The election campaign of Donald Trump has once again received support from another practicing Catholic and prominent politician, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the son of JFK's brother “Bobby” Kennedy, a daily mass attender and a devotee of St Francis of Assisi.
It wasn’t long ago that the former president announced that Catholic convert JD Vance, a man <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/how-catholic-philosopher-rene-girard-could-shape-us-politics-now-jd-vance-on-republican-ticket/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">heavily influenced by the teachings</mark></a> of St Augustine of Hippo and the French Catholic philosopher René Girard, would be his running mate for the Republican ticket to wrestle back the White House from the Democrats in November’s election.
At the same time, Trump has warned Catholics about <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-warns-of-anti-religious-democrat-policies-theyre-really-after-the-catholics/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">anti-religious Democrat policies</mark></a> and stated that “they’re after the Catholics almost as much as they’re after me”.
Is the Catholic vote in the US simply being leveraged for political advantage, or is there more going on?
When JD Vance was nominated as Trump's running mate, <em>Herald</em> editor William Cash <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-appoints-firebrand-pro-life-catholic-as-vp-running-mate-and-political-heir/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">wrote</mark></a> "that it confirms that Trump feels comfortable being surrounded and influenced by Catholics as part of his inner circle".<br><br>He added: "Above all [Trump] regards Catholics – with would-be VP contender Ron de Santis of Florida perhaps being the main exception – as loyalists", while noting that there is an argument to be made that Trump's aspirations to return to the White House are dependant on the "loyalty of his Catholic support base".
In an interview with the <em>Boston Globe</em> in 2005, Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, as well as a former heroin addict, spoke of how his daily attendance at Mass helps keep him on the straight and narrow, explaining:
“I don’t do it because I’m a holy person or a particularly good person, but because I’ve got a constant struggle going on in my head between doing good things and bad things, and I need a lot of help in order to do the right thing on a day-to-day basis.”
Kennedy has also spoken about how he believes that St Francis “embodied the manifold mandates of Christianity that we care for nature, that we act as stewards of the Earth and that we regard future generations as our responsibility". Kennedy also happens to be the author of a children’s book about St Francis.
Despite being a senior member of a famous Irish-American, and thereby Catholic, political dynasty that has long sided with the Democratic Party, Kennedy has rejected the Democrats because he says it has become “the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag[riculture] and big money".
In declaring his support for Trump, Kennedy said: “I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues”, while Trump responded to Kennedy’s endorsement by saying that Kennedy will “have a huge influence on this campaign”.<br><br>Kennedy also described how his involvement in the presidential race has been “a spiritual journey for me” and that the difficult decision to pull out of the race and to endorse Trump had involved “deep prayer”.<br><br><strong><em>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/robert-f-kennedy-decides-to-endorse-trump-following-deep-prayer/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Robert F Kennedy’s decision to endorse Trump follows ‘deep prayer’ and spiritual reflection</mark></a></em></strong>
Like Trump, Kennedy sees himself as an anti-establishment candidate, as a disruptor. He supports Trump’s view that “it is time to drain the Washington swamp”, believing that the nation’s food is unhealthy because Big Ag controls the Department of Agriculture, and that the US remains embroiled in endless wars because military contractors control the Department of Defence, the State Department and intelligence agencies.
Three specific issues appear to have convinced Kennedy to support Trump: free speech, the war in Ukraine and what Kennedy calls the “war on children”.
In respect of the first, Kennedy believes that American civil liberties have been under attack since the Bush-Cheney War on Terror, and that the trend accelerated during the pandemic and various Covid lockdowns.
As regards the war in Ukraine, Kennedy argues Russia’s actions were in part provoked by the US and NATO, and that international, economic elites are cynically using the war to preserve a global order that protects their stock portfolios, and regardless the cost to the blue-collar communities of America’s post-industrial heartlands.
Kennedy shares Vance’s view that the elites who are in favour of sending US troops to Ukraine are the same ones that send US jobs to China, and who also turn a blind eye while inflation wrecks the economy, immigrants flood the country, and the liberal mainstream press covers it all up.
As to the “war on children", Kennedy believes this is being waged by corrupt corporates, through the likes of, for example, the manufacturing of highly profitable, processed food that has led to endemic levels of obesity among children. Furthermore, those children will also have to face the consequences of the damage that has been done to America’s environment through the pollution of America’s rivers, and the serious long-term damage that has been inflicted on its soil by Big Ag.
One aspect of the “war on children” that Kennedy has not appeared to pick up on, and which will likely cause concern for many readers of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>, is Kennedy’s apparently ambivalent attitude to the war on the unborn.
In his latest clarification on the highly politicised issue of abortion, Kennedy has said that he supports abortion until a certain point, while he has also dialled back any endorsement of later term abortion, which he previously appeared to condone. In a 23 August statement released on <em>X</em>, Kennedy said: “...abortion should be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter.”
Many are baffled by the ability of Trump, a man whose lifestyle is not notable for its close conformity to Catholic teaching or practice, to harness and reach across to prominent Catholic politicians (as well as to your average Catholic voter).
