Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shaping up to be quite the puzzle for his rivals in the campaign for the White House.
Former President Donald Trump calls him a “Democrat plant,” saying Mr. Kennedy’s platform looks like what any other liberal Democrat would embrace.
Democratic officials, though, reject him as a MAGA-style disruptor whose campaign threatens to siphon desperately needed support away from President Biden’s dicey re-election coalition.
The reality is complex, with Mr. Kennedy, running as an independent, embracing most of Democrats’ big ideological goals of abortion rights and combatting climate change but sounding more skeptical about bipartisan Washington’s consensus on more open borders or writing big checks for Ukraine’s war with Russia.
“He considers himself a Kennedy Democrat, which is different than the Democratic Party we have today,” Dick Russell, author of “The Real RFK Jr.,” said shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the presidential race. “His belief is that we are in a place where a merger of corporate and state power has occurred to such a degree that it threatens the very existence of the free market capitalism society we have had and of our democracy itself.”
It’s been decades since an independent or third-party candidate made a dent in a presidential election but Mr. Kennedy, son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, is drawing enough support that both parties are worried about his chances of playing spoiler.
That’s particularly true for an election where so-called “double-haters” — voters who dislike both major party choices — are seeking a soft landing spot.
Pollsters say Mr. Kennedy is drawing from all demographics, though the voters he attracts usually fall somewhere between the two parties on the issues.
And so does Mr. Kennedy.
Economy
Mr. Kennedy sounds more like a Democrat than a Republican on taxes, saying Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cut was skewed toward big corporations instead of the “little guy.”
On his campaign website, he says corporations are sitting on $8 trillion in potential tax revenue despite their contributions to federal tax coffers plummeting from 33% in the 1950s to 10% today.
“It’s high time they paid their fair share,” his campaign said.
It’s part of a broader critique Mr. Kennedy delivers against the Biden economy, saying inflation is crippling the poor and younger Americans, locking them out of things like home ownership.
Abortion
Mr. Kennedy harkens back to older Democratic Party rhetoric on abortion, rejecting the urgent abortion-rights attitude of the modern party and saying “every abortion is a tragedy” while also saying the government should stay out of regulating it.
“I don’t want government or bureaucrats telling women when to terminate a pregnancy — or when not to,” he told MSNBC.
Mr. Kennedy says he prioritizes maximizing life and minimizing abortions. He also says he is focused on making sure that women do not feel the need to terminate a pregnancy out of fear that cannot financially support a child.
Health care
He has stated his opposition to vaccinations, although Mr. Kennedy says he’s not anti-vaccine, a stance that leaves many observers confused.
His campaign platform decries a high rate of “chronic disease” in the U.S. and says Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden “have allowed America’s health to deteriorate.”
Mr. Kennedy pledges that in his first week in office, he will convene a meeting at the National Institutes of Health to refocus the federal government’s $50 billion medical research budget toward chronic disease prevention.
“Kennedy will start funding studies into the causes of chronic disease, including toxic chemicals (PFAS, glyphosate, neonics, etc.), air and water pollution, microplastics, electromagnetic pollution, ultra-processed foods, and pharmaceutical products,” his campaign website states.
Guns
The 70-year-old independent has said he is “not going to take anybody’s guns away” and doubts that new gun restrictions would curtail the nation’s mass shootings.
“It can’t just be because of the guns, it has to be something else,” Mr. Kennedy said.
He wants more studies on the causes of gun violence, including what role video games, social media and psychiatric drugs contribute.
“When I was a kid we had gun clubs in our schools… kids brought .22 rifles to school,” Mr. Kennedy said. “They were not walking into classrooms and shooting people.”
Climate
Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, complains of the nation’s “longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil.”
He has voiced support for the Green New Deal, but said he is more interested in a market-based approach to protecting the environment that includes imposing a tax on carbon emissions and eliminating taxpayer subsidies for the coal and oil industries.
“Right now we have a market that is governed by rules that were written by the carbon incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, more poisonous, most toxic, most warmongering fuels from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome and patriotic fuels from heaven,” Mr. Kennedy has said.
After initially vowing to ban fracking of natural gas, Mr. Kennedy later said he would phase it out by cutting taxpayer-funded subsidies for the industry and putting “a moratorium on new exploration.”
He has also called for banning natural gas exports because he believes the U.S. should be “keeping that gas in our country and using it to rebuild our industrial base.”
“It does no good for the American people to ship it abroad to Europe,” he says.
Immigration
Mr. Kennedy labels the border a “humanitarian crisis” and blames Mr. Biden, saying the incumbent opened the border and allowed the asylum system to spiral out of control.
“Today there is no control, no effective policy and, as a result, there is a humanitarian, security, and economic disaster,” his campaign website says. “Just as a cell has a membrane, a country must have borders or it will disintegrate.”
His answers include building more of Mr. Trump’s border wall system, which he blames Mr. Biden for halting, and to speed up immigration hearings so the asylum system works.
He says fewer than 15% of asylum claims are successful, so would-be migrants who see their relatives and neighbors getting sent home quickly will deter others from coming.
Military
Mr. Kennedy eyes a deal in Ukraine, saying he would “offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia‘s borders” in exchange for Russia pulling out all its troops and guaranteeing Ukraine “freedom and independence,” with a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor Ukraine’s east.
“That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries,” he says on his website.
He also envisions a peace dividend at home, saying the U.S. was supposed to slash defense spending after the Cold War but it didn’t happen.
“We need to cut that back to the levels we were promised,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview with Breaking Points.
He says he’d act in the image of his uncle, President Kennedy, whom the campaign described as “a firm anti-imperialist.”
Jan. 6 pardons
Mr. Kennedy has not ruled out pardoning the Jan. 6 protesters who have been charged with storming the U.S. Capitol to try to upend Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory.
While he blames Mr. Trump for encouraging the riot with “his delusion that the election was stolen,” Mr. Kennedy shares some of the former president’s concerns about the weaponization of the federal government against the protestors.
“As president, I will appoint a special counsel — an individual respected by all sides — to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement.