How Tulsi and RFK can revitalise Trump’s campaign

Donald Trump’s decision to add Kennedy scion Robert F Kennedy Jr and former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to his presidential transition team can be read as an attempt by the Republican presidential candidate to re-establish himself as the candidate of the anti-establishment voter.

There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was Trump’s role in 2016. One count that year found that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had nabbed the endorsements of 57 newspaper editorial boards, while Trump won just two. From major media to senior national-security operatives to some of the wealthiest people in the country, the opposition to Trump that year was a sort of Who’s Who of the US elite.

This allowed Trump to portray himself as a populist figure who aroused the ire of the social, economic and political elite. His final ad of the 2016 cycle featured a narration where he said: ‘Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people.’

After a term in the White House, Trump has struggled to reclaim that populist lane. Kamala Harris’s rapid ascendancy to the Democratic nomination has been accompanied with much more favourable polling for her party – and maybe it’s not a surprise. Many Americans didn’t want to see a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden. Compared with these ageing candidates, Harris is the fresh face on the scene.

But that’s not all that’s preventing Trump from waving the populist banner in this election. His campaign themes have devolved into those utilised by previous, establishment Republicans.

Living in the swing state of Georgia, I’m bombarded with Trump campaign ads telling me that Harris has failed to secure the border and is soft on immigrant crime. More recently, Trump has turned to calling Harris a ‘communist’ after she said she wanted to combat price gouging in the food industry. Little to nothing Trump’s campaign has said in the past few weeks would be out of place in a Mitt Romney or John McCain commercial.

Yet the elevation of RFK Jr and Gabbard into Trump’s campaign may play a role in changing that. Both figures spent their lives in the Democratic Party, often positioning themselves in insurgent roles where they staked out contrarian positions.

Chief among those positions is opposition to America’s long involvement in wars overseas. During his first event with Trump, RFK Jr made his opposition to continued American support for the war in Ukraine a cornerstone of his address. ‘Don’t you want a president who’s going to get us out of the wars and who’s going to rebuild the middle class in this country?’, he asked the cheering audience.

Gabbard, herself a military veteran, offered her support to Trump based on these themes. At an event where she appeared alongside Trump at the National Guard Association of the United States, she pointed to his record as president:

‘President Trump understands the grave responsibility that a president, commander-in-chief, bears for every one of our lives. Whether you’re a soldier, you’re an airman, marine, sailor or a coastie, he keeps us in his heart in the decisions that he makes. We saw this through his first term in the presidency when he not only didn’t start any new wars, he took action to de-escalate and prevent wars.’

She credited this to his willingness to talk to adversaries and allies alike ‘in the pursuit of peace’. The reintroduction of these themes into Trump’s campaign could provide the kindling for a reboot.

Trump’s campaign has more or less been on autopilot since Biden was still the Democrats’ nominee. Savaging the Democrats for being soft on crime and soft on the border, while calling any Democratic proposal to tackle corporate behaviour ‘communism’, makes Trump’s campaign indistinguishable from any thousands of other GOP campaigns that have been waged since the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the head of the party more than 40 years ago. But pushing back on America’s endless wars is a tactic that could move more swing voters into Trump’s camp. That’s what happened in 2016.

The year after the election took place, I wrote a piece on a study that found that swing-state regions of the US that had had a high number of casualties in the Afghanistan war shifted towards Trump over Clinton. Trump’s anti-war campaign appeared to pay off – the researchers theorised that, without this shift, he would not have won the election.

This year’s a little different. America does not have a substantial number of troops deployed in any overseas war. But we are spending what appears to be endless billions on supporting two major wars overseas.

Trump has an opportunity here. Guided by voices like RFK Jr and Gabbard, he could make a new pitch to Americans. It would go something like this:

‘For years, people in both parties have told you that America benefits when we send billions of dollars overseas to fight other people’s wars. As thousands perish and our money goes up in flames, our leaders have abandoned diplomacy. When I’m president, I’ll have a simple mission: I’ll stop the killing and I’ll bring that money home so that we can spend it on our veterans, our schools, our roads and our people.’

The Trump campaign could dedicate significant spending on anti-war messaging across the airwaves, producing ads that talk about ending overseas wars and redirecting resources to America’s shores. This would tie directly into Trump’s America First motif. It would also elicit howls of protest from hawks in both parties.

Crucially, it would once again position Trump as a populist candidate, and it would give him something he sorely lacks – a justification for his candidacy. After all, Americans don’t want a ruder version of Mitt Romney, which is what the Trump campaign has come across as since Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Trump’s only chance of winning this race is by remembering why he eked out a victory in 2016 that almost nobody saw coming. He campaigned as the alternative to the status quo: someone who was going to walk up to the establishment and punch it in the face. RFK Jr and Gabbard, with all their flaws, provide him with the chance of becoming that candidate again.

Zaid Jilani is a journalist and communications consultant based in Atlanta. Follow him on X: @ZaidJilani.