RFK JR the Sellout

What really happened in Arizona

While more than half the nation rejoiced at the unexpected Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and President Trump Justice League Alliance on Friday afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, social media posts were littered with curmudgeonly comments about “RFK, Jr the sellout.” How he threw his third party ticket in the trash in exchange for getting a job and, even worse — that his campaign was a psy-op from the beginning.

You may have noticed that I’ve been awfully quiet for more than a year now, and I’ll finally share why that has been. Since March 2023, I’ve had the honor of a lifetime in serving as one of the 100 or so staffers on the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. campaign. I didn’t have the brain capacity to keep this blog alive while working 65 hours a week and still trying to parent my kids, and besides, I like to write about what’s going on in the world and I couldn’t possibly share what was going in inside the campaign without running afoul of my NDA.

But I’m writing to you tonight because I want all of you to understand exactly what happened in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday afternoon. Even people who are overjoyed about the union cannot possibly comprehend the meaning of RFK’s actions— and I want you to be willing to set the record straight with anyone who will listen.

Let’s just say this up front: the idea that RFK threw in the towel so that he could take a $250,000 government job when he’d easily make $10M in speaking fees in 2025 is just silly. No serious person would ever think such a thing, much less put in on social media for the world to see. If President Trump wins in November, it is a $10M loss for RFK, and that’ll be the least of his sacrifices.

Monsanto plaintiff DeWayne Johnson upon hearing the billion dollar verdict

RFK, Jr. is arguably the greatest Kennedy to ever grace this nation and he’s been one of the country’s premier environmental attorneys for the past 40 years. Think Hudson River cleanup. Think DuPont. Think billion dollar Monsanto verdict. He has an enormous network of thousands of supporters in the River Keeper organization, and I’d bet that the vast majority of them are Democrats.

He just celebrated his 10 year anniversary to his lovely Hollywood wife, actress Cheryl Hines. I’d also be willing to gamble that the lion’s share of their Hollywood friends are Democrats.

He’s been in the realm of children’s health for the past 13 years, which has been at a great expense on its own. Thirteen years of work coincides with the tail end of the first decade of the Democrats becoming the party of pharma, creating vaccine mandates for toddlers in preschool. His simply speaking up about mercury in vaccines was an affront to liberals in legislatures. He was dragged into the vaccine fight by a group of moms who knew he would not be able to turn his back on them once he read the science with his own eyes. These were not moms from his environmental circle. They were not moms from high society. They were not moms from Hollywood. They were moms who had no other reason to ever have their paths overlap with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

And he heard them out.

For a decade his extended family looked the other way when it came to his vaccine safety advocacy, but they could not stay quiet as he took on St. Anthony Fauci, the Patron of Saint of Patents, in 2021. When he launched his 2024 presidential bid, mainstream media loved to argue that he should end his campaign because he did not have the support of hundreds of Kennedy cousins none of us had ever heard of.

RFK and Donald Trump have a long history that no one seems to write much about. RFK has sued Trump over his environment-decimating developments in the past, and Trump ghosted RFK in 2016 after promising to appoint him to lead a vaccine safety commission. The two men have every reason not to speak to each other.

Yes, Trump asked RFK to be his VP last summer, and yes, RFK turned him down. His wife Cheryl publicly agreed that she would divorce him for partnering with Trump, and he wasn’t willing to call her bluff.

For the past year, RFK was consistently polling anywhere from 10 to 20% in national polls and raising $3 million a month, but on July 13, 2024, the world suddenly changed when Donald Trump missed taking eight bullets to the head by about an inch. So many of our fence sitters understandably moved firmly into the camp of the man who was nearly assassinated. The phones fell quiet. Fundraising tapered off. And when the Dems pulled a coup on President Biden and replaced him with VP Harris, pollsters couldn’t be bothered to list RFK’s name in their polls anymore. That’s a horrible blow to a candidate who knew he would take the White House if he could set foot on the national debate stage.

The writing was on the wall: RFK wasn’t seeing a path to victory anymore. He had just turned 70 years old and knows he doesn’t have much time left to make positive sweeping change in this country. Waiting until 2028 to do something wasn’t good enough.

Trump called two days after the shooting. They began speaking about what an alliance would look like, but RFK was unwilling to appear at the RNC on Trump’s behalf. In fact, he got on a plane and flew back to Los Angeles before Trump ever took the stage.

