A staffer in the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. presidential campaign has been fired over the discovery of a YouTube video.
At first, I thought the headline was odd. Isn’t the goal of a campaign to defeat an opponent? Why fire a staffer for being honest about that? But there is more here.
Rita Palma was a New York-based staffer with the RFK, Jr. campaign. A video circulated that showed her talking about preventing President Biden’s re-election by trying to send the race to the House of Representatives to elect Donald Trump as president.
Welp. That play sounds familiar. Amaryllis Fox Kennedy is RFK, Jr.’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law. She confirmed that Palma was fired “for misrepresentation immediately upon seeing the longer video in which she gave an inaccurate job title and described a conversation that did not happen.”
As an Independent movement, our supporters, volunteers, and field organizers come from all sides of the political spectrum and their reasons for supporting Bobby are as disparate as their backgrounds.
Rita Palma was hired a couple of weeks ago as a ballot access consultant,…
— Amaryllis Fox (@amaryllisfox) April 8, 2024
It’s a lengthy post but it’s worth clicking on and reading. Amaryllis explains that Palma was not speaking for the campaign but as a private citizen. She noted that volunteers are from all points on the political spectrum. The campaign has volunteers who previously supported everyone from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump to Mitt Romney and all points in between. Palma voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trump lost her support over the COVID-19 vaccine. Like RFK, Jr., she is an anti-COVID vaxxer.
Palma confirmed her termination to NBC News. She said her time on the campaign “has been one of the best political adventures of my life filled with some of the finest people I’ve encountered, and I have encountered many.” “I hold no ill will and look forward to the next seven months of watching Bobby shine,” she said.
Palma’s video was obtained by NBC News before it was deleted. Her presentation was to Republican voters and she asked them to help Kennedy to qualify for New York’s presidential ballot. She said she was the campaign’s New York state director. The campaign said she was not. She was described as a “ballot access consultant” with the campaign. She was not involved in electoral strategy.
Palma described Biden as the “mutual enemy” of the Kennedy and Trump campaigns.
“Whether you support Bobby or Trump, we all oppose Biden. And my thoughts are that, you know, that’s the No. 1 priority in the country,” Palma said.
Palma raises the idea of trying to deprive Biden of victories in Democratic strongholds like New York while national Democrats focus on key swing states that usually determine elections, with the goal of stopping either Biden or Trump from getting to 270 Electoral College votes. That would put the election into the hands of the GOP-led House.
The 36-minute version of the video (there is a shorter version) was downloaded by NBC News from a source before it was removed from YouTube. It allegedly occurred at a church in Poughkeepsie. It was uploaded to YouTube on Friday.
She learned a hard lesson. Don’t get out over your skis and be truthful about your job.
Democrats criticize the Kennedy campaign because they think it takes voters from Biden. Amaryllis pointed to the latest Emerson poll in her tweet that shows Kennedy also pulls from Trump.
By the way, the latest Emerson poll shows clearly that when RFK supporters are forced to choose between Biden and Trump, the majority choose Trump. The DNC should be thanking us for closing the gap that they have failed to close themselves.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Donald Trump posted a video on Truth Social in which he encouraged Democrats to vote for Kennedy, not Biden. He said that Kennedy is further to the left than Biden and a better man.
“RFK Jr. is, as you know, the most radical left candidate in the race. He’s more so than the Green Party. He’s more so than even crooked Joe Biden. But he’s got some nice things about him. I happen to like him,” Trump, 77, said in a video posted on Truth Social.
“I guess that would mean that RFK Jr. is going to be taking away votes from crooked Joe Biden and he should because he’s actually better than Biden,” the former president said. “He’s much better than Biden.”
“If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats.”
“He’s a better man than Joe Biden, that I can tell you,” Trump continued, calling it “great for MAGA” that he’s in the race.
I think Kennedy will take more voters from Biden than Trump but he will get some Trump supporters. The COVID-19 response by the Trump administration hasn’t been delved into in interviews and Trump hasn’t given in-depth explanations about the lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He also hasn’t explained his acceptance of Dr. Fauci leading the response. Biden hasn’t been held accountable, either.
This is a strange election. A majority of voters don’t want the Biden versus Trump re-match. Kennedy is an alternative they can go to if they are interested in an independent third-party alternative. The 2024 election may be a perfect storm for Kennedy to make new inroads into the acceptance of third-party candidates.