Don’t Ask RFK Jr. About Being a Spoiler

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For months now, I’ve been reluctant to talk about third parties. That’s not because of any individual candidates but that it’s hard to know what type of impact they could have in November, especially at this early stage. But this week, some news caught my attention. The Democratic National Committee has just formed a unit to specifically push back against third-party and independent candidates. And it comes at the same time some Biden allies formed a super PAC called Clear Choice that plans to do the same, meaning, clearly, Team Biden is worried about the potential impact of outsider candidates.

And one candidate in particular is likely the primary cause of concern — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He’s polling above 10 percent in national surveys. His team says he’s already secured ballot access in key states like Nevada and New Hampshire. And of course, he’s a Kennedy. But for as much as RFK, Jr., could matter in November, very little is known about him at this point besides his famous name and his history of spreading conspiratorial claims about COVID, vaccines, and the political system as a whole.

So after exploring the two major candidates and how Democratic and Republican leadership helped create the conditions for Biden versus Trump again, I wanted to talk to the person who’s crashing the rematch party and positioning himself as a potential spoiler for them both. Today, an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. From “The New York Times,” I’m Astead Herndon. This is “The Run-Up.”

Hello. Can you hear me?

Hey, Astead. It’s Bobby Kennedy.

Hi. How are you? Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time.

Yeah. Thanks for doing this. I wonder if you’d allow me to ask what is your — what kind of name is that? Is that Ethiopian or —

No, it’s actually a family name. My dad’s name is Astead. His uncle’s name is Astead. And I’m the next one of us.

Wow. All right.

[LAUGHS]: You know, I, too, have the same name as my dad, even though I think the pressure of that’s a little different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I talked with RFK, Jr., earlier this week with his press team in the background. I want to dive into this life of relationships and the scope and worldview, where that came from. So have you always been a Democrat? It might be an obvious question.

Yes. I grew up in the Democratic Party.

And was that an identification because of your family’s history? What did the word Democrat even mean to you as you were growing up?

The word Democrat means the party of the Constitution, particularly press freedom and other religious freedoms, et cetera. In the world I grew up in, the Democrats were the protectors of the Constitution. The Republicans often put law and order and national security in front of the Constitution. It was the party of working people of the middle class. The Republican Party, in contrast, was the party of Wall Street.

It was the party of free speech. It was the antiwar party. It was the party that was worried about the domination of America’s democracy by excessive corporate power. It was the party of the environment, you know? It was the party of freedom, essentially, of personal freedoms.

Mm-hmm. It was also the party of your family. I mean, I can’t be here and not ask the obvious question that I’m sure you’ve gotten so many times. But at the age of nine, your uncle was killed. What do you remember about that time, and what effect did it have on you and how you viewed the political system or political space in general?

Yeah. I mean, my uncle was kind of the son that provided the gravity that was the center of the orbit of all of our orbits growing up. My father had — there were a total of nine siblings, the children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. And we grew up with this notion that our lives would be consumed by some great debate and that it would be a great privilege for us to be involved in some meaningful way in those disputes.

And then when my uncle died, I was — of course, it was shattering for our whole family. I was at school that day at Sidwell Friends, and my mom picked me up early from school. And I could already see that the flags in Washington, DC, on our way home were at half staff. And I asked her about that. And she said, a bad man —

But you didn’t know why.

I didn’t know at that time. And then she said, a bad man shot Uncle Jack. And when I got home, my father was walking in the yard with John McComb, who was the head of the CIA. He came to our home every day during the spring time and summer to go swimming in our pool after work. And he would often come over for lunch and eat lunch with my mom or dad. So I knew him well.

And he was walking with my father in the yard when I got home. My father, actually, during that conversation, had asked McComb whether the CIA had been the authors of his brother’s shooting. And we hugged my dad, my — and that was kind of the beginning of a long mourning period.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You were 14 when your father was killed. At the time, did you see their deaths as connected to their political message and the work they were doing?

I saw their deaths as a risk of politics.

OK.

To me, I feel like I saw politics the way that you’d see going to war, that this was a risk and that it was something that took some courage to do and that it was part of the cause of maintaining a democracy. But there was also a risk involved. And I’m sure that I — that my uncle’s death influenced that belief system.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s a zen view to take as a 14-year-old who had experienced such personal — you say at the time, you thought that this was just a kind of function of public service?

