For many months former president Donald Trump's henchmen pushed the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an agent of chaos and a boon to Trump's latest bid for the presidency. Salon's Amanda Marcotte presciently called out their strategy in a piece last May titled "Of course Steve Bannon and Alex Jones love RFK Jr. — he's a great weapon for their war on reality." At that time Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary and it was easy to dismiss the right-wing "support" from the likes of Bannon and Jones as well as from former Trump admirer and QANON adherent Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk and Trump henchman Roger Stone as partisan mischief. But it was more than that.
They touted Kennedy as a perfect Trump running mate; a "dream ticket" ostensibly to attract low information, liberal anti-vaxxers and environmentalists to the GOP. Bannon worked this idea hard, suggesting that a Trump-Kennedy ticket would win in a landslide. In one of his podcasts last spring he told his audience that when MAGA crowds heard him say that Kennedy would be an excellent choice for Trump's running mate, he would get a standing ovation. (Kennedy denies that they ever spoke about it.)
