to remove his name from the ballots in such states, fearing its presence would help Kamala Harris. But his efforts have been rebuffed in North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Harris and Trump are neck and neck.
