Fox News Host Confronts RFK Jr. With His Own Criticism of Donald Trump

Fox News host Shannon Bream confronted former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an interview on Sunday morning about his own criticism of former President Donald Trump.

On Friday, Kennedy Jr. dropped out of this year’s presidential race and endorsed Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, instead of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Later that night, Kennedy Jr. joined Trump on stage at a campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona. When introducing him, Trump called Kennedy Jr. “a man who has been an incredible champion for so many of these values that we all share.”

However, Trump and Kennedy Jr. have criticized each other in the past.

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social in late May, Trump called Kennedy Jr. “one of the most Liberal Lunatics ever to run for office,” adding that he is “a Phony Radical Left fool whose poll numbers are TERRIBLE, and getting worse.”

Meanwhile, in a Newsweek op-ed from 2018, Kennedy Jr., who was a Democrat at the time, said that Trump’s “presidency has not just discredited our nation, but the entire American experiment in self government.”

Kennedy Jr. also reportedly told someone in a recent text message exchange that Trump was “a terrible human being. The worse [sic] president ever and barely human. He is probably a sociopath,'” according to an article published by The New Yorker on August 5.

Meanwhile, Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, told Newsweek via email on Sunday afternoon: “They agree on the big issues facing our country, and that Kamala Harris must be stopped before she completely destroys America. Thats why so many people from all political backgrounds have united behind President Trump to Make America Great Again.”

Newsweek also reached out to Kennedy Jr.’s former campaign via email for comment on Sunday afternoon.

Bream confronted Kennedy Jr. about this past tension between Trump on Fox News Sunday and asked, “How did you get from that position to Friday night?”

Kennedy Jr. explained how it became clear to him that he couldn’t win the election, blaming censorship from the media that wouldn’t allow him on their networks and blocked him from the first presidential debate. Kennedy Jr. did not meet CNN’s requirements to appear on their debate stage in Atlanta in late June, falling short in poll numbers and ballot access in states.

The former independent candidate said that he had several conversations with Trump in which they agreed on some big issues.

“The broader issues that were most important to me, the ones that brought me into the campaign, which was ending the [Russia-]Ukraine war, ending the censorship and protecting children’s health…reforming our food supply—all the things that we need to do to make our children healthy again,” Kennedy Jr. said.

He continued: “Those are all things that [former] President Trump also wanted to work on. And he invited me to form a unity government. We agreed that we’d be able to continue to criticize each other on issues on which we don’t agree. But these issues are so important in their way of unifying our country. We need in this country to reach a point where we love our children more than we hate each other.”

Bream also confronted Kennedy Jr. on reports that there were negotiations between him and Trump for a position in his administration if he wins in November in exchange for an endorsement from Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy Jr. denied this arraignment and said, “There’s been no commitments. But I met with [former] President Trump, with his family, with his close advisers, and we just made a general commitment that we were going to work together.”

There were also reports that Kennedy Jr. sought a meeting with Harris to discuss a possible role in her administration if he supported her and she won.

When asked by Bream about those reports, he said: “I reached out to them on the same basis that I reached out to [former] President Trump. And I actually talked to other presidential candidates…about figuring out ways that we could end the polarization and the hatred and the vitriol…”