Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration. The idea of Trump, a Republican, appointing Kennedy to his cabinet would have been surprising just a few months ago.
After all, Kennedy began his presidential run last year as a Democrat and is the scion of a Democratic dynasty. Nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent most of his career as a lawyer representing environmental groups that sued polluting corporations and municipalities.
Yet Kennedy, 70, has long held positions that put him at odds with the Democratic mainstream. He pushes public health misinformation around vaccines and HIV/AIDS, opposes U.S. military involvement in foreign wars, including in Ukraine, and claims that the CIA assassinated his uncle.
Kennedy’s ideologically mixed politics are hard to categorize in traditional left-right terms.
My political science research finds that Kennedy’s journey from left-aligned skepticism into Trumpism is part of a broader trend of contemporary left-to-right populist transformations happening across the United States.
Rise of the populist alternative media
Populism is a political story that presents the good “people” of a nation as in a struggle against its “elites,” who have corrupted democratic institutions to further their own selfish interests. It cuts across the ideological spectrum, often combining left-wing economic critiques with right-wing cultural ones.
Based on my research, I find that Kennedy uses a populist style of speech that matches the rhetoric of today’s online alternative media, also known as the “alternative influence network.”
Cindy Ord/Getty Images
If populism cuts across the ideological spectrum, so does the alternative media.
This network of politically diverse independent podcasters, YouTube hosts and other creators connects with young, politically disaffected audiences by mixing politics with comedy and pop culture, and presenting themselves as embattled defenders of free thinking – in opposition to mainstream media and mainstream parties.
Top-rated shows include “Breaking Points,” “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” “The Joe Rogan Experience,” The Culture War with Tim Pool“ and ”This Past Weekend w/Theo Von.“
While many of these shows have been around since the 2010s, the network expanded throughout the Trump era. Their popularity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public distrust in government, anger over pandemic restrictions and vaccine skepticism surged.
These shows hosted Kennedy frequently throughout his presidential run in 2023 and 2024. He was particularly focused on a class of male-dominated alternative shows sometimes called the ”manosphere.“
Kennedy finds his audience
I analyzed a set of Kennedy’s appearances for this story. Both Kennedy and alternative media hosts claim to care about “the real issues” facing Americans such as war, corporate and political malfeasance and economic troubles. They condemn the “mainstream” for promoting frivolous “culture war” topics related to race and identity politics.
Kennedy and the alternative media hosts also combine left and right arguments in a typically populist way. They claim that corporations control the government and that liberals and corporations censor free speech.
For example, on a May 2024 episode of “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” Brand asserted that corrupt institutions are backed by the “deep state.” He asked Kennedy how he would fight these powerful interests.
“The major agencies of government have all been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and act as sock puppets serving the mercantile interests of these big corporations,” responded Kennedy. “I have a particular ability to unravel that because I’ve litigated against so many of these agencies.”
My research found that Kennedy often bonded with his alternative media hosts over his perception that liberal media sources – allegedly controlled by the Democratic National Committee or the CIA – were censoring his campaign.
Like Kennedy, alternative media hosts often identify as former or disaffected Democrats. Many used to work at mainstream left news sites, where they say they experienced censorship.
‘This little island of free speech’
In a June 2023 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan explained that he no longer identifies as a liberal because of the “orthodoxy it preaches” around issues like vaccines. He then cited YouTube’s removal of some of Kennedy’s vaccine-related videos for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.
Kennedy had just spent 90 minutes outlining his journey toward vaccine skepticism, which started with meeting a mother who believed vaccines caused her son’s autism.
“If a woman tells you something about her child, you should listen,” he said.
Kennedy also described being convinced by a set of studies that public health officials had ignored.
“Trust the experts is not a function of science, it’s a function of religion,” he said. “I’ve been litigating 40 years; there’s experts on both sides.”
Afterward, he thanked Rogan for maintaining “this little island of free speech in a desert of suppression and of critical thinking.”
Kennedy reiterated this point in the Aug. 23, 2024, speech that ended his presidential campaign. The “alternative media” had kept his ideas alive, he said, while the mainstream networks had shut him out despite his historically high third-party poll numbers of 15% to 20%.
“The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintained a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me,” Kennedy said.
Speaking directly to the reporters in the room, he added, “Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”
Kennedy ended that speech by endorsing Trump for president, a move that reportedly prompted Trump to promise his former rival a role overseeing health policy in his administration.
bsd studio via Getty Images Plus
Left-to-right pipeline
Trust in a range of U.S. institutions is at historical lows. Americans on both the right and the left are skeptical of power. As the 2024 election results showed, they crave radical change.
Alternative media hosts tapped into this desire, helping to push some disaffected listeners rightward. The same left-to-right pipeline landed Kennedy in Trump’s orbit.
Trump and his allies were adept at harnessing the power of the alternative media ecosystem. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump appeared on male-centric shows like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and “This Past Weekend w/Theo Von,” and many media critics see this as a big factor in Trump’s success winning over young, male voters. Both Rogan and Von were personally thanked by name at Trump’s victory celebration.
Trump and his inner circle even form part of the alternative media themselves. Trump founded the alternative social media platform Truth Social and his adviser Steve Bannon hosts an influential podcast called the “War Room” on another MAGA alternative media platform, Rumble. Known for its fiery populist rhetoric, the “War Room” broadcasts live for an astonishing 22 hours a week.
Bannon, who was briefly jailed for contempt of Congress in mid-2024 and now faces trial in New York for financial fraud, used his show as a soapbox to promote Trump’s candidacy. He also praised Kennedy on the air, boosting the Democrat’s profile among his far-right listeners.
For Kennedy, aisle-crossing is part of the solution to partisan polarization.
“Step outside the culture war!” he tweeted in July 2024. “Step outside the politics of hating the other side!”
This story has been updated to reflect the outcome of the 2024 election and Kennedy’s likely nomination to Trump’s cabinet. It was originally published on Oct. 29, 2024.