Yes, I did. And I think my mom and my family were really shattered by the death, but they also — they wouldn’t allow self-pity in our house or victimization. Those were regarded as destructive impulses and selfish impulses. My mother, I remember her saying, everybody takes their licks. And there are kids in Harlem, there are kids in Compton, there are kids in Bed-Stuy who have lost their dads, you know, dads have been shot, and they don’t have what you had, which is a strong family, a strong religious belief, a good education, wealth, and plenty of potential.

And my grandfather set the standard that people don’t whine about — that you accept what happens and try to embrace it.

I read a lot of details of your life after that. I read that you were kicked out of school twice. You were arrested. You were sworn in as an ADA in Manhattan but then had to resign because you didn’t pass the bar. How did you go from that story and land at environmental activism? Take me through the journey that — I see a wayward-y teenager era, but it also seems like it landed in an impassioned activist, specifically in finding the cause of the environment. How did that happen?

Well, I would say — I mean, I became a heroin addict pretty soon after my dad’s death. I was a heroin addict from the age of 15. And I think after my dad’s death, I felt a pressure to pick up the torch. And I ended up following a little more in his footsteps. I went to Harvard. I went to the University of Virginia Law School, which he had done. I became a DA, which was kind of a parallel to what my dad had done.

But I was doing things that were not appealing to my soul. I was doing them out of a sense of obligation or some other sense that was — that it was not right for me. And when I got sober at the age of 28, one of the important things about sobriety is to try to be true to yourself. And I knew that I wanted to work on the environment. When I was a little kid, I said I wanted to be a vet or a scientist. I was in the —

I loved the outdoors. I had homing pigeons that I was racing and breeding from when I was seven years old. I started training hawks when I was nine and became obsessed with falconry and had hawks my entire life after that. And so when I got sober and started reorganizing my life, I wanted to work with people who were working in the environment, people who were up to their waist in mud and water and waders. And so it was very, very comfortable to me to work for fishermen.

And I began suing polluters for the fishermen on the Hudson River. And I felt like I was being effective at doing something that I loved.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve listened to other interviews where you explain this, and I think this really comes through. And I think it gets us to a portion we can talk more about — how this informs a belief set and how you start to use your public voice in this time. This is when you start using your voice specifically in the public health arena and you’re expressing the skepticism against vaccines. There is a now-notorious retracted article in Salon that repeated the, I would say, heavily debunked theory that vaccines cause autism in children. I want to say, I don’t want to really fight about the science here. Because in my opinion, that’s something that is settled or folks can look up. I guess I just wanted to ask you more broadly about the choice to use your voice for that issue. It does seem like around this time, you go from being RFK, Jr., environmental lawyer fighting against corporate influence, to using your voice for something — other things in the public eye. I guess I’m asking, with your voice and with your name, how did you think about your own personal responsibility and lending that to these causes? Like, even if you believe them privately, what about the choice to do so publicly?

Well, I mean, the way that I got into this was kicking and screaming. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do. In 2003, FDA and the National Academy of Sciences published a study that found that every freshwater fish in America had dangerous levels of mercury in its flesh. And the Waterkeepers — by then, the Waterkeeper movement, which I had cofounded, was the biggest water protection movement in the world. We had 350 Waterkeepers on waterways in 46 countries.

And a lot of them began suing the coal-burning power plants and cement kilns for discharging mercury, which was then getting in the fish. And I was giving speeches — public speeches — all over the United States and Canada. And these women started showing up at almost all my speeches — different groups. They’d always do the same thing. They’d come early, occupy the front rows. And then afterwards, they’d ask to speak to me.

And they were — as it turns out, they were the mothers of kids with intellectual disabilities. And they all believed that their children had been injured by vaccines, particularly in mercury in vaccines. And so I started talking to them, and they —

I said I didn’t want to talk about the science, but that’s where this ended up going. So first, we found no evidence of a study finding dangerous levels of mercury in all freshwater fish in the United States, even though it’s true that nearly all fish contain at least some traces of mercury. And second, as for this very debunked conspiracy that mercury in childhood vaccines causes autism, here’s the situation.

Mercury is a dangerous heavy metal. A specific, less harmful type of mercury used to be used in some childhood vaccines. But there is no link between the mercury in vaccines and autism, and it was taken out of childhood vaccines in 2001. Still, the theory continues that the government, the CDC, and the FDA knowingly let parents harm children this way, all in the name of profit for big pharma, which is what really angers Kennedy.

So I was looking at just this mass poisoning of children that nobody was acknowledging and nobody really had the capacity to confront. And any scientist or doctor who came out and spoke about it was censored, punished, delicensed, made pariah. And that kind of left me as the only one who could actually stand up and help these kids and these parents. I felt an obligation to it. It was not something that I chose or that I wanted to do.

