Nicole Shanahan, the running mate of independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., declared on a podcast that their campaign may be coming to an end. But she says they’re not just thinking about closing up shop and saying farewell to supporters. They’re considering endorsing Donald Trump.
“There’s two options that we're looking at, and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump,” Shanahan told the business podcast “Impact Theory.” “Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and, you know, we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we're making this decision.”
Kennedy’s biggest contributor just so happens to be Trump’s biggest contributor, who no doubt thought Kennedy would draw votes from President Joe Biden. But since Biden stepped aside and the Democratic Party has rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris, Kennedy’s campaign has been shrinking toward irrelevance. Worse, as Shanahan acknowledges in her interview, recent polling shows Kennedy pulls more votes from Trump than from Harris.
So it’s time to end the charade that the Kennedy campaign was ever serious about anything other than helping Trump.
Shanahan’s full appearance is … something. It’s full of claims that the Democratic National Committee has “shadow-banned” Kennedy’s campaign (though what it’s been banned from is not clear), that it blocked him from participating in debates (which, in reality, he failed to qualify for), and that it “planted insiders” to corrupt the campaign.
This is the same campaign best known for explaining that the candidate recently had a brain worm, that he planted a dead bear cub in Central Park, and that he reportedly apologized for sexually assaulting a babysitter by sending a text. It’s fair to say that if Democratic insiders were attempting to disrupt the Kennedy campaign, their actions never rose close to the level of sabotage that Kennedy inflicted on himself.
The truth is that Kennedy never had real appeal as a candidate beyond those who knew absolutely nothing other than his name—or those who shared one or more of his odious conspiracy theories.
Shanahan is the ex-wife of Google founder Sergei Brin. She brought to the campaign an estimated net worth of over $1 billion and her own set of conspiracy theories, including one proposing that the key to increasing fertility is “two hours of morning sunlight.”
In the interview with “Impact Theory,” Shahanan expresses some desire to stay in the race, most of which seems to be focused on the $13 million in public funding that might be accessible if she and Kennedy could obtain over 5% of the vote. But 538’s polling average shows their campaign getting just under that share, at 4.8%—and it’s decreasing with time. Even someone deeply enmeshed in junk science as Shanahan and Kennedy should be capable of seeing that those funds aren’t a good bet.
As our own kos wrote on Saturday, it was always a stretch to believe that Kennedy’s long list of irrational beliefs would put him in a position to take votes from the Democratic candidate. Not only do many of his conspiratorial fantasies align with the QAnon conspiracy movement, but the only place Kennedy was establishing a regular media presence was on right-wing platforms.
If it talks like a Trump and it’s on the same platforms as a Trump, then conspiracy believers might just start to think this is a Trump. And they did.
Should Kennedy and Shanahan show up at Mar-a-Lago ready to wed their psychosis to Trump’s, no one will be surprised. Or alarmed.
Hopefully, Trump will reward Kennedy with an offer of a spot as surgeon general or head of the National Institutes of Health. Kennedy’s name on the ballot might not amount to much, but that’s the kind of threat that might help give Harris voters some extra motivation.
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