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CV NEWS FEED // During a recent podcast interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running mate Nicole Shanahan said that the two are weighing the possibility of exiting the presidential race and endorsing Republican nominee former President Donald Trump.
Shanahan is currently running with Kennedy on an independent ticket that is polling in a distant third place against Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
“They’re two options that we’re looking at,” the independent vice presidential candidate told host Tom Bilyeu on Tuesday’s episode of his business-focused podcast “Impact Theory.”
“One is staying in and forming [a] new party,” she explained, “but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump….”
“Or,” Shanahan continued, “we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump.”
The attorney said that if she and Kennedy decided to bow out and back the Republican ticket, they would explain to “our base why we’re making this decision.”
She emphasized that the decision is “not easy.”
Shanahan is a former longtime donor to Democratic candidates and left-wing causes. She had supported now-President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 presidential campaign.
The same year, she had also donated to the campaign of controversial Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón. Gascón is widely scrutinized for his lenient record on prosecuting crime and connections to groups with financial ties to left-wing billionaire George Soros.
>> MARCH: RFK JR. PICKS NICOLE SHANAHAN AS HIS RUNNING MATE <<
Shanahan had been a member of the Democratic Party up until she registered as an independent last year.
“In 2023, I made the difficult choice of leaving the Democratic Party, the party that I have been a part of my entire life,” Shanahan said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday afternoon.
“I left the party and I declared my independence because I had become disillusioned with the leadership, values, and lack of moral compass that had taken over the party,” she added:
The party that had once stood for diplomacy, civil liberties, the middle class, and the American dream had morphed into a party of corporate capture, greed, corruption, and incompetence.
In a post accompanying the video, she compared Harris’ controversial new economic agenda to policies implemented in Communist China, where Shanahan’s mother was born.
“Kamala Harris’s economic plans, particularly her flawed ideas about price caps on food and the misconception that farmers are responsible for price gouging, echo the very policies that caused the famine my family suffered through in Mao’s Communist China,” Shanahan wrote.
Last week, Kennedy sharply criticized Harris and the modern-day Democratic Party in a lengthy X post.
Like his running mate, Kennedy had been a lifelong Democrat until switching his registration to independent last year.
“VP Harris’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to my father [Sen. Robert F. Kennedy] and uncle [President John F. Kennedy] and I cannot reconcile it with my values,” the now-independent candidate wrote in his viral post. “The Democratic Party of RFK and JFK was the party of civil liberties and free speech. VP Harris‘s is the party of censorship, lockdowns, and medical coercion.”
Kennedy made the criticisms shortly after The Washington Post ran a story alleging that he had approached Harris with an offer to drop out of the race and endorsed her. Kennedy called the story “fake news.”
>> RFK JR. DENOUNCES HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY <<
The Kennedy-Shanahan ticket currently has ballot access in just over half of states.
On Tuesday, CNBC reported: “If Kennedy and Shanahan quit the election contest, it is not clear if their would-be voters would necessarily go to Trump.”
CNBC continued:
But some polls suggest that the Democratic nominee, Vice President Harris, would be stronger against Trump in swing states when Kennedy is included as a candidate, as opposed to when Kennedy is not an option.
Earlier in the interview [with Bilyeu], Shanahan said, “I did not put in tens of millions of dollars to be a spoiler candidate.”