If you knew about RFK, Jr., before he ran for president, it was probably because of this advocacy. And it’s not just vaccines and autism. It’s conspiracies about 5G wireless and Wi-Fi, that they can get into your body and cause cancer. It’s election denial long before Trump turned that conspiracy mainstream. This is a man whose life has been defined by mistrust.

Do you see any connection between your beliefs that the government has not been fully honest with its citizens on a bunch of issues and the personal tragedies that you experienced as a kid? It’s hard to ignore the fact that your uncle and father’s death were the basis of some very big American formative beliefs about the government not being honest or what’s been now brandished as sort of conspiracy or conspiracy theory. Well, I guess I’m considering for you, as someone who has lived this, do you see a connection between having experienced some of the things you did growing up and where you’ve landed on where the government is in terms of just as an instrument to be trusted or not?

Well, there might be. But my skepticism about government authorities, I think, was really melded during my years as an environmental attorney.

OK.

And my attitudes about my uncle’s death, my father’s death, I never questioned those orthodoxies until quite late in life. So I just accept it like you do. “The New York Times” version of things, that there was a single gunman — which now “The New York Times” is flip-flopping on — and then as the information began to come out and the documents — because the JFK Act and people made confessions — and I started reading the books and the scholarship on it — my attitude about that changed. And I’m happy to talk to anybody about the details of that, of what made my attitude change.

And if you can tell me something that shows that I’m wrong, then I will —

No. I mean, I don’t have a formed opinion on — I guess I’m saying —

I’ll tell you, Astead, I think what you say is right, that these were formative —

Yeah, that’s what I was asking about.

It was — you know, most Americans do not believe the official story about what happened to my uncle. When the Church Committee actually went back and looked at these and Gary Hart and all these senators, when the House assassination committee and the Select Committee on Assassination went back and looked at much more voluminous data, they came to the official conclusion — you can read it in the Congressional Record — that my uncle was killed by a conspiracy. Oh, yeah, it’s a conspiracy theory, but the United States Congress and Senate believes it. And I’m told I’m a conspiracy theorist because I believe that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But I was able to help convince juries that it does. And I also was called by “The New York Times” a conspiracy theory because I said the COVID vaccines would not prevent transmission as I said there’s no scientific basis for imposing social distancing or masks. And now “The New York Times” admits those things. So, you know, you call them conspiracy theories until they’re proven true.

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For the record, he’s mostly right. The House committee did reach the conclusion that President Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of conspiracy. The Senate committee was more ambiguous. They concluded that the investigation into the assassination was, quote, “deficient” but said they had not found evidence of a conspiracy. And “The New York Times” continues to cite experts who say that masking and social distancing can help keep people safe from COVID. But as with all conspiracies, the power isn’t in the factual basis but the feeling it adds up to — that the government can’t be trusted and skepticism is required.

After the break, RFK, Jr., on his campaign.

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So for years, and particularly before his antivaccine pivot, RFK, Jr., was rumored as a possible candidate for elected office. But it wasn’t until last year, when he formally announced his intentions to run for president, that he officially joined the family business and followed in his father’s footsteps. Initially, RFK, Jr., ran as a Democrat, seeking to challenge President Biden in the primary. But last October, he announced he would drop out of the Democratic primary and run as an independent candidate, positioning himself as a potential spoiler.

That word, spoiler, now hangs over everything regarding Kennedy and his campaign. Personally, as the host of this show, I’ve been avoiding the topic of third-party candidates, partially because history is really jumbled on how to think about them in November. Obviously, a third-party candidate hasn’t won. But this year seems uniquely suited to a kind of idea of an outsider due to how many people are disillusioned with the race or have said to be interested in candidates outside of Trump or Biden. How would you think about the RFK, Jr., campaign? What’s the point of it? Who’s its audience?

Early in my life, I was sort of dabbled in politics. And there was a couple of times when I came close to running. I came close to running when Hillary — that would have been around 2000 when Hillary won — or ran for my dad’s seat. And I was actually considering running, but I had family issues that made it so that it wouldn’t have been a good judgment. And then when Obama won and she was appointed Secretary of State, that, of course, was very tempting to me because it was something that never happens, a free Senate seat.

