Opinion | RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard aren’t pushing Trump to the center

When former President Donald Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic-turned-independent Rep. Tulsi Gabbard would join his presidential transition team, senior campaign adviser Brian Hughes declared that the former president’s “broad coalition of supporters and endorsers” was expanding “across partisan lines.” Kennedy heralded being a part of Trump’s future “Unity Government.” MAGA influencers said Trump was reaching across the aisle and bringing the country together.

But MAGA politicians and pundits aren’t the only ones presenting Trump’s recruitment of Kennedy and Gabbard as an example of bipartisanship. During a recent episode of “The Daily” podcast, New York Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn said Trump’s new transition team co-chairs are part of an effort to bridge political divides.

“If you, a decade ago, told me about a Republican who had the support of an RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, but was opposed by Dick Cheney,” Cohn said, “I think we would recognize that candidate as being one who was doing a lot of work to try and occupy something like the political middle.”

This idea was recently echoed by Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, who observed that Trump’s “agenda is a unity agenda. He’s running with Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.” There are many other examples of journalists repeating the narrative that Trump’s new surrogates are an appeal to the “political middle.”

The “Kennedy-Trump alliance,” according to a recent Associated Press article, gives Trump a “chance to present his campaign as having bipartisan appeal.” The New York Times described Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump as a “remarkable twist for the scion of a Democratic political dynasty.” Another AP article echoed this observation: “A year ago, some would have thought it inconceivable that a member of arguably the most storied family in Democratic politics would work with Trump to keep a Democrat out of the White House.”

But endorsing Trump wasn’t a “remarkable” or “inconceivable” deviation for Kennedy or Gabbard. While it’s true that they both once had D’s next to their names, they aren’t members of the MAGA movement in order to forge unity between Republicans and Democrats. They’re part of Trump’s campaign because they embrace the paranoid conspiracism that has moved from the fringe to the mainstream as MAGA has taken over the GOP.

Kennedy is a prolific conspiracy fabulist who described public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic as “fascism” and accused Anthony Fauci of orchestrating a “coup d’etat against Western democracy.” He said unvaccinated Americans had it worse than Anne Frank under the Nazis. He has spent years spreading the debunked theory that childhood vaccines cause autism, and Trump shares some of his anti-vaccine suspicions. Kennedy says Trump wants to “enlist me in his administration,” and he’s angling for a prominent role in public health. The former president describes him as a “brilliant guy” who would “certainly” warrant consideration for a position in government.

Trump appreciates Kennedy’s paranoid, anti-establishment politics — a reflection of views that have become increasingly central to MAGA’s messaging. Kennedy accuses the Biden administration of trying to have him silenced. He has launched lawsuits against a list of media organizations for allegedly censoring him. In a recent video, Kennedy said, “President Trump and I have both felt the brunt of government censorship, of surveillance, of propaganda, and of the weaponization of the agencies against us.”

Like Kennedy, Gabbard wants to serve in the Trump White House, and believes she can “make the most impact in … national security and foreign policy.” She has long held positions that are closely aligned with Trump’s America First foreign policy.

For example, she says the United States is to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and believes Washington should abandon Kyiv. By surrendering to Vladimir Putin, she argues that Trump will “walk us back from the brink of nuclear armageddon” and avoid “World War III.” There’s nothing bipartisan about Gabbard’s foreign policy — it’s just a mirror of Trump’s populist isolationism. The same applies to Kennedy: He wants to permanently seal the southern border and says the United States is responsible for the war in Ukraine (which he calls a “setup by the neocons and the CIA”).

Gabbard appeals to Trump in other ways. She describes Vice President Kamala Harris as the “new figurehead for the deep state” and says she is the “perfect puppet controlled by the faceless, power-hungry warmongers who run our country right now.” She says the Biden administration has “spent years weaponizing law enforcement, the national security state, and their friends in Big Tech and the mainstream propaganda media.” She recently retweeted a meme posted by Elon Musk in which a shadowy figure throws a Biden puppet in the trash and replaces it with a Harris puppet.

None of these views represent the “political middle” in the United States. They represent a toxic stew of conspiracism, populism and apologetics for MAGA authoritarianism.

Kennedy and Gabbard’s message about government tyranny and deep-state manipulation has thrived in the vast and growing nexus of alternative media outlets. Kennedy has even been described as the “first podcast presidential candidate.”

Joe Rogan hosts the most popular podcast in the world, and he recently attracted the ire of the MAGA movement when he appeared to endorse Kennedy. Trump posted on Truth Social: “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring???” There’s a reason Trump was upset by Rogan’s “endorsement” of Kennedy (which he later retracted, saying it was never an endorsement in the first place) — he views Rogan’s audience as a potential source of support. Now that Kennedy is part of his campaign, this is a problem he no longer faces.

Trump’s alliance with Kennedy and Gabbard isn’t part of a grand effort to unify the country — it’s an effort to reach anti-establishment, MAGA-curious podcast audiences. It exploits the rampant conspiracism and disinformation that Trump has fueled for nearly 10 years. The Americans who believe the fascist deep state trampled their freedoms during the Covid-19 pandemic are in the same coalition as the Americans who think the deep state stole the 2020 election from Trump. This is unity of a kind, but it certainly isn’t bipartisanship or centrism.