RFK Jr.’s fans revel in the publicity he’s getting from Trump’s attacks

BOSTON — Donald Trump and the Democratic National Committee are hammering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His supporters are thrilled.

As Kennedy raised money in a series of private events Monday inside the downtown Boston hotel where he launched his quixotic presidential bid just over a year ago, attendee after attendee said they were convinced the bipartisan pile-on would only aid the independent candidate.

“If Republicans and Democrats see him as a threat, that’s a good thing, because not a lot of people realize he’s running,” said Renata Letniowska, a Duxbury, Massachusetts, resident who was on hand for a portion of the fundraising bonanza at Boston’s Park Plaza hotel.

Phil Jackson, too, maintained that all the attention — negative though it may be — will help draw attention to “Bobby,” as his supporters affectionately call him.

“It just means he’s doing a good job. He’s going to have to go through all these attacks [but] it’s going to raise people’s awareness of him,” said Jackson, an independent voter from Rockport, Massachusetts.

It isn’t clear that Kennedy would benefit from the voting public learning more about him. In a Monmouth University poll released Monday , just about half of voters were aware of some of his most controversial claims about Covid-19 and vaccines — and his performance in the poll barely moved after respondents learned about them.

Rather, poll director Patrick Murray said in a prepared statement, Kennedy “appears to be more of a placeholder for expressing some generalized dissatisfaction with the likely trajectory of the 2024 nomination process.”

But the survey was also the latest of several showing what Democrats and, now, the former president, are coming to fear — that Kennedy could siphon votes from both major-party candidates in November.

Kennedy is showing at least some success in trading in his family’s famous name — even without the backing of many of its most prominent members. And he’s engendering support through his anti-vaccine and anti-government-corruption advocacy.

In an effort to neutralize him, Trump has ratched up his attacks on Kennedy in recent days. The former president eviscerated Kennedy as a Democratic “plant” in a series of posts on his Truth Social website late last week and said that any ballots cast for “Junior” would be a “WASTED PROTEST VOTE.”

Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee paid for a mobile billboard displaying ads targeting Kennedy to circle the hotel where he was mingling with supporters on Monday. The ads yoked Kennedy to Trump through their shared donors — highlighting GOP megadonor Tim Mellon, in particular.

Kennedy didn’t exactly fire back Monday. During a “fireside chat” with two of his highest-profile supporters — Donnie Wahlberg, who also hails from a famous local family, and his wife, actress Jenny McCarthy — Kennedy called Trump “well-intentioned” but said he padded his administration with the very “swamp creatures” that he had claimed he wanted to get rid of in Washington.

“What I say to people: If you want more of the same, you should vote for [Trump] because that’s what you’re going to get,” Kennedy told the roughly 100 supporters who had packed into a second-floor ballroom to see him.

On stage, despite the lack of evidence in the polls, McCarthy and Wahlberg argued that while “there’s a lot of love” for Kennedy, a general lack of awareness about his campaign has hampered their ability to promote him as a candidate.

“Some people just feel like they don't know you,” Wahlberg said to Kennedy. “And I think there are good reasons for it. One, nobody seems willing to debate you.”

A debate, Wahlberg added later, would be a “game changer.”