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RF Kennedy as the Trump-tamer?

Politics
#1

RF Kennedy Jnr has highligted the aim of ‘draining the swamp’, one of Turmp’s stated aims in 2016.

Here’s the problem:

“Kennedy also said in April Trump “promised to drain the swamp” before he “filled his administration with swamp creatures” and “promised to protect our rights and then torpedoed the Constitution,” in addition to claiming Trump “ran up the biggest debt” in U.S. history during his presidency.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/08/23/rfk-jr-endorses-trump-after-calling-him-sociopath---his-reversal-explained/

Forbes.com isn’t too impressed and has fun pointing out what the two POTUS hopefuls had said about each other before joining forces.

Kennedy has laid out what he says will be different this time; him:

https://x.com/EndTribalism/status/1833183097904398422
(the 3m video is better than the extract printed)

According to RFK Trump says in 2016 he was naive about government, and didn’t know who to trust, and chose badly. (That last part is surely not in dispute!). Kennedy’s in-depth knowledge of the workings of big business - gained from suing them over the decades - will, he says, create this dream, swamp-draining ticket, like a kind of Trump-booster.
A scary thought, as Trump has never actually demonstrated he has anything worthwhile to boost. Kennedy may hope to play a role of Trump-dampener in some areas.
However there are bad things he says he won’t do, like cause a world war.

At this stage it’s about belief in the lesser evil. Trump has been making better noises than before (except in presidential debates). For policies, Harris is Biden; because Biden had no influence on policy; and, it seems, neither has she. There is no doubt she outpointed Trump in the so-called debate, but no more than would be expected when you pit an attorney general against a boorish amateur. Harris’s main problem is she can only be sold on personal attrubues (joy, OMG) as she hasn;'t been in the driving seat of policy. Those reluctant swing voters are still waiting to see Harris’s policies but they are looking in the wrong place.
From being slightly behind, Harris is now slightly ahead. The temproary boost obtained by the Dems from their trump card, the ‘debate’ - in my view needed to be bigger, but who knows what the media can dream up, and what new gaffes Trump will make.

This US election seems to have more interest than usual, but only on the entertainment front. Nixon vs JF Kennedy it ain’t.

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#2

I think RFK is dreaming here I’m afraid. I think it will be very hard for him to be any real influence on Trump as I don’t think trump listens to anyone, and can surprise even himself with his improv. As a classic narcissist his actions are driven by a need for adulation and that’s a bad thing for any kind of stable planning. He turns, like a sunflower, to wherever the greatest applause is coming from in the moment.

Trump has shown from his last presidency onwards that it takes very little for him to jettison one-time allies. His level of loyalty to anyone other than himself is basically zero. One minute best friends, the next you’re out in the cold. Again, classic narcissist symptoms.

Unfortunately RFK has already shot himself in the foot by being mildly critical of Trump’s debate with Harris. Trump himself, of course, is loudly proclaiming that he won the debate by a large margin and won’t take kindly at all to RFK declaring otherwise. On his beloved Fox news no less…

I think that partnership will soon be done.

Mind you, listening to RFK on Israel (“the Palestinians are the most pampered people on earth”) and the economy, I’m not sad that he’s nowhere near an actual decision maker.

Although it must be said that I would put the whole lot of them away in an insane asylum if I could.

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#3

Thanks Aly. Trump would make a poor vehicle for anyone’s inspiration for sure. But he definitely does listen to RFK at the moment (he asked him inside in 2016 but I think his team of ‘swamp creatures’ of the industries Kennedy is hostile to then scuppered it). I’ve long thought the team is key to any prospects of moderation, and lamented the fact that you have to elect him again to find out if he’s serious, but RFK up front is a huge plus in the role they are discussing. I hope he keeps to that role.

I don’t really know how to analyse economics as it seems to me big unmentionables outweigh the effect of what is actually discussed as policy; at the end of the term the billionaires are unfathomably richer and the poor are always poorer and/or more numerous. One of these unmentionables was covid and another is the war business.

Yeah I’m not sure which of them is worst on Palestine when it comes to policy - it seems Nyu-know-who gets what he wants anyway.

The US as ever has a choice of evils. Ironically it’s arguably been voting the supposedly lesser evil that got them there. But now the stakes are so high that it seems to make sense to discuss the lesser insanities that we will permit. Choose your poison…cheers

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#4

Let’s see how long Trump keeps RFK around if RFK starts disagreeing with him. Previous experiences suggest that’s not a thing he tolerates.