I had the same family issues that I was still struggling with, and that led me to believe I should not do that. And then after that, I put aside any thought of ever running for political office again. So I was very content with what I was doing. And it wasn’t until COVID, when I saw the nation really making these very strange choices and taking these very disturbed, troubling directions, both the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party losing touch with its traditional values, its abhorrence for censorship. It became instead the driver behind the censorship of speech, particularly of dissent from or criticism of government policies, which is exactly what the party had represented for so long.

So you’re saying COVID was a break? I mean, I hear a ton of ground covered in terms of your life and your advocacy. But in that moment, you actually felt that there was a moral call to direct political action.

Yeah, exactly. And the first thought that I began toying with is, I had a big enough following. And I could raise enough money that even if I didn’t have a chance to win a presidential contest that they would have to force me into the debates. And I was frustrated because I hadn’t been allowed to talk about any of these issues of wall-to-wall censorship since 2014, beginning, really, in 2005. And by 2014, it was total eclipse.

I couldn’t publish a letter to the editor. Nobody would allow me on to talk about issues. So if I ran, I thought, at least I’ll be able to talk about these issues and confront them. But my wife would have never let me run if I wasn’t going to win. And it would have been a hardship on my children. And I could have ended up, really, being kind of a joke. And so I — and then a pollster, Jeremy Zogby, contacted me by email.

And he said, I have some — I’ve been polling your name, and I need to show you these polls. And he came out to Los Angeles, and he sat down with me and Cheryl. And he was getting these results that were extraordinary given that I had had nothing but bad publicity for almost a decade. And yet my popularity was better than anybody. So at that point, I started thinking, I could actually win this. Anyway. That’s the long version of a long story.

No, I appreciate — I wanted to hear the story in full because I think it helps give me an understanding of the arc that brought us to this point. But it’s unclear to me when you feel like the Democratic Party lost its way. Is it during that time? When would you cite your own break with Democrats?

Well, I would say during that time, I saw a lot of disturbing things. I saw the lockdowns, businesses shut down with no scientific citation, no notice-and-comment rulemaking, no environmental impact statement, no due process — none of the safeguards of democracy that I’ve been litigating against government corporations for 40 years. When they try to skip the democracy part of regulation — and here you just had one guy who one week says, masks don’t work. Three weeks later, he’s saying, everybody put them on.

A week after that, he’s saying, put on two and never gives a single citation for anything that he says. And yet everybody is saying — we get this new thing that Democrats are saying, which is trust the experts. Well, of course, trust the experts is not a feature of democracy, and it’s not a feature of science. It’s the opposite of democracy and science. My father told me part of the duties of living in a democracy is to maintain a posture of constant and persistent and fierce skepticism towards public authorities.

Mm-hmm. But you initially announced your presidential run as a Democrat before switching to independent. Why did you initially announce as a Democrat? And why did you switch?

My idea was to try to recall the Democratic Party back to its initial values, the values of Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, FDR. And if you went down a list of everything that they believed in, I would check every one of those boxes. But the Democratic Party does not believe in those things anymore. And I thought the best path for me was to run within the Democratic Party, try to summons it back to its traditional values, and then go ahead and beat Donald Trump.

And by the way, our polling was showing me, if I ran as a Democrat, decimating Donald Trump because I was getting a lot of independents. I was getting a lot of Republicans.

Right. But the part — mm-hmm. But why did you switch from the Democratic primary to independent? I guess I still haven’t heard an answer to that.

Because the Democratic Party rigged the rules so that I could not win.

Mm-hmm. As a primary candidate, it was — polling was showing you having a real uphill battle against Biden among Democratic primary voters. Obviously, running as an independent ensures that you can pull from other groups. And to your point, it has inspired some fears of playing a spoiler from either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Did you do any polling as you switched from Democratic run to an independent run trying to ascertain who you would pull more votes from in the general election in November?

That was not the purpose of our polling. Our polling we did was to see if I could win.

And the polling indicated that I could win as an independent.

You aren’t concerned at all about whether you will pull more votes from Biden or Trump?

My purpose is to win the election.

Mm-hmm. Are you committed to staying in the race through November? Is there any — if there was any evidence that you would help one candidate or another win, would that cause you to drop out?

No.

No. Do you have any personal fears — even if you believe that you can win the election, you don’t have any personal fears about the possibility of playing a spoiler to either Biden or Trump?

I have a fear about both of them winning the election.

Mm-hmm. I guess I’m curious about that in your view. What are the stakes to this election? What do you think happens if Biden wins or if Trump wins?

