Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr
CV NEWS FEED // Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has sided with Texas’ invocation of its “Right to Self Defense” and blasted the ongoing crisis at the border.
“Texas is right,” the former lifelong Democrat stated in a viral X (formerly Twitter) post Thursday afternoon. “Biden’s failure to secure the border leaves states no choice but to take matters into their own hands.”
“As President, I will end this humanitarian crisis once and for all. I will secure the border and destroy the business model of the drug cartels,” Kennedy added. “A country without borders is not a country at all.”
In less than 24 hours, the candidate’s post received nearly 100,000 “likes.”
A Harvard/Harris poll conducted last week showed Kennedy with 21% of the vote in a three-way race between him, Biden, and former President Donald Trump. With Kennedy in the mix, Trump had an eight-point lead over Biden – 44% to 36%.
If Kennedy maintains his current share of the vote until election day, it will make him the best-performing third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt, who received 27% of the vote in 1912. It would also make Kennedy the best-performing non-major-party candidate in American history who was not a former president.
By comparison, businessman Ross Perot received just shy of 19% of the vote in 1992.
The same Harvard poll showed that without the independent as an option, Trump had a six-point lead, with 53% of the vote to Biden’s 47%.
A recent Economist/YouGov poll asked respondents whether they had a “favorable” or “unfavorable” view of over a dozen national political figures. Kennedy and Trump tied as the most favorable of the bunch, each with 45% of respondents indicating that they had a “very or somewhat favorable” view of him.
Meanwhile, 42% of the poll’s respondents said they viewed Biden favorably. Another recent poll found Biden’s job performance approval rating to be at a much lower 33%.
Of the major candidates currently left in the presidential race, former Ambassador Nikki Haley ranked the least favorable, with only 35% of respondents saying they had a positive opinion of her – a mark three percentage points lower than Vice President Kamala Harris’.
>> HALF OF U.S. GOVERNORS ISSUE STATEMENT SUPPORTING TEXAS <<
As CatholicVote previously reported:
Abbott sent shockwaves throughout the political landscape Wednesday when he declared in a statement: “The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by [Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution] has triggered [Article I, Section 10, Clause 3], which reserves to this state the right of self-defense.”
“For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion … to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” he emphasized. “The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”
