Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime advocate for environmental causes, made a surprising move by suspending his independent presidential campaign and endorsing former President Donald Trump.
At first glance, this announcement seems quite shocking. Trump has famously dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and worked to roll back over 100 environmental regulations during his time in office. Meanwhile, Kennedy, who spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting against polluters, once claimed he would be the “best environmental president in American history.” Many experts view Trump’s presidency as one of the most damaging to the environment in recent memory.
Earlier this year, nearly 50 of Kennedy’s former colleagues from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) ran full-page ads in swing state newspapers, urging him to drop out of the race to avoid helping Trump. They asked him to “honor the planet” and reconsider his candidacy, fearing it might split the vote and benefit Trump.
So, how did Kennedy end up endorsing Trump?
Kennedy’s campaign didn’t respond to questions about how he reconciles his lifetime of environmental advocacy with his support for Trump. But those who know his history and have followed his career weren’t entirely surprised by the move.
Let’s take a closer look at how this happened.
Kennedy’s Environmental Legacy Kennedy, now 70, is the son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
His passion for nature started early, but his environmental work took off in the 1980s after a run-in with the law. Following a heroin-related conviction, Kennedy was sentenced to community service, which he completed at the NRDC, a relatively small environmental group at the time. Over the next 28 years, he rose to become a senior attorney there.
One of his first major projects involved working with Riverkeeper to take legal action against polluters in the Hudson River Valley. He later co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international environmental group dedicated to clean water advocacy. His efforts led to the closure of a New York landfill that was polluting local water supplies, and he helped stop dam projects in Chile and Peru.
Liz Barratt-Brown, a senior adviser at the NRDC who worked closely with Kennedy for many years, reflected on how unexpected this turn of events would have seemed years ago. “If you’d told me back then that this would happen in 2024, I’d have been shocked,” she said. However, she wasn’t entirely surprised to see her former colleague endorse Trump now, though she admitted, “It’s really disappointing.”
A Gradual Drift According to Barratt-Brown, Kennedy began distancing himself from the environmental community in the early 2000s when he started promoting debunked theories linking vaccines to autism.
Around the same time, he opposed a wind power project in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, putting himself at odds with many in the environmental community. He framed the issue as a battle between industry and nature, arguing that no one would consider building a wind farm in a place like Yosemite National Park.
In 2014, Kennedy left the NRDC, around the time his increasingly anti-science views started clashing with the organization’s mission. Despite stepping away, he continued to speak out on environmental issues. In 2017, during Trump’s presidency, Kennedy criticized the administration’s support for coal and oil, telling CNN that such policies were likely to lead to a grim future for the country.
More recently, Kennedy also criticized the Biden administration’s environmental policies. He opposed parts of Biden’s climate agenda, especially those related to carbon capture, arguing that these measures favored the fossil fuel industry. Kennedy positioned himself as the true environmentalist in the race, focusing not only on climate change but also on issues like soil regeneration and clean water—topics he considered less politically divisive.
However, while Kennedy emphasized the importance of making food safer and healthier for Americans, the Trump administration approved over 100 new pesticides, many of which were banned in other countries due to health risks.
Kennedy didn’t mention environmental policies directly in his speech when he endorsed Trump but acknowledged there were still “serious differences” between them. In an interview with The Washington Post, Kennedy expressed hope that he could influence Trump’s approach to environmental issues, saying, “I’d hope to have an impact on how the environment is treated under his administration.”
Trump later announced that Kennedy would serve as an honorary co-chair of his presidential transition team. Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said they were “proud” to have Kennedy in that role.
However, Kennedy’s former allies in the environmental movement remain skeptical. Sarah Burton, the national political director of the Sierra Club, dismissed the idea that Kennedy could influence Trump’s environmental stance, calling it as out of touch with reality as the other conspiracy theories Kennedy has endorsed.
Manish Bapna, president of the NRDC Action Fund, was even more blunt, calling Kennedy’s move “raw opportunism” and accusing him of desperately seeking relevance, no matter the cost.