These two presidents ran up the national debt higher than any president in history, and we now have a $34 trillion debt. We’re spending more on servicing our debt than our defense budget. The chronic disease epidemic, I don’t think either of these guys are going to do anything about it. And, you know, President Trump said that he understood that you shouldn’t lock down an entire society, that it was crazy, and yet — and he knew it.

He said it. And he caved into his bureaucracy and let them roll over him. So I don’t think he — you know, I just — I think both of these — that it’s scary thinking about what could happen if either of these guys gets elected.

It’s interesting because a lot of what you’re saying does not sound so dissimilar to the conceit of the original Donald Trump presidency — an outsider with a big name, a willingness to tell it like it is, not beholden to systems of power, the money that backs it. I guess there’s also what I think critics would say is an intention to use conspiracy or maybe fear in the terms of bringing it to the mainstream. I guess, how would you respond to that? Do you see many similarities between what you’re asking for voters to do and what Trump has asked for voters to do in the past?

Well, I think both of us have a populist message. But, you know, populism can be either an instrument of idealism or it can be — as my father had a populist campaign in 1968, and then George Wallace had a populist campaign in 1972, four years later. And one was a message of darkness, and the other was a message of light.

I’m going to use my last couple minutes — well, I think I hear what you believe in terms of the government’s failures during the pandemic. I guess what’s harder to understand about your candidacy is where it stands on the broader issues, right? You’ve gone back and forth on the national abortion ban. You’ve changed your opinion when it comes to the southern border. There’s even less known about what you would do in a foreign conflict in terms of war, a war in Gaza, or over in Ukraine.

I guess I’m asking, because of that, should we see this candidacy as a protest vote? Or considering your comfort with playing the role of spoiler, how am I not supposed to see it as a spoiler campaign considering just the level of unknowns?

Well, there is a level of — your statement, your synopsis of my record is just a disinformation campaign. It’s not accurate.

Did you not go back and forth on the national abortion ban?

No. I’ve been consistent about abortion, that women should have the right to choose. And that’s my position. Listen, if you want to know what my position is, go to our website. Go to my interviews and watch them. And I’ve been very, very consistent about that. Women should have a right to choose. Women should be in charge.

I’ve been a champion for medical freedom, for bodily autonomy more than anybody in this country. Oh, and I stick by that. People should go to our website, Kennedy24.com, if they want to know what my position on issues are. I’m not flip-flopping on issues. Now, listen, if I learn something, then I’m going to change my position. I think we want politicians to do that.

I learned something about the border from doing two trips, spending three days on one trip down there, two days on another. And I saw what was happening — the chaos, the destruction, the humanitarian crisis. And yeah, I changed my position on that because — and I think — don’t we want politicians who can respond in common-sense ways when new information comes in front of them? I think we do.

Mm-hmm. My last point or question, I really do think that in this conversation, there are so many signs of someone who has been navigating difficult life circumstances in the public eye, someone whose name has afforded them access and privilege to information but also insulated them from political consequences. I’m still stuck at you saying that you really haven’t thought about whether you pull more from Biden or Trump, or that’s not really a thought process of your campaign.

I did not say I have not thought about it.

I mean, you say you didn’t pull from it, and that’s not like —

Well, I didn’t pull — why would I pull from them? My intent was to see whether I could win this race. Oh, well, I —

Well, I’ll ask again, then, specifically.

And by the way —

Do you care —

By the way, here’s what the polling’s showing. The polling is showing — and, you know, Politico did an article on this elsewhere that I am polling — my strongest supporters are independents. There are people who don’t want to vote for Trump or Biden. And I beat Trump and Biden among independents. So in that sense, I’m not pulling from either of them. I’m also beating President Trump, President Biden among people under 35 nationally, people under 45 in the battleground states.

They’re people who probably would not vote for either Trump or Biden. They’re going to vote because I’m in the race. People don’t want to choose between the lesser of two evils. They want somebody they can believe in, somebody that they have faith in, somebody that they like. And my popularity is greater than any political figure right now, according to every poll.

I guess I — that’s not the question I’m asking you, though. I’m saying —

You’re asking me the question everybody asks me, which is what every — every reporter asks, are you a spoiler? And I’m not — you know, listen, I don’t know who I’m going to pull from.

So we gave 10 extra minutes —

I totally understand. Can I ask this final question? Can I ask this question? That’s all I — I just want to be understood.

As long as I’m understood and you answer it, then we can totally get out of there. I totally understand.

It’s a privilege to be understood. Most people don’t get that.

Yeah. I’m asking for you to understand.

Yeah.