Yes, to some degree. It was trump that started the policy of dumping billions into the stock market when COVID hit, allowing CEOs to massively increase their share values and push money up into the elites. He wanted the Dow Jones and similar indices to look strong as that was his measure of how well the economy was doing, and he talks about that constantly. And it did, indeed, reach record highs as the country collapsed into economic disaster.

Not that Biden or Kamala would do much different. And listening to RFK being interviewed (by Krystal and Sagar on Breaking Points if I remember) I didn’t think his form of corporate capitalism would do any good either.

We need someone who is willing to think completely differently about all this. Trump and project 2025, or Kamala and the WEF are not the teams who are going to go anywhere good.

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#5

Well Trump thinks completely differently on Russia/Ukraine and insane weaponisation of untested so-called medicines.

What do you think of his utterances on tariffs?
He was almost coherent at times in his acceptance speech.

Trump’s program for America, end of globalism – The Duran
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

He seems to realize the US will hardly win any kind of war with China, Russia and the rest of Asia. Whereas the mad mommas in the Dems (and in the Reps) think it’s a necessary gamble to keep the US advantage as Top Dog. They’re more dangerous than Trump IMO - at least to the rest of the world,.Dunno about the US population…

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#6

Hey bwana. Thanks for the post.

Yeah, TBH, I go through the same calculus. I just can’t really get it to add up convincingly for myself. The Dems are definitely the current endless war party, but the Trump camp just isn’t convincing me either.

On the vaccine question, Trump was responsible for operation Warp Speed, pulling out all the stops to make the COVID vaccines happen faster than any vaccine had been created before. He was pushing for corners to be cut so that he could claim a big victory against covid. What he would have done afterwards had he been in office and therefore in charge of vaccine rollout is unclear to me. Whether he would have weaponised them in the same way or not. During his presidency, the pro-trumpers were all Ra Ra about the vaccine and the anti were all sceptical. After his presidency, the teams reversed position.It feels more like tribal loyalty than actual conviction, which means it’s hard to know which way it would all swing if he gets back in.

The agenda to weaponise policies seem pretty clear if you read project 2025 (which he denies having anything to do with, but which his VP is up to his neck in) There’s a lot of weaponisation there against women ,and LGBT people. Plus his weaponisation of the anti-immigrant rhetoric is hard for me to swallow. I remember marches by the proud boys and other violent right wing groups when he was prez. Not sure that’s a thing to go back to.

So overall, I dunno if Trump would be less weaponis-ey about policy. Maybe so about vaccines, but perhaps not about general human rights? How do we add that up to decide anything?

I used to think that Trump would be less likely to start a big war. Again, now I’m not so sure… On the subject of Russia, he seems to have no real clear idea about fixing things. He’s still talking about building up Ukraine’s military (on the other side of a DMZ). Vance is saying the key is that the Russians have to “fear” America so they don’t try anything. This is not the clear - “let’s get the hell out of Ukraine as it has nothing to do with us” - that I was hoping he would say.

And on Israel/Iran I have no faith in trump at all. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, saying that the Golan Heights are Israeli territory and they should just go in and take ownership. Pulling out of the nuclear deal with Iran for no reason and then accusing the Iranians of enriching uranium and looking to build a bomb. IIRC Jared was part of the recent set of conventions that swept the US on the subject of building beachfront condos on the Gaza strip.

Add in the fact that the biggest backers for Vance are Peter Thiel and Sergei Brinn, both hardcore war activists and the tech brains behind the MIC, and it doesn’t look peaceful. Whitney Webb did a great interview with Jimmy Dore a few months ago pointing out the pro-war influencers who have jumped into Trumps campaign. Her strong belief is that he would draw down the war in Ukraine and ramp up war against Iran…

Ai yai yai.

Again, I just don’t see a peaceful or particularly trustworthy candidate here.

Not that I’m saying Biden was in any way better, and I just don’t know enough about Kamala to think she will do anything to buck the war machine either. I highly doubt it, in fact.

The tariff issue confuses me. As I understand tariffs, it’s an import tax that ultimately gets passed to the consumer. The goal is to make foreign made goods more expensive than locally made ones, so people buy local. In all cases though, people in your country are paying more for those goods than folks in other countries without tariffs. Trump keeps saying that it’s the Chinese who have to pay the tariffs… I can’t tell if he’s lying or just doesn’t understand how tariffs work. Or maybe I’ve misunderstood.

The truth seems to me that any further overture to war - especially in the middle east - is likely to massively inflate energy costs and therefore spike inflation even higher and reduce economies to recession or worse. Tariffs on top will make life even more expensive for poor people.

