Michael Smerconish: Robert F. Kennedy JR. As Donald Trump's Running Mate

Source:Michael Smerconish- DJT/RFKJR 2024? Why not. They're both professional MAGA men who don't seem to believe in the rule of law or American democracy.

"TRUMP/RFK JR. 2024?" 

From Michael Smerconish

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose tech attorney and entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan to be his running mate.

Shanahan, who has never run for office before, donated the maximum amount to Kennedy’s campaign and $4 million to the chief super PAC backing his bid to air a retro-themed Super Bowl commercial. In addition to backing American Values 2024, she also gave $500,000 to another super PAC backing Kennedy, Common Sense PAC. Both donations were made through an LLC, Planeta Management.

Kennedy said he was searching for a running mate who understood technology, government agencies’ vulnerability to corruption, the need for secure borders and an athlete.

“So that is why I’m so proud to introduce to you the next vice president of the United States, my fellow lawyer, a brilliant scientist, technologist, a fierce warrior mom, Nicole Shanahan,” Kennedy said in Oakland, California.

Shanahan was raised in Oakland by a mother who was a Chinese immigrant and a white American father who suffered from mental illness. Tickets for the announcement event were sold for $2, $24 or $500.

Kennedy has been searching for a vice presidential candidate to join his independent bid since quitting the Democratic Party primary last October. The short list was wide-ranging, including NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and ex-Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

Now that he’s named the 38-year-old Shanahan as his running mate, the campaign can begin collecting ballot access signatures in about 20 more states.

Shanahan said she’s passionate about fighting chronic disease in the U.S. by eliminating toxins in food and water and electromagnetic pollution as well as doing different studies on pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

“There is only one candidate who takes the chronic disease epidemic seriously, and it is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and I will be his ally,” Shanahan said.

Shanahan said Kennedy will be focused on corruption in government agencies while she applies her skills as a technologist to the issue. 

Shanahan, who is also a fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, has a long history of political giving, backing progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna’s campaigns as well as making a contribution to President Joe Biden and a five-figure donation to the Democratic National Committee in 2020 after supporting Marianne Williamson’s long-shot bid during the primary. The tech entrepreneur also donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.

Kennedy said Shanahan has also now left the Democratic Party. As independents, they will face Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive major party nominees, in the November general election.

But since Kennedy and Shanahan are both California residents, they will now be unable to accept California’s 54 electoral college votes should they win the state in November unless one of them moves his or her residency to another state, according to the Constitution’s 12th Amendment.

As Kennedy’s team was announcing his running mate, Democrats and allied groups also seized on Kennedy’s big day.

The DNC paid for a mobile billboard highlighting a mega donor, Tim Mellon, who has donated to both the super PACs supporting Kennedy and Trump. Protesters handed out fliers across the street featuring a QR code that went to a website that read, “Kennedy for Measles,” pointing out the dangers of his anti-vaccine positions. And Clear Cho ice PAC, a newly formed group to oppose third party candidates, launched a negative website that calls Kennedy’s candidacy “dangerous” and asks voters to “Reject RFK. Stop Donald Trump.”

“RFK Jr. has no path to victory, and his vice presidential selection does nothing to change that,” Pete Kavanaugh, co-founder of Clear Choice PAC, said in a statement.

Shanahan’s wealth and ability to financially support the campaign’s operations — including gathering petition signatures to get on the ballot and potential litigation — are advantageous to the Kennedy ticket. Kennedy denied in a News Nation interview that Shanahan’s wealth was a factor in his decision making.

Shanahan was last in national headlines when The Wall Street Journal reported that she had an affair with Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla who was also being courted for a donation by American Values. Both she and Musk denied the affair, which allegedly took place in 2021. She and her then-husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, divorced. The Journal reported that Brin also asked his advisers to sell his personal investments in Musk’s companies.

In 2019, Shanahan founded Bia-Echo, a nonprofit foundation. Its mission includes “reproductive longevity & equality, criminal justice reform and a healthy & livable planet,” according to its website.

Bia-Echo Foundation has only ever had one donor, according to three years of financial disclosure forms: Brin. The forms disclosed that Brin made his eight-figure donation through shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, in 2020. The following year, his contribution came as Tesla shares valued at about $25 million. Brin did not make a donation in 2022.