OK. I am saying, considering the long road of viability that you have as a third-party candidate, even though you believe that you have a good chance of winning, there’s a much higher likelihood that because of those structural barriers that your candidacy is less likely to be successful than Biden or Trump’s. I am saying, considering that reality, how do you, then, think about your potential impact on this race? Is that a thing that you think about at all?

I think I’m going to have a good impact on this country. And listen, everybody that I’ve admired in history I admired because they’ve gone against conventional wisdom, they’ve gone against sometimes their families, sometimes their friends, sometimes their political parties, their allies. And they win. And that’s why I admire them. And I believe I’m going to win this race.

And in any case, I’m going to have a positive impact on this country because I’m going to get people to start questioning some of these orthodoxies that have been so destructive to our health, to our economy, to political polarization. And I’m bringing — listen, I’m healing a divide here. The people —

Considering the reality of the stakes, how would you really respond to someone who says that someone who has the name access and wealth that you do are insulated from a lot of the consequences of maybe some elections, that in the same way that you think you’re acting on what you believe in, that it requires a certain level of privilege to do so without thinking about the possibility of being a spoiler? How would you respond to that?

I don’t even know — I really don’t understand what your question is. I don’t understand what your question is. Listen, I’m running a race. I’m raising the money that I need. I have an organization that we believe is better than any of the other political organizations. I’m surrounded by people who are motivated by very, very pure impulses, because they love this country. I’m offering a vision to Americans that they’re not getting.

70 percent of the people in this country do not won a contest between Trump and Biden. Don’t you feel that those people should have an option? Or isn’t that kind of a privileged position that you have of taking the position that “The New York Times” is not going to give — allow those people to — those Americans who don’t want to see a rerun of this contest, don’t you think they deserve something? Or are you going to sit there and say nobody should do that because I’m scared of this guy or I’m scared of that guy?

Mm-hmm. The reason that we have pressured Democrats about the way that they set up Biden and about Republicans about the way that they set up Trump is because of that very fact, because of the fact that most Americans do not want these two options. I guess I’m asking you a separate —

Listen, “The New York Times” is essentially an instrument of the Democratic Party.

I understand that you’re making an institutional argument. I’m asking about the work that we do, and I’m posing a question to you —

You’ve been making institutional arguments against me since this started.

You’re a instrument of the DNC, and of course you’re going to try to get people — your job as — doing what you’re doing is to try to spin this some way that it’s going to help Biden and hurt Trump and get rid of any threat to that narrow guardrail — in the guardrail contest that “The New York Times” approves of. And it’s just not right for our country, and I’m not going to go along with it.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you all. I appreciate your time. And just so you know, that’s not what I’m here to do, nor was that the question I was asking. So we have — we’re going to be able to get this back to you. We’re planning to do this on Thursday. And we appreciate your time.

Great. I’ll work with Anna. Thank you.

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So RFK, Jr., believes he’s going to win, and his campaign is plowing ahead. Efforts to secure ballot access in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are already underway. And the campaign will soon unveil his choice for vice president after floating names like Aaron Rodgers, the NFL quarterback who has also dabbled in conspiracy, and Nicole Shanahan, the Bay Area lawyer and investor. But the flashy VP pick or getting on the ballot in all 50 states will not immediately take Kennedy from the fringe to the mainstream.

Because while RFK, Jr., says his message is one that calls back to a more populist version of the Democratic Party, that’s not quite what I heard. I heard a man completely convinced of his convictions, no matter how unfounded, and I heard a candidate convinced of his own viability, no matter the evidence against it — in other words, the perfect recipe for a spoiler.

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That’s “The Run-Up” for Thursday, March 21, 2024. Now, the rundown. On Tuesday night, the march to Biden and Trump’s nominations continue.

Trump took home wins in all five Republican primaries. Biden also swept his contests, winning in all four Democratic primaries. And in one of the most consequential Senate races come November —

Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman who was backed by Trump, beat out Republican state Senator Matt Dolan. That seat is crucial to the GOP’s hopes of winning back a majority in the US Senate. We’re 229 days from the general election. See you next week.

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“The Run-Up” is reported by me, Astead Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O’Keefe, and Anna Foley. It’s edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Lanman, and Elisheba Ittoop. It was mixed by Sophia Lanman and fact-checked by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Sam Dolnick, Larissa Anderson, David Halbfinger, Maddy Masiello, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, Elizabeth Bristow, and Rebecca O’Brien. Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunup@nytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the voice memo app in your phone. That email, again, is therunup@nytimes.com. Thanks for listening, y’all.