Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his presidential campaign on Friday and threw his support behind Donald Trump’s Republican candidacy. Time will tell whether this affects the 2024 race in any meaningful way, though at face value, the significance of the developments seemed limited: The independent conspiracy theorist has never held public office. His notoriety comes from being a lawyer with a famous name.
Around the same time as Kennedy’s news, however, some lawyers who lack famous names made a notable endorsement of their own. Fox News reported:
A dozen Republican White House lawyers who served in the administrations of then-Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in her race against GOP nominee former President Donald Trump.
“We endorse Kamala Harris and support her election as President because we believe that returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country,” the lawyers wrote in a letter that the signatories shared first with Fox News Digital.
The signatories added that “we urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris.”
The same joint statement went on to remind the public, “Donald Trump’s own Vice President and multiple members of his Administration and White House Staff at the most senior levels — as well as former Republican nominees for President and Vice President — have already declined to endorse his reelection.”
“Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election proved beyond any reasonable doubt his willingness to place his personal interests above the law and values of our constitutional democracy,” the Reagan and Bush administration lawyers added. “We cannot go along with other former Republican officials who have condemned Trump with these devastating judgments but are still not willing to vote for Harris. We believe this election presents a binary choice, and Trump is utterly disqualified.”
They concluded that the GOP nominee is “guilty of grave wrongdoing to our Constitution, democracy, and rule of law, and who remains unfit, dangerous, and detached from reality.” The endorsement from Friday came on the heels of Harris also picking up a variety of other Republican endorsements and Democrats including some GOP speakers at the party’s convention in Chicago. Indeed, Friday’s bookend endorsements were emblematic of the broader message the Harris campaign wants to convey to the electorate: Trump picked up support from a fringe anti-vaccine activist, while the Democratic nominee received support from lawyers from Republican administrations who want to put country over party. For Democrats pushing the “normal vs. weird” message, the developments were entirely on-message.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
