Opinion: Ignore my brother Bobby, Max Kennedy says
I’m heartbroken over my brother Bobby’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
I think often about my father and how he might have viewed the politics of our time. I’m not sure what he would have thought about TikTok or AI, but this much I know for sure: He would have despised Donald Trump.
Trump was exactly the kind of arrogant, entitled bully my father used to prosecute. Robert F. Kennedy’s life was dedicated to promoting the safety, security and happiness of the American people. That is why he would have so admired another former prosecutor, Kamala Harris. Her career, like his, has been all about decency, dignity, equality, democracy and justice for all.
Trump is the enemy of all that. The only thing he seems to be for is himself and, disturbingly, autocrats such as Vladimir Putin, whom my father would have regarded as an existential threat to our country.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed former President Trump.
Yet my brother now endorses Trump. To pledge allegiance to Trump, a man who demonstrates no adherence to our family’s values, is inconceivable to me.
Worse, it is sordid. Earlier this month, as Harris surged in the polls, my brother offered her his endorsement in exchange for a position in her coming administration. He got no response.
Now he has offered that same deal to Trump. His is a hollow grab for power, a strategic attempt at relevance. It is the opposite of what my father admired: “the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America.”
It is all the more tragic because of our brother’s name. To carry the name Robert F. Kennedy Jr. means a special legacy within a legacy. It would strongly imply a desire to carry on our father’s work. But Bobby’s alliance with Trump puts this in jeopardy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, could make voters regret wishing for an option other than the Republican and Democratic candidates.
Let me go through the record.
My father was an anti-racist who joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in common cause, and forged a powerful bond with African Americans everywhere he went in 1968.
Donald Trump is a lifelong racist whose entire career has been shaped by his dislike of people with a different skin color.
My father believed in expanding legal immigration because he came from an immigrant family and knew how much talent and drive hard-working families bring if we open our doors to them.
Donald Trump stirs up hatred of immigrants, whom he mischaracterizes as criminals and drug addicts.
My father believed in the rule of law, as a prosecutor, and as the attorney general of the United States.
Donald Trump has contempt for the law, as evidenced by his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election and his ongoing legal struggles. He is the first felon to run as a serious candidate for the presidency.
My father believed in bringing Americans together. He said, “I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.”
Donald Trump’s entire campaign is about stoking division.
Even before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Trump for president, he repeatedly disappointed environmentalists, who said he had abandoned his green roots.
My father loved the priceless inheritance of our land and water and surely was an environmentalist in his way, even if the term did not catch on until later.
It feels especially hypocritical that Bobby, a genuine environmentalist, has thrown in with the most anti-environmental president in our history, who promises to “drill, baby, drill” if elected.
My father was against the “mindless menace” of gun violence. Donald Trump is against any meaningful form of regulating guns.
My father believed in democracy. Donald Trump does not.
My father believed in the truth. Donald Trump does not.
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 cast an oppressively long shadow in Los Angeles. For some, there was no moving on.
At the University of Kansas, on March 18, 1968, my father said, “[W]e as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the president of the United States.”
The truth is essential to democracy. And truth is essential inside a family, too. For all of these reasons, the truth requires me to set the record clear. I love Bobby. But I hate what he is doing to our country. It is worse than disappointment. We are in mourning.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be motivated to write something of this nature. With a heavy heart, I am today asking my fellow Americans to do what will honor our father the most: Ignore Bobby and support Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic platform. It’s what is best for our country.
As my father said, in a campaign of his own, “I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.”
Max Kennedy is an author, an attorney and the ninth child of Ethel and Robert Kennedy.
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