Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate Nichole Shanahan expressed doubts about Donald Trump and said their campaign would never “sell out,” hours before RFK Jr. endorsed the former president.
In an interview on the Adam Carolla Show that aired on Friday, Shanahan described the challenges the RFK campaign has had getting on the ballot in states like New York and tried to calm speculation they were about to endorse Trump, telling Carolla only RFK would make that announcement.
“We would never sell out this campaign ever. It’s not what we would ever choose to do nor are we defeated in this moment, but I have to say something. We are up against something that is unprecedented,” she said.
“My statement was that we are weighing our options of staying in or working however we can with a plan b to ensure that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz do not end up in office in November,” she added, referring to comments on a different podcast where she described the campaign “looking at” endorsing Trump.
Elsewhere in the interview, Shanahan described certain reservations about allying with Trump, including his record on Covid, including “the vaccinations, the lockdowns letting Fauci and Francis Collins run the show, the firing of the other folks at the NIH and individuals at the CDC that were censored.”
“There was a lot that happened under Donald Trump’s watch that should not have happened and cannot happen again,” she said.
Later that day, RFK Jr. did in fact endorse Trump, suspending his campaign and removing his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states.
The decision was “agonizing”, Kennedy said, but he argued it aligned with his stances against Big Pharma and his belief a Trump administration would work to combat chronic disease.
Other members of the Kennedy family, many of whom opposed RFK Jr.’s candidacy to begin with, condemned the endorsement.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” they said in a statement. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
The Kennedy campaign was projected to get about five percent of the expected share of national votes, and it’s unclear how his supporters will impact the race going forward, given the tight margins between the two leading candidates.