The third party in the US election is considering “joining forces” with Donald Trump. Libertarian Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering dropping out of the race and joining the Republican candidate, who is losing the most votes ahead of the November elections. Nicole Shanahan, the lawyer RFK Jr. chose as his running mate, is considering joining forces with Donald Trump. ticket In an interview, the independent couple shared their internal calculations that could favor Trump in his battle against Kamala Harris. The independent couple has 5% of voting intention, according to polls published over the weekend.
Shanahan, who has enormous wealth thanks to her divorce from one of the founders of Google, Sergey Brin, says that the independent campaign is at a crossroads. “One is to stay in the race and build a strong third party, but we run the risk of allowing a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz presidency because we take some votes away from Trump. Or we leave now and join forces with Trump and explain to our base why we are making this decision,” said the vice presidential candidate in an interview on the Impact Theory podcast, uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday. “It is not an easy decision,” Shanahan added.
Trump has found the offer to be a good idea. On a tour of Michigan, one of the seven states that will define the election, the candidate told CNN that he “respects” Kennedy. “He’s a brilliant guy. He’s very intelligent. I’ve known him for a long time. I didn’t know he was thinking about leaving, but if he decides to leave, I would be open to it (receiving his support),” said the Republican standard-bearer, who is looking to break the great moment that the Democrats are experiencing after the rise of Harris.
Shanahan, 38, was introduced last March at an event in Oakland, California. She has been a financial lifeline for RFK’s campaign, which is running without the support of the Kennedy clan. With a fortune of around $1 billion, Shanahan, an apostate from the Silicon Valley elite, has invested “several tens of millions of dollars” in the presidential aspirations of Bobby Kennedy’s son. This effort, however, has been fraught with difficulties in getting the couple’s name on the ballots in all 50 states.
“The Democrats have spent millions of dollars to derail us (…) They have brought people into our campaign to create obstacles for us. They have sabotaged us because they want to keep us on a leash,” Shanahan said in the nearly hour-long talk. Last week, a judge denied the possibility of Kennedy’s name appearing on the New York ballot, determining that the politician lied when he claimed in his registration that he was a resident of the state. The lawsuit was initiated by a group of supporters of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
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“We are going to make sure that the people who have corrupted our democracy do not come to power in November,” the lawyer said in a menacing tone. She also criticized Walz for exaggerating his role in the military, one of the points of attack that Republicans have set against the Minnesota governor. “He is not a patriot, he is someone who was terrified of being sent on a mission (…) He used his military career for his political benefit,” Shanahan said of his rival.
The candidate, however, showed during the talk that she is on the same wavelength as the controversial former Republican president, who chose as his running mate a venture capitalist who lived in San Francisco, the senator for Ohio JD Vance. “If it is about the future of this country, I trust Trump, Peter Thiel and JD Vance more than Harris and Reid Hoffman (the founder of LinkedIn and a powerful donor to the Democratic Party),” she admitted.
Shanahan said that the Trump administration’s (2016-2020) Achilles’ heel was its closeness to the pharmaceutical industry during the coronavirus pandemic. Now he believes that the Republican has corrected course, which brings him closer to the campaign of RFK Jr., a famous anti-vaccine activist.
“Trump has shown a real interest in our chronic disease policies. He takes it seriously. So I think that forces us to sit down and talk about whether we can really make a change. We could have a party of unity that benefits the American people,” Shanahan said.
At the end of July, The Washington Post published that RFK Jr. had contacts in July with the Trump campaign. The independent floated the idea that he was willing to drop out of the campaign and support Trump in exchange for a position in Trump’s 2025 Cabinet. “I have great respect for President Trump and that he is in contact with me. No one in the Democratic Party, high or low, has contacted me in 18 months. Instead, they have spent millions to disrupt my campaign,” Kennedy said in an interview on July 22.
American media have pointed out that the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket has done the same with the Democratic Party. Conditioning the exit from the race in exchange for a job. The vice presidential candidate assures that this is false. “We have not spoken with Harris. There has been no talk of the possibility of supporting her or the option or the option for a position in the Cabinet. It is Fake News,” she told content creator and businessman Tom Bilyeu, in the interview on Tuesday.
The independent team also believes that staying in the race is a priority. Shanahan is confident that Kennedy can get 5% of the votes nationwide, a percentage that would help consolidate the organization as a third option between Democrats and Republicans. Experts, however, warn that candidates without a party traditionally end up below the numbers they had in the polls. Shanahan, however, was positive about the possibility of reaching the number of votes that would allow her to obtain 13.5 million dollars in public financing for the organization. “That’s quite a lot. We could position ourselves in 2028 without paying millions of dollars to ensure access to the ballot. We can focus on campaigning,” she said.
Shanahan split from Sergey Brin after her infidelity with Elon Musk came to light in 2021, according to The New York Times. The separation agreement made her entitled to part of her ex-husband’s fortune, which is worth some 145 billion dollars. That financial capital is now serving the lawyer in what is her first political adventure. Given the slim chances of winning this fall, the rookie has set her sights on the 2026 California election, in which she wants to cut off the Democratic continuity in power. “We have to eliminate that at the root,” she said.
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