Trump allies getting spooked that promoting RFK Jr. may blow up in their faces: report

When environmental attorney and noted conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. jumped into the presidential race in the Democratic Primary, former President Donald Trump and his associates cheered him on. But now he's running as an independent instead, they're divided over whether to promote him or stop him, unsure of whether his presence will hurt or help their campaign.

According to reporter Marc Caputo for The Bulwark, "For months, the conventional wisdom has held that Kennedy was more of a problem for Democrats — that he would siphon votes from President Biden. The Biden campaign launched a full-scale assault on Kennedy, defining the scion of Democratic royalty as a 'stalking horse' for Trump, filing election complaints against the independent’s campaign, and trying in some states to block him from qualifying for the ballot."

However, while Kennedy does have the name of a distinguished Democratic political family and has pushed some liberal policies like on the environment, he has by and large focused his campaign on appealing to the far right — with his attacks on medical science that sometimes veer into anti-Semitic territory, and his defense of the January 6 rioters.

And now this has some, but not all, of Trump's supporters worried that overall he'll pull more votes from Trump than Biden.

“A year ago, everyone thought Kennedy was a good thing. Not everyone thinks it’s a good idea now,” a GOP operative who advised Trump told Caputo, saying at the time they saw him as a parallel to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a politician Kennedy has praised. "The challenge today with Kennedy is he is appealing to the ‘go-f--k-the-world’ voter, which is a portion of the Trump coalition. And that’s the challenge. The Kennedy base of support is still closer to a Bernie-type voter, but Trump won some of them in 2016."

As a consequence, many conservative outlets that were once hyping Kennedy are now trashing him as a liberal.

All of this comes as Democrats, watching early polls that say they could in fact lose a significant percentage of votes to Kennedy, are gearing up for an offensive of their own.

"Democrats have waged a two-front war on both Trump and third-party candidates. Now that the group No Labels has quit its effort to recruit a presidential candidate, the Democratic National Committee, two Biden super PACs, and the group Third Way are planning to focus more negative attention on Kennedy," wrote Caputo.

For his part, Kennedy has proclaimed his campaign "a spoiler for President Biden and for President Trump," a shift from his previous claim he would mainly take votes from Trump.