Kennedy publicly apologized to Trump that a recording of their phone call was leaked online.
Donald Trump seemed to be wooing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a recent phone call they shared, in what some interpreted as a push for Kennedy to drop out of the presidential race.
In leaked video of Kennedy taking a phone call from Trump — which was first posted to X on Tuesday morning by Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III — the former president appears to coax the independent candidate’s support by saying that he also has doubts about vaccines. (Kennedy built a career around his vaccine skepticism, and once compared the plight of being an anti-vaxxer to that of being Jewish during the Holocaust.)
“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination and it’s like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Trump tells Kennedy on the call. “And then you see the baby, all of a sudden, starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times.”
Trump then suggests that he has something “big” in mind for Kennedy, without providing further context.
“I would love you to do something,” Trump says in the video, which Kennedy’s son said was taken on Sunday. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you.”
“And we’re gonna win,” the former president continues, to which Kennedy responds, “Yeah.”
The video was quickly deleted and Kennedy publicly apologized to Trump that their conversation was leaked.
“When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” Kennedy wrote on X. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”
Kennedy’s son who leaked the video said that he did it so the world can hear what Trump says about vaccines behind closed doors.
“I am a firm believer that these sorts of conversations should be had in public,” Bobby III said in the now-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Here’s Trump giving his real opinion to my dad about vaccinating kids this was the day after the assassination attempt.”
The leak came one day after Trump and Kennedy met in person in Milwaukee, the site of the Republican National Convention, sparking speculation that Kennedy was planning to bow out of the race.
But Kennedy refuted those claims on Monday in a post on X: “Lots of rumors going around about my meeting this morning with President Trump. Our main topic was national unity, and I hope to meet with Democratic leaders about that as well. No, I am not dropping out of the race.”
Following the attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend, Kennedy was also in the headlines when he was granted Secret Service protection by President Joe Biden.
Major party presidential and vice presidential candidates are guaranteed Secret Service security, but third-party candidates are judged on an as-needed basis, according to the Associated Press.
In a post to X, Kennedy — whose father, Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, John F. Kennedy, were both assassinated — acknowledged the update to his security detail.
“Thank you to President Biden for granting me Secret Service protection,” he wrote. “And I am so grateful to Gavin deBecker & Associates for keeping me safe for the last 15 months of my Presidential campaign.”
