A campaign worker for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential bid recently floated the prospect of blocking the re-election of President Joe Biden by sending the election to the House of Representatives. .
Rita Palma, a a long-time New York critic A recently uploaded video appears to be aimed at persuading Republican voters to help Kennedy run in the state’s presidential primary this fall. He identifies himself in the video as the campaign’s New York state director, though the campaign said Monday that he was a “ballot access consultant” and that his comments did not reflect overall campaign strategy.
In those comments, Palma notes that he knocked on doors for Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and “I have more Trump shirts than Bobby Kennedy shirts,” but Trump “lost” him because of “vaccines.”
Palma went on to declare Biden a “mutual enemy” of Trump and the Kennedy electorate, saying his “number one priority” is denying Biden re-election, not helping Kennedy win.
“Whether you support Bobby or Trump, we’re all against Biden. In my opinion, you know, that’s the number one priority in the country,” he says in the video.
And he describes a specific way to do it. While national Democrats typically focus on unseating Kennedy in key states that decide the election, Palma raised the prospect of depriving Biden of wins in blue states like New York. That could deprive both Trump and Biden of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, Palma said, leaving the choice to the currently GOP-controlled House of Representatives, which he says will elect Trump.
In the statement, Kennedy campaign manager Amarillis Fox He described Palma as a “ballot access consultant responsible for planning the line-up of volunteers for our upcoming signature drive in the Empire State,” and said it’s no surprise that different Kennedy supporters come from different sides of the ideological spectrum.
“As an independent movement, our supporters, volunteers and field organizers come from across the political spectrum, and their reasons for supporting Mr. Kennedy are as diverse as their backgrounds,” the campaign said in a statement.
“He is not involved in national or New York election strategy. This was not a campaign event. “Palma was speaking as a private citizen and his statements in no way reflect the strategy of the Kennedy campaign, which is to win the White House with the votes of both former Trump and Biden supporters,” the statement said.
The video once again highlights how Kennedy and other third-party candidates’ participation in the 2024 presidential election could skew the outcome. This was previously reported by NBC News No Labels has not raised the prospect of a presidential effort to send the 2023 election to the House of Representatives.. Organization in the end he decided not to get the ticket.
In the video, Palma describes his outlook as follows: “I’m going to vote for Bobby. However, if Trump wakes up on November 6th and Trump wins, I won’t be too upset. But if Biden wins, we’ll all be very upset because he’s destroying America and making it ruling people are destroying our country.
He called his blue-state strategy for 2024 “Count the Republican Vote,” something he said he started promoting well before joining the Kennedy campaign.
“If the Republicans accepted that New York, Maryland, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, most of the Northeast would turn blue, why don’t we vote for Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and . .. cast those 28 electoral votes [in New York] Bobby, not Biden?” Palma said in the video.
“If it’s a Republican Congress, they’re going to elect Trump, so we can get rid of Biden.”
“All we need is four blue states, and there’s no way he’s going to get in,” he said of Biden.
As he spoke, Palma stood in front of a slideshow showing how to “stop Biden from winning his No. 1 presidential priority,” including both supporting Kennedy and “Go to Pennsylvania to help Trump.”
First, CNN reported the existence of the videoa truncated version of it is doing the rounds on social media on Monday and was criticized by the Democrats.
NBC News obtained a 36-minute version of the video from a source who uploaded it before it was removed from YouTube. The YouTube description of the video shows it took place at a Poughkeepsie church and was uploaded on April 5, the source added. The video contains a handful of small cuts, but includes a fuller conversation than the short version posted on social media on Monday. and includes a question-and-answer session with participants.
Palma confirmed the authenticity of the video to CNN. He asked NBC News to send his questions via text message and has yet to respond to a request for comment.
In the video, Palma says that when he was hired by the Kennedy campaign, he told them he wouldn’t stop making this special appeal, admitting it was an “unusual campaign message.”
“If I’m allowed to promote it, if I’m allowed to, you know, get that message out there, yes, I’ll definitely work for the campaign. But I don’t want to be restricted in what I say because I think that’s a really winning strategy,” he said.
“And my boss said, well, okay, you know, you should. He suggested that I isolate in certain markets, of course I do. I’m not going to Manhattan to talk about it,” Palma said.
Fox, the Kennedy campaign manager, added in a statement that “we are investigating whether there were any misrepresentations.”
“Our campaign advocates for free speech for all of our supporters, volunteers, contractors and employees, as long as they don’t claim to speak on our behalf,” Fox said.
Palma also did not respond to NBC’s question about whether he served as the New York state director, as he claimed in the video, or as a get-out-the-ballot consultant, as the campaign claimed. It is listed as Attend a “personal reception”. For donors in Melville, NY, with Kennedy in attendance later this month.