Listen To This Story

A couple of weeks ago, I started writing a piece I did not publish. 

Here is how it began:

Donald Trump is a volatile, self-serving, and dangerous man. 

Unfortunately, so is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

What might happen if two such persons were to find common cause? 

I guess I should have published it — because, although I did not imagine it would actually happen, that is exactly what now has come to pass. 

*** 

As you surely know, RFK Jr. dropped out of the presidential race, and has done something that, even for someone we know is capable of doing anything, nevertheless numbs the mind: He endorsed Trump. 

Of course I am busy calculating the electoral math of this, but I keep stopping to ponder the simple fact of two men who savaged each other being able to spin on a dime and become lovebirds. It is revolting to watch. 

Now we know that politicians must to some extent always eat their words. We know that after a bruising primary season, for example, members of the same party invariably close ranks. And we know that a lot of what they said previously about another person gets dismissed as in service of winning. 

What we don’t so often see is politicians who really think the other guy is just totally demented nonetheless enthusiastically joining forces. 

To be sure, most people — even his supporters — can tell that Trump is damaged, perhaps one can indeed say demented, yet his list of supporters is packed with people who had once warned about him, who had promised they would never back him under any circumstances. 

As for Trump himself, he simply has no standards at all. He’s not only capable of reversing himself and saying the opposite, it’s his very essence. 

And still. 

Let’s recall what the two have said about each other: 

Kennedy called Trump “appalling,” “a terrible president,” “a bully,” “unhinged,” “a terrible human being,” “probably a sociopath.” 

In May, he said

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance, and our philosophies of leadership could not be further apart.

Trump, meanwhile, called Kennedy “a radical left lunatic” and the “dumbest member” of the Kennedy family.  

Of course, besides being totally about themselves, they both make the most improbable, fantastic, and outrageously false claims, to attract a certain kind of follower. From embracing QAnon to blaming vaccines for autism, everything is on the table. No intellectual honesty, no shame. 

Pretty much anyone can see that the Kennedy-Trump rapprochement is nothing more than a cynical marriage of convenience. If either of the two grooms ever had any real moral compass, any good judgment, any sense of decency, they certainly abandoned them along their journey of ambition. 

Given the proven untrustworthiness of each, I wouldn’t count on this ultra-transactional pair to stay happily married for very long, but who knows!

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