After the hush money verdict was announced Thursday, Donald Trump was not the only presidential candidate to criticize the court’s decision — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took a jab, too.
“The Democratic Party’s strategy is to beat President Trump in the courtroom rather than the ballot box,” Kennedy said in a statement posted to X. “This will backfire in November. Even worse, it is profoundly undemocratic.”
Kennedy’s criticism echoed Trump and the outcry of Republicans after the verdict was read, saying it was “compromising our government’s separation of powers or weaponizing the courts.”
He also attempted to draw a contrast between his campaign and President Joe Biden’s, claiming he is running against Trump’s track record, such as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and increasing the national debt.
“I’ll challenge him on these things, but the Democrats won’t. You know why? Because they pursue the very same policies,” he continued.
RFK Jr.’s running mate, Silicon Valley billionaire Nicole Shanahan, did not explicitly mention Trump or the hush money case in her X post about the verdict, instead gesturing to the “weaponization of the justice system for political gain.”
“Weaponizing the press, the judiciary and each other puts us all in the barrel,” Shanahan said.
Even RFK Jr.’s campaign director Amaryllis Fox seized the opportunity to take a shot at the verdict, and like Shanahan, appeared to reiterate their boss’ claim of Biden “weaponizing the courts.”
“Some know full well the demons they unleash. Others content themselves that ends justify means,” Fox wrote on X. “Until, predictably, inevitably, the monster they’ve created is turned upon them.”
“The road to tyranny is paved with good intentions,” she concluded.
Notably, Kennedy’s own friends, family and former colleagues have said his candidacy could be a spoiler campaign and hand the election to Trump, who has himself said he would be a dictator if re-elected (but only on “Day One” in office). In April, one of RFK Jr.’s own staffers admitted their campaign could throw the election to Trump — and was promptly fired.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.