Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has failed to gain noticeable traction in the wake of President Biden’s catastrophic debate fallout against former President Trump.
Biden’s widely panned performance in Atlanta gave Kennedy a potential in as he looks to draw support from both top candidates' voters for his third-party presidential bid.
But as bad as things have been for Biden, Kennedy is also facing challenges. He didn’t get much of a polling bump this week and was the subject of a report in Vanity Fair that outlined allegations of sexual assault, which he did not deny.
“If RFK Jr. was a truly viable candidate, he'd be making a credible push to supplant Biden as the main alternative to Trump,” said Kyle Kondik, an elections analyst and managing editor at the forecasting outfit Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Clearly that is not happening in the slightest and to the extent he's making news, it’s bad news.”
Another instance of bad news for Kennedy came Friday, when he posted online that he “won’t take sides” on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Kennedy soon clarified that he was responding to a report on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that raised speculation about possible Saudi involvement in the al Qaeda attacks, but the remarks drew attention over perceived echoes of long-running conspiracy theories about 9/11.
Democrats have long criticized Kennedy over various conspiracy theories, from spreading widely disproven claims about the damaging effects of vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic to........