by John Solomon
When Robert F Kennedy Jr. formally divorced the party his family once ruled as kingmakers, he opened the door for more Democrats to follow suit in embracing Donald Trump in 2024 and creating a “unity party” where Americans can disagree and debate without destroying each other.
“I attended my first Democratic Convention at the age of six in 1960,” Kennedy fondly recalled Friday of the era when his uncle John and father Robert Sr. ruled the Democratic establishment. “Back then, the Democrats were the champions of the constitution, and of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars.”
“We were the party of labor, of the working class,” he added. “The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy,” he said during a nationally televised press conference Friday where he announced he was suspending his independent presidential campaign and backing Trump.
Kennedy argued he didn’t leave the Democrat Party, but rather that “it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with” that it left him and other traditional Democrats like him.
“It has become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag and big money,” he declared.
With that political indictment, Kennedy opened an unprecedented political door for defection. And standing at the threshold are two other celebrity defectors: billionaire tech innovator Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.
Even Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, echoed similar sentiment, saying on X that “We may disagree with RFK Jr. about many things, but he’s right about how the Democratic Party uses lawfare and dirty tricks to suppress democratic competition and voter choice. The Dems preach about ‘saving democracy,’ but in reality they’re working overtime to stamp it out.”
Senior Trump aides and outside advisers have been buoyed by the the once-unimaginable possibilities that:
- Musk would lend his massive X social platform for an historic interview and fund a Super PAC to boost Trump;
- Gabbard would help prep the GOP nominee for his debate with Kamala Harris and make a case for women to return to the GOP; and
- Kennedy would lend his famous family name and political capital to lure defectors, especially the young and first-time voters who flocked to his independent campaign
“We now have a trio of Power Rangers who can swoop right into the middle of the rival party and convince traditional Democrats that it’s OK to leave a party that left them,” said one senior Trump adviser, who asked to remain unnamed.
The advisers credited Trump with being willing to set aside potential grievances — Musk runs a rival to Trump’s Truth Social platform and Kennedy lambasted Trump during his campaign — and to reach out behind the scenes and court big-name Democrats to his side.
Likewise, Trump agreed to set aside four years of vitriol with Brian Kemp and mend fences with the popular Georgia governor who controls a powerful political machine in that battleground state.
Having a trio of most famous ex-Democrats at his disposal opens up entire new strategies for Trump, experts said.
“I think that the Trump people should package Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr, together, and they would — as joint former Democrat witnesses about the corruption of the system — be devastating,” former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast.
Gingrich also credited Trump for setting aside years of anger at Kemp over the 2020 disputed election and making amends for the good of the GOP party.
“Look, Brian Kemp is far and away the strongest politician in Georgia. He’s been a remarkably effective governor, and the fact that he’s now, you know, all in is an enormous step in the right direction,” he explained. “And frankly, the fact that Trump has relaxed and accepted that having him as an ally really matters is very, very healthy, and I think it just dramatically improved the likelihood that we will carry Georgia” Gingrich said.
The former speaker said Kennedy in particular could play an outsized role in peeling young voters to the Trump team who had flocked to his independent campaign after supporting Joe Biden in 2020. The retribution and censorship that Democrats repeatedly tried to impose on Kennedy have made him authentically sympathetic, the former speaker noted.
Kennedy’s defection “has an effect, first of all, on young people, because here they have a very famous name that was historically totally Democrat, who is saying to them that the Democratic Party has now become a party of thugs and bosses and Intimidators and is corrupt and is no longer responsive to the American people,” Gingrich said.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley told Just the News the fact that Kennedy followed Musk and Gabbard out of the Democrat fold is important “on two levels,”
“First it shows you that today’s Democratic Party is leaving these people behind. Today’s Democratic Party is so radical, so dangerous, so progressive, that there are millions of Democrats who are leaving that party every day.,” Whatley told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “We’re seeing thousands of them that are coming our way. Just look at the voter registration statistics in places like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and around the country. That’s a huge thing, that people are leaving the Democratic Party. Because, frankly, the Democratic Party has left them.
“The other side of it is that the Republican Party is very quickly becoming the big tent party,” the GOP boss added. “Donald Trump is willing to work with anybody who wants to make America great again, and he’s willing to sit down with nontraditional platforms. He’s willing to meet with nontraditional groups.”
RFK Jr. acknowledged Friday that it was that very willingness by Trump to reach out to people who didn’t agree all the time with him and signal that it was OK to debate and dissent that hastened his switch to the GOP nominee.
It has not been lost on Kennedy, Gabbard and Musk that Harris was appointed, not elected, to top the Democratic ticket. She did not receive a single primary vote, and never had an open debate. Critics such as JD Vance said that “she lied for nearly four years about Biden’s mental capacity–saddling the nation with a president who can’t do the job.” After Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Harris continued to defend Biden’s mental acuity.
The Kennedy scion said that Trump’s invitation gave him hope to create “a unity party” that would “allow us to disagree publicly and privately and seriously” and still work to better America.
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John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. Before founding Just the News, Solomon played key reporting and executive roles at some of America’s most important journalism institutions, such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Newsweek, The Daily Beast and The Hill.
