Donald Trump asks Democrats to vote for RFK Jr in bizarre video

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Donald Trump has asked Democrats to vote for independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr in a bizarre video posted to Truth Social.

Mr Trump called Mr Kennedy Jr “the most radical left candidate in race” but insisted that he was “a better man” than his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

“But he’s got some nice things about him, I happen to like him,” Mr Trump added, before referencing RFK Jr’s one-time support for the so-called “Green New Scam”, a reference to the Democrat-proposed Green New Deal that aimed to tackle climate change.

Mr Trump went on to say that Mr Kennedy Jr should “take votes away from crooked Joe Biden”.

“If I were a Democrat, I’d vote for RFK Jr every single time over Biden, because he’s frankly more in line with Democrats,” the former president claimed.

However, despite his family’s close historical ties to the Democratic party, polls show that far more Republicans than Democrats have a favourable opinion of RFK Jr, according to the Associated Press.

Mr Trump’s apparent push for Democrats to vote for Mr Kennedy Jr has come days after the independent candidate’s campaign staffer let it slip in an insinuation that she believed the purpose of Mr Kennedy Jr’s campaign was to take away votes from Mr Biden.

Rita Palma’s contract with the campaign had been terminated for “misrepresentation”, amid controversy that she told GOP voters that her “number one priority” was to get rid of Mr Biden by driving Democratic votes to Mr Kennedy Jr and encouraging them to volunteer for Mr Trump.

She also self-identified as the New York state director of RFK Jr’s campaign, yet a spokesperson later clarified that she was just a “ballot access consultant”.

The spokesperson for the campaign also said Ms Palma was not speaking at a campaign event and was talking as a private citizen, with her statements not reflecting the Kennedy campaign.

In a further blow, in now-deleted social media posts reviewed by CNN, Ms Palma said she attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 January 2021, all the while claiming it was non-violent.

She had also tweeted that Mr Trump was her “favourite president” and suggested she would vote for him in 2024.

The son of the late US senator Robert F Kennedy initially filed candidacy papers for the Democratic nomination in April but later switched to running as an independent candidate.

Mr Trump claimed in his recent video that he did this because the Democrats “made it very, very difficult for him, they really went after him viciously, just like they go after me”.

RFK Jr has previously been accused of amplifying conspiracy theories – most notably about the Covid-19 vaccine.

He was accused of making baseless claims that vaccines are linked to brain disorders. He also claimed that the virus which causes Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” and was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people”.

Nevertheless, election polls from last year show that Mr Kennedy Jr could take votes away from both Mr Biden and Mr Trump in November.

The former president also went on in the bizarre video that the independent presidential candidate would be “indicted any day now, probably for environmental fraud”, saying this without any evidence.

However, it appeared he connected this to Mr Kennedy Jr being Biden’s “political opponent, not mine”, and stated, “Biden can’t speak. Biden can’t debate. Biden can’t put two sentences together, so I guess he’s probably going to indict RFK Jr.”