Nicole Shanahan, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s running mate, firmly aligned herself with the views of right-wing former Fox News host and staunch Donald Trump defender, Tucker Carlson.
Speaking to an audience at a campaign event in Kittery, Maine last Thursday, Shanahan described a recent meeting she had with Carlson, who has a home in the state.
“I’m sitting across from Tucker, and he and I are so on the same page in every single way,” Shanahan said proudly. “We are on the same page because we have left establishment thinking once and for all.”
Some of Carlson’s contrarian thinking includes pushing conspiracies about the Jan. 6 insurrection and the COVID-19 vaccine, and hawking the racist “great replacement” theory that some white supremacist mass shooters have cited as inspiration for their crimes. Also, Carlson’s affinity for Trump—in public, at least—was evident in his breathless response to the felon’s conviction in New York for falsifying business records to help his 2016 campaign.
“Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first,” Carlson wrote in a post on X. “But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.”
Shanahan on Thursday also apparently made an effort to link the Kennedy campaign to Sen. Angus King. While formally a Maine independent, King—like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)—caucuses with Democrats.
“This is a state with independent-minded people. This is a state that understands issues, not rhetoric,” Shanahan said, according to NewsCenterMaine.
Shanahan’s comments aren’t the first instance of the Kennedy campaign—which many of his family members denounce—garnering attention for anti-Democratic positions.
A New York campaign staffer was fired in April after she said the quiet part out loud: that preventing Joe Biden’s re-election was her “number one priority.”
Kennedy himself has also suggested that Biden actually poses more of a threat to democracy than Trump, who remains indicted in two jurisdictions for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, as well as in a third for allegedly violating the Espionage Act and trying to cover it up.
