Robert F. Kennedy Jr. picks Nicole Shanahan as his running mate for his independent White House bid Donald Trump assails judge and his daughter after gag order in New York hush-money criminal case
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose Nicole Shanahan on Tuesday to be his vice presidential pick, adding a wealthy but nationally unknown figure to his independent White House bid that’s trying to appeal to voters disaffected by a rematch of the 2020 election.
Shanahan, 38, is a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office. She leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes.
Kennedy, a former Democrat, made the announcement in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was raised in an impoverished family.
“Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party,” he said. “Our values didn’t change. The Democratic Party did.”
Kennedy’s campaign has spooked Democrats, who are fighting third- party options that could draw support from President Joe Biden and help former President Donald Trump. But allies for both Biden and Trump attacked Kennedy and Shanahan on Tuesday, reflecting the uncertainty about how Americans might respond to an independent ticket that has little chance of winning Electoral College votes but could draw votes across the spectrum.
Without the backing of a party, Kennedy faces an arduous task to get on the ballot, with varying rules across the 50 states. He’s picking a running mate now because about half of the states require him to designate one before he can apply for ballot access.
Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.
In Nevada, Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a March 7 letter to independent candidates that they must nominate a vice presidential candidate before collecting signatures. The letter came days after Kennedy’s campaign announced he’d collected enough signatures in the state.
Kennedy acknowledged the hurdles he faces and urged Americans to “take a risk” and vote for him, saying the biggest obstacle to his campaign is the belief that he can’t win.
“If Nicole and I can get Americans to refuse to vote from fear, we’re going to be in the White House in November,” he said.
In a nearly 30-minute speech introducing herself to Kennedy supporters, Shanahan echoed the critique at the heart of Kennedy’s campaign — that both major parties, the media and the U.S. government are beholden to greedy profiteers. She also embraced his discredited anti-vaccine message.
“It wasn’t until I met Bobby and people supporting him that I felt any hope in the outcome of this election,” Shanahan said.
Formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Shanahan is deeply enmeshed in the Silicon Valley technology culture that Kennedy frequently critiques.
But he said her connections would help her confront the tech industry’s power and influence, and her knowledge of artificial intelligence could steer the government to nurture transformative technologies.
Outside the performing arts venue where Kennedy announced his pick, broken-down cars, discarded bicycles, tents and all manner of household goods took up the sidewalk and a park, a visual reminder of the housing crisis that has plagued California.
Dawn Mitchell, a 52-yearold retired Army reservist and U. S. Postal Service worker from Chesapeake, Virginia, said she was vacationing in Los Angeles when she heard Kennedy would be appearing in Oakland and decided to make the six-hour drive to hear him and Shanahan.
“I didn’t really know her before, but just listening to her and listening to her passion about helping children and the chronic disease epidemic and regenerative farming, I’m pretty impressed by her,” she said.
Speakers who entertained the crowd before Kennedy took the stage included Angela Stanton-King, a woman pardoned by then-President Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring that led to a 2004 federal conspiracy conviction and two years in prison; Metta World Peace, the NBA allstar player formerly known as Ron Artest; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford Medical School professor who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential launch event last year.
The Democratic National Committee is gearing up to take on Kennedy and other third-party options, including No Labels, a well-funded group working to recruit a centrist ticket. The effort is overseen by veteran strategist Mary Beth Cahill, whose resume includes chief of staff to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, another of RFK Jr.’s uncles.
Some members of his family have publicly criticized his views. Dozens of Kennedy family members sent a message when they posed with Biden at a St. Patrick’s Day reception at the White House in a photo his sister Kerry Kennedy posted to social media.
“He’s a spoiler. He’s tried to coast on his family legacy and the goodwill they have in the African American community,” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis said of Kennedy on a conference call with reporters organized by the DNC. “But the Kennedy family has denounced this lame attempt and they’ve quite frankly stood with President Biden.”
Republicans, likewise, worry Kennedy’s anti-establishment bent and skepticism about the response to COVID-19 could entice voters who might otherwise vote for Trump.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a far-left radical that supports reparations, backs the Green New Deal, and wants to ban fracking,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesperson for the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. “It’s no surprise he would pick a Biden donor leftist as his running mate.”
Kennedy is a descendant of a storied Democratic family that includes his father, Robert F. Kennedy, who was a U.S. senator, attorney general and presidential candidate, and his uncle former President John F. Kennedy.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his April 15 hush-money criminal trial, suggesting without evidence that the veteran jurist was kowtowing to his daughter’s interests as a Democratic political consultant. The former president objected in particular to what he said was her specious social media photo showing him behind bars.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, posted on social media that the gag order issued Tuesday was “illegal, un-American, unConstitutional.” He said Judge Juan M. Merchan was “wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement” by Democratic rivals and urged him to step aside from the case.
The gag order, which was requested by the prosecution, bars Trump from either making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about jurors and potential witnesses in the hush-money trial, such as his lawyer turned nemesis Michael Cohen and porn star Stormy Daniels. It also prohibits any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.
It does not bar comments about Merchan or his family, nor does it prohibit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat whose office is prosecuting Trump.
Merchan’s daughter, whose firm has worked on campaigns for President Joe Biden and other Democrats, “makes money by working to ‘Get Trump’” and recently posted a fake photo on social media depicting her “obvious goal” of seeing him behind bars, Trump said. He argued those circumstances make it “completely impossible for me to get a fair trial.”
Trump did not link to the purported photo, but an account appearing to belong to Loren Merchan on X, formerly known as Twitter, showed a photo illustration of an imprisoned Trump as its profile picture Wednesday morning. It was later changed. Loren Merchan’s consulting firm had linked to that same account in a previous social media post.
“So, let me get this straight,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “the Judge’s daughter is allowed to post pictures of her ‘dream’ of putting me in jail ... but I am not allowed to talk about the attacks against me, and the Lunatics trying to destroy my life and prevent me from winning the 2024 Presidential Election, which I am dominating?”
“Maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump’ and when he rules against me over and over again, he is making her company, and her, richer and richer,” Trump continued. “How can this be allowed?”
Messages seeking comment were left with Merchan, his daughter, and a spokesperson for New York’s state court system. Bragg’s office declined to comment.
Trump’s three-part Truth Social post was his first reaction to the gag order. His focus on Merchan’s daughter and her ties to Democratic politics echoed his lawyers’ arguments last year when they urged the judge to exit the case. The judge had also made several small donations totaling $35 to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden.
Merchan said then that a state court ethics panel found that Loren Merchan’s work had no bearing on his impartiality. The judge said in a ruling last September that he was certain of his “ability to be fair and impartial” and that Trump’s lawyers had “failed to demonstrate that there exists concrete, or even realistic reasons for recusal to be appropriate, much less required on these grounds.”