In a lengthy profile with People Magazine, Shanahan again denied the affair with Musk and said the two instead talked about autism treatments for Shanahan and Brin’s young daughter, Echo. Shanahan said she frequently has conversations like this in the tech world. “Elon was another person in this group of people. There’s almost this generational ecosystem and it’s a community. You run ideas past each other and you ask questions,” she told the magazine.

Shanahan added finding a cure to autism to Bia-Echo’s work, in the People interview. She said she spends 60 percent of her time researching autism.

“I am hopeful of helping my daughter overcome her autism, whatever that might look like, whether it be in five years not having a diagnosis anymore, or having all of the tools to navigate the challenges that her diagnosis has produced in her life,” Shanahan said.

In addition to scientists and doctors, Shanahan said she learns about autism interventions “with greater accuracy than any published medical paper” from mothers raising autistic children. Kennedy has shared a similar sentiment about mothers when describing how he became skeptical of vaccine safety.

Kennedy has falsely claimed that there is a link between mercury content in vaccines and disease, including autism, publishing a book on the subject and starting a nonprofit that engages in litigation on behalf of people who believe they’ve been injured by a vaccine.

Advocacy against vaccines and vaccine mandates following the Covid-19 pandemic have bolstered Kennedy’s public profile in recent years and given a boost to his grassroots campaign strategy.

“I want her to represent the mothers who struggle to protect their children from the bad chemicals, the pharmaceuticals and bad food,” Kennedy said of Shanahan to great applause from the crowd. “As vice president, she will stand between them and Big Ag, Big Pharma, the chemical industry, the processed food industry, and the government regulators who are colluding to poison our kids for profit.”

Despite Bia-Echo’s mission statement, its financial disclosures show the foundation has invested more in financial assets than in grant giving.

In 2022, the latest available year in online records, Bia-Echo reported owning $13.7 million in U.S. and state government securities and $12.2 million in corporate stocks and bonds. It reported $0 in grants, gifts or contributions to other organizations." 

Source:POLITICO- Independent MAGA presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan.

From POLITICO 

As I wrote about this back in March: 

"As an at best Independent Democrat at this point, whose not in love with the Democratic Party politically, or really anything else, for that matter, I would love to see Robert F. Kennedy JR. run for President as a Libertarian. Why? Because it would just confirm what I, what this blog, and what a lot of other Democrats believe about RFK JR. that he's simply a MAGA man, who at the very least doesn't want Joe Biden to be reelected and perhaps even wants Donald Trump back in The White House, where all their MAGA conspiracy theories and avenues to financially profit for them, would open up." 

From The New Democrat 

If Bob Kennedy JR. was anti-Trump, he wouldn't spend all of his opposition campaigning against President Joe Biden. U.S. Representative Dean Phillips ran against the President in the Democratic primaries. Former Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang said that the Democratic Party needed to nominate someone other than Joe Biden for President in 2024. But there's a big difference here. Both Representative Phillips and Mr. Yang are going to vote for the President in the fall. And would probably speak in favor of him, if they were called to do that. 

Unlike Bob Kennedy, who once said that he would be honored to be Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee and has flirted with running for President of the Libertarian Party, which are now filled with Libertarian populists, who are least are leaning towards Donald Trump because they share the same conspiracy theories and hatred for the "deep state." Kennedy is simply running for President to take votes away from President Biden and make it easier for Mr. Trump to win the election in November. 

So if you are the Democratic National Committee, the Biden Campaign, and the Never-Trump wing of the Republican Party, who are establishment Conservative Republicans, like The Bulwark, The Lincoln Project, groups like that, your mission (if you choose to accept it) is to define Bob Kennedy, before Kennedy can define himself. 

The Democrats and what's left of the center-right of the Republican Party, need to define Kennedy as the man whose opposed to all vaccines, who thinks the Jan 6. rioters are American patriots and are now political hostages, that Russia is really our friend and not enemy, etc. Before Kennedy can run like left-winger whose so far-left, that he can make Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jill Stein, as well as "The Squad" in the House, look like flaming moderates. And he would run that far-left-wing campaign, if he even got on enough ballots, just to hurt President Biden and get Donald Trump back in The White House. 

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