Don't knock RFK Jr.'s presidential bid just yet

Politico

4 hours ago

TAN, RESTED AND READY — Not even a year has passed since Donald Trump's election, but the invisible primary for 2028 is already underway. Potential candidates in both parties are making appearances in the early presidential primary states, recalibrating their positions in advance of running and building their fundraising operations.
None of it seems to have generated as much chatter in Washington as the groundwork being laid by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appears to be eyeing another presidential bid.
At first, the prospect of a Kennedy campaign seems outlandish. His considerable personal baggage, polarizing views and habit of trafficking in conspiracy theories might seem to be disqualifying. He's never won election to any office. If he ran as a Republican, his party credentials would be suspect — and he'd likely be running in a primary field loaded with experienced heavyweights.
Yet that's the precise profile Donald Trump carried into the 2016 primary when he cut through a crowded and accomplished Republican presidential field like a buzzsaw.
And RFK Jr. would be a far more formidable candidate in 2028 than in 2024, when his campaign fell apart. As HHS secretary, he has built a portfolio marked by bashing regulatory agencies, the media, mainstream medicine, and taking on foes like Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and the baby formula industry. By honing an anti-establishment message, RFK Jr. is gaining traction in an increasingly populist Republican Party. Parts of his MAHA agenda are already resonating in state capitals — particularly, but not exclusively, in red states.
It's why even if he doesn't really rate in the constellation of MAGA stars — Kennedy exists in his own adjacent universe, which he oversees from his perch as secretary of Health and Human Services — he has just enough celebrity, name recognition and appeal to elements of Trump's winning 2024 coalition that he can't be easily dismissed. Those same coalition politics that boosted Trump's White House comeback bid also may have blurred traditional primary lanes ahead of 2028.
RFK Jr.'s road trips to red states draw robust crowds. He already polls better than many of his prospective Republican rivals, especially among the youth vote. While Vice President JD Vance leads most polls by a wide margin, RFK ranked fourth after Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis in a June Emerson College poll. But in the spring 2025 Yale Youth Poll — which surveys both young American voters and the general population — Kennedy trailed only Vance among Republican voters. He also had the highest net favorability ratings after Vance among voters aged 18-29 and the general population.
A June Economist/YouGov poll found RFK with a 70 percent job approval rating among Republicans.
Polling this far out doesn't have much predictive value. But what's clear is that HHS is providing a useful platform for RFK Jr. that could not only fuel a campaign launch, but also carve out discrete parts of the core MAGA constituency for him. He has an army of online healthy-living influencers proselytizing for him, can tap into the energy of the anti-vax movement and wields a ready-made slogan — Make America Healthy Again — that's a friendly derivative of MAGA.
RFK 2028 sounds far-fetched, no doubt. Kennedy did, after all, begin his political adventure running for president as a Democrat, then as an independent, before dropping out and endorsing Trump. But MAGA happily embraces converts — another recent Democratic contender for president, Tulsi Gabbard, is now a Trump stalwart ensconced in a cabinet-level position as director of national intelligence.
RFK Jr.'s fate in a prospective Republican primary bid would be heavily reliant on remaining in Trump's good graces. And he'd likely be up against others with greater claims on the MAGA imprimatur — most notably Vance. But in an era of tremendous political disruption, where the major parties are inverting, traditional coalitions are fractured and longstanding campaign assumptions and traditions are being turned upside down, almost nothing can be ruled out anymore. Before writing off Kennedy, ask yourself a question: Is there anyone who thinks Trump wouldn't throw his vice president under the bus if it suited his political needs or whims at the time?
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AFGHANS STRANDED IN PAKISTAN — Pakistani police have reportedly arrested hundreds of Afghans in Pakistan slated for resettlement to Germany, deporting some to Afghanistan.
This follows suspension of a German government program that provided refuge to people deemed particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule.
Around 400 Afghans awaiting resettlement to Germany in Pakistan have been arrested in recent weeks, and several dozen of them have been deported to their home country, according to a report by German newspaper Welt — which, like POLITICO, is owned by Axel Springer.
The German government effectively suspended a resettlement program for vulnerable Afghans after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came to power with a vow to drastically curtail the influx of asylum-seekers into the country. That decision stranded some 2,200 Afghans in Pakistan — among them women's rights activists and LGBTQ+ people who face oppression under Taliban rule.
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Spain, in the wake of a row with Washington over NATO's new 5 percent defense spending goal, ditched its multibillion-dollar purchase of the stealthy F-35 fighter jet. Switzerland, reeling from steep U.S. tariffs, is facing increasing pressure across the political spectrum to drop plans for its own F-35 war planes. And India, frustrated at higher U.S. prices on its goods, has reportedly decided to pause efforts to buy American combat vehicles.
The moves — all made in the past two weeks — show the potential consequences of Trump's economic actions as they reverberate through allied capitals, forcing governments to reassess their defense ties with the United States. They also reinforce American industry fears that this new form of protectionism will spark retaliation, jeopardize arms sales and chip away at America's dominance as the globe's top defense supplier.
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THE FEATHER DETECTIVE — Roxie Laybourne, an ornithologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, could identify the species of bird any feather came from. In 1972, she was called to 'the chicken capital of Maine' to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial after the victim was found covered in feathers. The trial was the first of many in which Laybourne lent her expertise to prosecute murderers, poachers, and even a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Chris Sweeney reports on how Laybourne solved the case and created the field of forensic ornithology in an excerpt of his book in Boston Globe Magazine.
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Jacqueline Munis contributed to this newsletter.
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