The conversations continued. There were secret meetings. Even for me, I didn’t know for sure there was a deal until l saw that we were cancelling events we’d just begun to plan. Once the release went up on our website about RFK’s press conference in Phoenix, I checked Trump’s public schedule and immediately booked a flight on my own dime, as did 40 of my teammates.

We met in the hotel the next morning, unsure of what RFK was going to say. Nicole Shanahan, our brilliant VP candidate, had begun to provide cover earlier in the week, driving the press into such a frenzy with her primetime breadcrumbs that, by the time Friday arrived, over 100 of them were packed into the ballroom. Millions watched online. The staffers stood on the fringes, shoulder to shoulder, us witnessing the announcement that he would be suspending campaign activities and endorsing and campaigning with Donald Trump, right along with the rest of the world.

When it was over, he ducked into the motorcade and we regrouped in the lobby, dividing ourselves between SUVs and Ubers for the 35 minute caravan to the arena. We arrived to the scorching 107 degree parking lot and walked to the special guest entrance, our skin searing under the sun.

I wore a Kennedy hat that I would not be taking off for the rest of the night. The group in line behind us asked, “Oh, you like Kennedy?”

“Yeah, I like him,” I said. My teammates turned around.

“We all like him,” they said.

“That’s cool! I heard he might be making an appearance here today, did you hear that?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t hear that, but that would be awesome.”

“Oh, that would be so awesome!” my team echoed.

We told security who we were and showed our digital passes. They walked us into the arena, packed with 17,000 Trump fans, after 10,000 were turned away at the gates. I know the work that goes into getting 1,500 people to show up for our events so I found the size of the crowd to be staggering.

We were taken to the floor and then up to the first row, where seats were saved for us. The ushers were stunningly beautiful older women, dressed to the nines; Palm Beach personified. One said they were volunteers who travel with the campaign.

My team filed in one at a time and I took the aisle. The woman knelt down beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. She leaned in and said, “I just want you to know how much we all love you, and how much we love Bobby. We’ve been praying for you. We’ve been waiting for you and we are so glad you’re here.”

I felt like shipwrecked castaways who have been lost at sea for the last 18 months with everything in the ocean doing its best to kill us everyday, now having washed up on the shores of a luxurious island where nobody has to worry about food or shelter.

I was a hurricane refugee stumbling into the Red Cross.

I’d already been to an event at Mar-a-lago at the end of last year so I knew how strong the MAGA love was for RFK. But when Charlie Kirk merely mentioned his name, the crowd jumped to their feet with a roar, shouting with more enthusiasm than I ever expected.

The people seated behind us leaned down and asked if we were Team Kennedy and they wanted to know if he would be making an appearance. We smiled and said we didn’t know.

You couldn’t pay me to ruin this surprise for anyone.

I don’t mean to gloss over seeing President Trump walk out to a crowd like this because singing along to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” with 17,000 new friends was pretty emotional, but it’s getting late and I want to finish this note for you.

Trump spoke for a couple of minutes and then began to introduce RFK, but without naming him. “I don’t think too many of you people have heard of him,” he said. “He’s very low key. He’s a very low key person. He’s highly respected. He is a great person—“ and in that moment the crowd began to stand up in a wave, from bottom to the very top of the stands. They knew who it was. And they could not wait.

And in that historic moment, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of President John F. Kennedy, walked out on stage to the Foo Fighters “My Hero.”

Holy shit, I thought. Who on our team chose this perfect song that Trump is about to be in trouble for broadcasting on television? We would never have used a song like that at our own rally because we couldn’t afford the lawsuit.

And all of that brings me to the point of writing this note tonight. This is what I want you to know.

In that moment, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. did not throw in the towel. He didn’t ruin third party politics forever. He didn’t quit so that he could get a job. He did not sell out.

In that moment, this most important member of the most famous Democratic family in America chose our children above all else. He chose our children above his Hollywood friends. Above his long standing Trump-hating environmental supporters. Above the entire Democratic party. Above his once-adoring Kennedy family. Above peace in his own home.

Can you imagine the pressure he was under to do anything but this?

He chose my kids. He chose yours. He chose all the babies being born from here on out. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is going to prove what is causing this 40-year tsunami of childhood chronic illness. He is going to root it out, shine the light on it, make the public understand, and he is going to burn down the altar it’s been living on.

In that moment, on Friday afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, I witnessed the most selfless human act of my entire lifetime.

We all did.