Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now singing a very different tune about Donald Trump — admitting he once bought into the harshest caricatures of the former president but now insists the reality couldn’t be more different.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend, Kennedy confessed he had been duped by the dominant narrative surrounding Trump’s personality.
“President Trump is exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be. I admit I basically drank the Kool-Aid that he was this bombastic narcissist that didn’t read books [and] was ill-informed. And now I know the exact opposite,” Kennedy said. “He’s the opposite of a narcissist, he’s an empath.”
That’s not exactly the image critics have been selling for years.
Kennedy argued that Trump’s handling — and, more importantly, his emotional reaction — to the Russia-Ukraine War reveals a side rarely acknowledged by his opponents. According to Kennedy, Trump is deeply troubled by the human cost of the conflict and frequently brings up the death toll in private conversations.
“You will not hear any Democrat ever talk about that,” Kennedy told the crowd, taking a swipe at the left while painting Trump as unusually attuned to human suffering.
But Kennedy didn’t stop there. He went on to portray Trump as something closer to a walking encyclopedia than a disengaged populist figurehead — praising what he called the president’s “encyclopedic, molecular knowledge” across an eclectic mix of subjects, from Broadway productions to professional wrestling.
And in a line sure to raise eyebrows, Kennedy elevated Trump’s instincts on leadership to historic levels.
He said Trump “understands the use of power better than probably any president that we’ve had at least since Roosevelt and maybe in American history,” though he left it unclear whether he meant Theodore Roosevelt or Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Kennedy isn’t the only unexpected voice offering a softer take on Trump’s private persona.
Last year, comedian and political commentator Bill Maher made waves after a widely discussed White House dinner with Trump, saying the version of Trump behind closed doors sharply contrasts with his public image — describing him as attentive and engaged.
Meanwhile, Trump himself was notably absent from this year’s CPAC gathering — the first time in a decade he skipped the high-profile conservative event.
Still, his allies carried the torch.
Among them: Brendan Carr, who took aim at the mainstream media while declaring Trump victorious in what he framed as an ongoing battle against press elites.
“When he ran for office, he ran directly at the fake news media,” Carr said. “He said, ‘You don’t get to decide what we say, what we think, how we’re gonna vote inside the voting booth.’ President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.”
Carr then rattled off what he framed as evidence of that victory lap.
“Look at the results so far,” he continued. “PBS — defunded. NPR — defunded. Joy Reid — gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyed Chuck Todd — gone. Jim Acosta — gone. John Dickerson — gone.”
