‘We wanted to win. We wanted a fair shot,’ Kennedy running mate Nicole Shanahan said.
The campaign of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has not received a fair chance at winning the election, according to his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, leading the campaign to consider the option of forming a new party or joining forces with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump.
“I really wanted a fair shot at this election, and I believed in the America I as a little girl pledged allegiance to, and that is not where we are today,” Shanahan said in an interview with the Impact Theory podcast posted online on Aug. 20.
Shanahan, an entrepreneur and attorney, told the podcast host that the “tens of millions of dollars” she put into her own campaign wasn’t intended to make Kennedy a “spoiler” in the 2024 race.
“We wanted to win. We wanted a fair shot,” she said.
The challenges the campaign is facing, including what she described as being shadow-banned from social media platforms, being kept off stages, and facing legal actions, greatly diminish the chances that a third-party candidate such as Kennedy will win, Shanahan said.
The campaign is now looking into two options.
“One is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz presidency because we draw votes from Trump. We draw somehow more votes from Trump,” she said.
“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and we walk away from that and we explain to our base why we are making this decision. Not an easy decision.”
Shanahan said in the interview that she believes Trump “has taken genuine, sincere interest in [the Kennedy campaign’s] policies around chronic disease; he takes it seriously.”
She continued: “The question we have to ask ourselves right now is, one, do we trust Trump and his personal sincerity to really do the right thing for our country, end chronic disease, balance the budget, end these forever wars? Is he somebody that’s going to continue to invite people like Bobby and I into the conversation, or is he going to fall victim again to things that he fell victim to in his first administration?”