It may simply be because, despite Trump being an incredibly wealthy New York property tycoon, he is also the anti-establishment candidate, a status-quo-defying disruptor, in an age when the political establishment has become synonymous with policies that are blatantly contrary to Catholic teaching.
Indeed, for many Catholics at least, it seems that Alastair Macintyre, author of the critically acclaimed <em>After Virtue</em>, and the inspiration behind Rod Dreher’s <em>Benedict Option</em>, was right when he claimed that the barbarians are no longer at the gates of Rome, but have in fact been ruling us for some time.
Thus, on the basis that "your enemy’s enemy is your friend too", Trump is the friend to those who wish to inflict damage on the political status quo that has become so entrenched in the US.
Trump’s portrayal of a broken America strikes a chord with those who believe that the US is on the verge of a civilisational collapse. Trump’s campaigning tone and portrayal of a broken America certainly makes for a marked contrast to the deliberately sunny optimism of Kamala Harris, whose humanitarian focused, Enlightenment-style faith in human hope and faith in “progress” plays well to much of the younger and more liberally inclined US electorate.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance has expressed his own concern about a broken America, explaining it within a framework of understanding that has been formed, in part, by St Augustine’s <em>City of God</em> and its <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/how-catholic-philosopher-rene-girard-could-shape-us-politics-now-jd-vance-on-republican-ticket/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">analysis of the circumstances that brought about the collapse of pagan Rome</mark></a>, including not least the behaviour of a corrupt class of oligarchs.<br><br>Vance has also discussed that “If you look at the people that I’ve worked with most successfully, it’s people who, even though they’re from the Left, recognise that something’s pretty fundamentally broken about American society".
Vance has collaborated, for example, with various Democrats against both more mainstream, pro-business Democrats and Republicans, following the aftermath of the train derailment in early 2023 that released hazardous chemical waste in East Palestine, Ohio. A few months later, Vance teamed up with Democrats to reduce executive compensation that had happened despite the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. In October 2023, Vance supported auto workers on the picket line in Ohio.
Vance believes that “the regime" – the political mainstream, spanning both Left and Right – is no longer fit for purpose, because it has turned progressive cultural values into a tool to entrench its own economic and political power. Thereby, when Trumpian Republicans defend their conservative cultural values, they are simultaneously, the logic goes, defending working class economic interests against the predations of corporate exploitation and government coercion.
Kennedy, for his part, has spoken in apocalyptic terms about the endemic levels of corruption that exist among the Washington, DC-based and decision-making political, commercial and media classes.
He has stated on his campaign website that “independent of the broken two-party system and the corporate corruption of our government, Robert F Kennedy Jr will pursue new policies in the best interests of the American people”.
There are two specific areas in which Kennedy and Vance already appear on the same political wavelength. Firstly, Kennedy’s commitment to the regeneration of America’s soil, farms and food, with a particular focus on supporting “yeoman”-type family farms, chimes with Vance’s own commitment to supporting local, blue-collar communities that not only have been impoverished by the outsourcing of jobs to China, but exposed too to the effects of the pollution of rivers.
Secondly, there is Kennedy’s commitment to the ending of the corrupt merger of state and corporate power, with a freeing of government agencies from the control of big corporations, and which mirrors Vance’s own support for empowering and serving the kind of working-class local communities in which he grew up.
Policy areas that could pose particular difficulties for any Trump-Vance-Kennedy alliance, however, include those related to conspiracy theories and fossil fuel. Kennedy is famous for his conspiracy theories, whereas Vance has said that “I think what I would like to persuade people most is that [too] many people think the problem with the country and the world right now is [to do with] Klaus Schwab [scheming] in a private room”.
Energy policy is likely to represent a second source of conflict between Kennedy and “drill baby, drill” Trump. Both Trump and Vance are tied in with funding from Big Oil, whereas Kennedy is resolutely anti-fossil fuel, and has said that he will support policies that require fossil fuel companies to internalise those costs that are currently borne by the communities in which they operate.
Given that Vance has made much of his championship of the needs of local communities in the face of corporate exploitation, Kennedy’s desire to force energy companies to internalise their costs may actually appeal to Vance, and serve as a source of mutual agreement.
That, and much else, however, will likely be dependent on the extent to which the election outcome, currently on a knife edge, is determined by the number of votes that Kennedy does, or does not, bring to the Trump-Vance ticket.
The greater the number of votes that Kennedy brings to Trump, the greater the likelihood of Kennedy’s energy policy having an impact on any Trumpian presidential policy that we might be about to see again.<br><br><strong><em>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/trump-appoints-firebrand-pro-life-catholic-as-vp-running-mate-and-political-heir/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Trump nominates ‘firebrand’ pro-life Catholic as VP running mate and political heir</mark></a></em></strong><br><br><em>Photo: Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a campaign rally at the Desert Diamond Arena after announcing that he was suspending his presidential campaign and supporting former President Donald Trump, Glendale, Arizona, 23 August 2024. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images.) <br></em><br><br><br><br><br><br>
