Why Major Dissident Figures Now Back Trump

Why are Democrats Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard backing Donald Trump?

For the same reason that the right-leaning figures J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson, and even a group like the Libertarian Party are: They are all dissidents, something that in this moment goes beyond mere left and right.

But who, or what, are they dissenting from?

In the 2024 presidential election, you have the clear establishment choice in Democrat Kamala Harris.

Let me be clear what I mean by “establishment”: Those who control the narratives and parameters of the Democratic mainstream, who dominate and manipulate legacy media for their own gain, and who ensure that permanent war, central planning, corporatism, and identity politics will continue to define their party. The people who gave us the Clintons, the Obamas, and the Bidens, and who ward off any dissidents to their left, whether it was Bernie Sanders in 2016 or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and pro-Palestinian voices today. This establishment is also bipartisan, in that it now includes so many of the Bush-Cheney era Republicans, who see a better neoconservative future—their forever non-negotiable reason for existence—in Kamala Harris than they do her Republican opponent.

They will spy on citizens, censor speech, weaponize government, and demolish any democratic or constitutional norms to retain power.

This establishment doesn’t control the Deep State; they are the Deep State.

In this election, it is also clear that the dissident candidate, or major disrupter, is Donald Trump. You don’t have to like or agree with everything he has said or done to recognize that since the moment he descended down that escalator nearly a decade ago, Trump has completely turned American politics on its head.

If the Republican establishment’s presidential game plan was once to run George W. Bush–style candidates for eternity, as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 certainly seemed to indicate, Trump demolished that business model in 2016, blasting the Iraq war that had become so central to Republican identity—something would-be frontrunner Jeb Bush himself had to endure. Many neoconservatives backed the Democrat Hillary Clinton that year just as they support Harris now, banished from a party they once considered their birthright. The few remaining, like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger, challenged Trump head-on, lost their congressional seats, and became de facto Democrats. Some even attempted a last-ditch effort at a neocon coup through the former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. This failed embarrassingly.

Now, the old Republican establishment and current Democratic establishment are essentially one, and Kamala Harris is their champion. 

They have ten weeks to prevail.

Trump is flawed, and that’s being generous. But he is also the greatest threat to the bipartisan, entrenched establishment of this country.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tried to run as a Democrat this election, but his party refused him. When he was getting poll numbers north of 20 percent, they still refused to hold a primary. Kennedy went Independent and got the astronomical number of petition signers required to be on state ballots. So Democrats sued him. Before dropping out of the race, he asked to speak with Trump and Harris. Harris refused.

He was the most high profile non–White House Democrat running; he exposed in real time how deeply undemocratic his party is. As a liberal of old, his antiwar views and free speech concerns ran counter to the current neocon-tinged and increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party.

So much so that those old liberal views—stances that would have been typical of most anti-Bush Democrats 20 years ago—now puts Kennedy on the right. Many conventional Democrats today will tell you that they see him as a right-winger, even before he aligned with Trump.

And on those issues and others, that he said he discussed with Trump and said that they agree, Kennedy now takes a stance with Trump against an establishment that wants nothing to do with him and his traditional liberalism.

The same is true of the former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard. In 2016, Gabbard was the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, who resigned her post to back then dissident Democratic presidential candidate, who, according to former DNC Chair Donna Brazile, had the primary rigged against him by the eventual nominee Hillary Clinton. Gabbard would run for the Democratic presidential nomination herself in 2020 on war and peace issues, where she decimated fellow candidate Kamala Harris on her controversial record as California’s attorney general. Harris left that race soon after.

Another liberal of old, her anti-interventionist and pro-civil liberties views have made Gabbard a mainstay in conservative and independent media. After endorsing Trump in late August, she said, “I believe his first task will be to walk us back from the brink of war,” referring to the tense, U.S.-fueled conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

“We can’t live free as long as we have a government that is retaliating against its political opponents, that is undermining our civil liberties, weaponizing our very institutions against those they deem as a threat,” Gabbard said in her endorsement. “We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power.”

She’s right. Trump abused his power, too, while in office. But it was nothing like the great institutional power the Democrats now wield and deploy at whim with no accountability or repercussions.

Before her endorsement of Trump, it was reported that Gabbard had been put on a TSA watchlist.

Like Kennedy, Gabbard understands the real threat to democracy is the party constantly warning about threats to democracy. Other left dissidents in this election like the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the independent candidate Cornel West are not endorsing Trump, but do have sympathy with Kennedy and Gabbard in their critiques of the current regime.

The number of high profile dissidents backing Trump span the ideological spectrum, both Left to right, but also within just the right. Trump’s vice presidential choice, Senator J.D. Vance, represents the national conservative wing of the GOP, while the former candidate and “America First” advocate Vivek Ramaswamy and the Libertarian Party itself, which has coordinated with Trump’s campaign, cover the more libertarian bases. Trump, Kennedy and Ramaswamy all even spoke at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention.

Arguably Trump’s greatest non-politician ally is also the greatest dissident voice on the contemporary Right and even more so after getting kicked off Fox News, the pundit Tucker Carlson.

What these figures represent under the rubric of Trump is not undying loyalty to the man, and most of them have been clear on that front. In his endorsement, Kennedy said he may even “furiously” disagree with Trump publicly during the span of this election.

But each seems to understand the importance of a dissident coalition that might match and thwart the institutional power of the Democratic party and the threat it has become to peace and our most basic liberties. Democrats like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are supporting the Republican presidential nominee this year because they see the real problem of limitless power held by those in power, something far beyond the mere categories of Republican and Democrat.

As of this writing, Kamala Harris has done only a single soft interview with CNN, but every pro-Trump figure I have mentioned here has done many, sounding the alarm.

They now dissent in the most impactful way possible from a wholly undemocratic regime that unironically calls itself Democratic, that seeks to undermine and upheave America as we have known it.

What American wants that?