Oh well… I’m not sure how coherent this post turned out in the end. Probably way longer than was required, as usual.

Anyway. I’ll finish up by saying what the hell do I know? I might have got completely the wrong end of the stick here. I think there are energies and forces at work that are currently underground that could play massive havoc with any plans from the front men persons(!) of the current establishment.

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#7

:slightly_smiling_face:

I think we’re all feeling our way. Despite this, just the kind of reply I was hoping for as I know little about some of these issues (that I keep posting my view on, oh dear).

It’s difficult to have any faith in Trump on anything. Sure he wanted the glory on the vaccines and before that the hydroxychlroquine and you’re right that polarised the issue, all the way up to the upper echelons of medicine including (fully including) medical journals. The other side of that coin is that the American middle class, medics (Dems and other never Trumpers) and all thought it was worth sacrificing half a million US lives or so rather than have Trump gifted the 2020 election by eliminating the virus with HCQ. That puts the awfulness of Trump into perspective, for me.
But I think he lacked the nous to investigate vaccines properly - not to mention the covid impersonations - and saw this as the way out, turning a blind eye to the problems which along with most leaders he thought of as the long grass. But also, trusting the people around him. Fool!

Tony Benn said policies not personalities and I think on some of the global issues (plans, really) the Dems are more steeped in the bad stuff.
The risk calculations involve staggering numbers of deaths and societal harm or ruination. On the other hand Trump is doing a lot of harm mostly on the domestic front.
Homo sapiens aren’t equipped to weigh up variables of such magnitude, just like you can’t do arithmetic with infinity. Without any specific visions, wiser heads warned long ago that you have to avoid projects that shake off democratic controls.

I don’t know how to include Israel as they are all awful on that front. Kennedy equally so though nuts though he is about Israel v Palestine in general, I suspect he is not driven by the requirements of the US War Machine as the main leaders. Grasping at straws I know.

My main point is really that Trump plus RFK offers more hope in some directions than Trump. I take your reservations - it may just amount to minus infinity plus one (or plus zero :slight_smile: ), though I am more hopeful, as I think there is more of a genuine connection there. Might be that Trump is looking to his legacy, which may have sparked a change in some areas.

Thanks for your other thoughts I’ll think about them as I really posted to get them!

Cheers

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#8

Quite. I also forgot to mention the endorsements of Kamala by Dick Cheney and other similar nice guys.

So Peter Thiel and Elon musk on one side and Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton on the other.

:face_vomiting:

Whatever the policies, it looks too me like the us public is deeply split between MAGA and never trumpers. Feeling like it’s gonna be another knife edge election decided by the courts.

Luckily the American judicial system is well known to be the least corrupt and most upstanding in the world. Especially on election shenanigans…

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#9

On tariffs for whatever it’s worth

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#10

One final bit on tariffs. At least I feel I’m not missing the point. Richard Wolff sees it the same way I do

RICHARD WOLFF: Nima, let me expand on this because it’s crucial. For nearly a decade, tariffs have been a central part of Trump’s approach, as if he discovered them like a child playing with a new toy in a sandbox. He throws tariffs around without understanding them. He continues to claim that tariffs are paid for by China, but in reality, the tariff is a tax paid by American importers—the businesses that bring foreign goods into the U.S.

This is a key point: a tariff is essentially a tax, and yet Republicans, the self-proclaimed party of low taxes, have made tariffs a cornerstone of their economic strategy. In earlier days, tariffs were called import duties, but the effect is the same. The business bringing in French wine, Japanese electronics, or Chinese-made products has to pay the cost of the goods, and then pay the tariff to the U.S. government.

Let’s take the example of a Chinese electric vehicle that costs $30,000. Companies like BYD, which have outpaced Tesla in producing high-quality electric vehicles at competitive prices, would try to sell this car in the U.S. for $30,000. But under a 100% tariff, that price would double to $60,000—$30,000 for the vehicle, and another $30,000 in taxes. This puts the American businesses which are purchasing electric vehicles for transportation, at a severe disadvantage compared to their global competitors, who can purchase the same vehicle for $30,000.

Actually a pretty interesting discussion

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#11

Interesting discussion, I tend to think that Trump is the lesser evil and like to say so to provoke all my old friends who got marooned in the Flags’n’pronouns Sargasso Sea sometime around 2015 and spent their lives ever since in the most hellish samsara.

This I liked:

For real? Fear them why? Surely everyone alive realises by now that the US War Machine is basically a money pit wrapped around a black hole. Luckily some people in the Dept Of Defence have clicked to the fact that “We’re the United States, dammit…” just isn’t the USP it used to be.

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