RFK Jr., Trump, and the cynicism of conspiracy theories

In 1956, my father was on a beach in the south of France during his summer break from law school. It was the day after the Democratic National Convention, where Adlai Stevenson — nominated for president for a second time — let the convention decide his vice presidential running mate.

A man was reading a newspaper next to Dad, who tapped the guy on the shoulder and asked whom the Democrats had picked for veep. “Not me,” the man said, putting down the paper and smiling.

It was John F. Kennedy. He had campaigned for the vice presidential nomination but was edged out by Estes Kefauver, the Tennessee senator and anti-corruption crusader.

JFK flew to France that night and spent the morning chatting with Dad and his law school friend, Richard Ravitch. Most of their classmates would go to Wall Street firms and get rich, JFK said. But Dad and Dick should work in public service, Kennedy told them, which would help make a better world.

And that’s what they did. My father was a government lawyer in Washington and later joined the Peace Corps, where he served as a country director in India and Iran. Ravitch became the head of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority and the state’s lieutenant governor.

I thought about JFK’s advice to them when his nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Friday and endorsed Donald Trump. Five of RFK Jr.’s siblings released a statement condemning his alliance with Trump as “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.” It was, they said, “a sad ending to a sad story.”

That’s true. But it was also predictable. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump are both tribunes of conspiracy theory, which buries human idealism and decency in cynicism and deceit. All that remains is ego, which craves more and more for itself.

For many years, Kennedy has asserted that his father and uncle were murdered in conspiracies led by the CIA. Then he became America’s leading voice against vaccines, which he falsely connected to autism and a series of other health ailments. It was all the fault of shady government officials, who colluded with “Big Pharma” to line its pockets.

But Trump’s bid for the presidency began in conspiracy theory, too — specifically, the bigoted and discredited claim that Barack Obama was born overseas and was therefore ineligible for the White House. More recently, Trump has made similarly baseless allegations about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

And let’s not forget the granddaddy of Trumpian conspiracy theories: that the 2020 election was stolen. Dozens of judges, state election officials, and even an arm of Trump’s own U.S. Department of Homeland Security said otherwise. How could all these different parties be in on the same con, without anybody finding them out?

But this isn’t about logic, of course. And it’s certainly not about JFK’s ideal of public service, which the conspiracy theorist dismisses as just another con. If everything is “rigged” — as Trump likes to say — why not rig the government to your own advantage?

That’s Trump’s signature move. He used his presidency to rake in millions at his private properties, where lobbyists and foreign officials paid big bucks to curry favor with him.

Ditto for RFK Jr., whose latest maneuver has sleaze written all over it. Although he recently texted that Trump was “the worst president ever,” “a terrible human being,” and “probably a sociopath,” Kennedy is now all in for him.

And that’s because there’s something in it for Kennedy, it would seem. After he went on Fox News to praise Trump’s “courage” during the assassination attempt against him, Trump and Kennedy had a videotaped phone call that speaks volumes about their similarities.

Trump shared his own skepticism of vaccines — ”And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically” — before suggesting that Kennedy could work in his next administration. “I would love you to do stuff, and I think it would be so good for you, and so big for you, and we’re going to win,” Trump said.

Kennedy replied, “Yeah.” And on Monday night, after stepping out of the race, he said that Trump had tapped him for his presidential transition team. Kennedy was “looking forward to that,” he said.

He didn’t mention he had also reached out to Harris’ campaign for a possible postelection job, showing that he’s willing to sell himself to whoever wins. And that also reveals the corruption at the heart of conspiracy theory, which always aims to empower the person who is touting it.

Ultimately, though, it discredits whatever good they have done in the world. Kennedy used his law degree — and his family pedigree — to clean up the Hudson River. And his now-discontinued campaign also put in a good word for the Peace Corps, pledging to expand it to the domestic sphere and to allow anyone with a high school degree to enter it.

RFK Jr.’s latest maneuver has sleaze written all over it.

I will always be indebted to the Kennedys for inspiring my father — and, much later, myself — to join the Peace Corps. But I’m distressed that one of the scions of the clan — and its most famous environmentalist — has thrown in his lot in with Trump, who has called human-made climate change a “hoax.”

To believe that, you need to imagine thousands of scientists around the globe secretly agreeing to tell a lie. In other words, you have to be a conspiracy theorist. And you can’t square that with public service, or with democracy. Ever.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books.