Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy a “huge, huge problem” for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, admitting that she was worried he could siphon off enough votes to do some serious damage.
Psaki, during a Thursday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” told co-host Mika Brzezinski that she was concerned people might vote for Kennedy based on name recognition rather than his policy positions.
WATCH:
PSAKI: “These third party candidates are a huge, huge, huge problem. And there's a number of them. If you look at RFK Jr., it's the name recognition issue, as Tom was just talking about. And there are still states in this country, obviously — I mean, Georgia is one of them, I…
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 21, 2024
Brzezinski began the conversation by asking Psaki to weigh in on what might be motivating Kennedy to stay in the race, especially if there was a chance that he could ultimately help former President Donald Trump by taking votes from Biden.
“I don’t want to be in RFK Jr.’s brain where he didn’t believe in science and all sorts of other things,” Psaki replied. “This is the biggest challenge.”
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“These third-party candidates are a huge, huge, huge problem, and there’s a number of them. If you look at RFK, it’s the name recognition issue,” Psaki continued. “And there are still states in this country, obviously — I mean, Georgia is one of them, I will name, where the Kennedy name is beloved, right, where people may just not still —”
“Right,” Brzezinski agreed, interrupting.
“— where they may just not know a lot about the fact that he is an anti-vaxxer, who’s a conspiracy theorist,” Psaki added. “They don’t know that yet. So this is something. There is an aggressive effort that the campaign has been working with the Democratic National Committee on to run on this, but it needs to be broad, people need to be shouting it from the rooftops because this is one of the biggest threats to Joe Biden being re-elected, is these third-party candidates.”
President Biden also took a shot at Kennedy over the weekend, posting a photo of himself with many members of the Kennedy family — but not RFK Jr. — in honor of their shared Irish heritage and St. Patrick’s Day.
Kennedy, when confronted by NewsNation host Chris Cuomo about the photo, shrugged it off and explained that it was fine for family members to sometimes disagree on things.