RFK Jr.

 Independent presidential candidate and former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted this week that he supports “full-term” abortions. In a sit-down interview with former ESPN reporter Sage Steele, RFK said that while he doesn’t think women should abort their children in the eighth month of pregnancy or beyond, he wouldn’t prohibit them from doing so.  “Even if it’s full-term,” he said, later adding, “I think we have to leave it to the women rather than the state.” RFK’s position is extreme, no matter how you slice it. The majority of Americans believe there should be some restrictions on abortions; only 37 percent believe abortion should be legal in the second trimester and just 22 percent say it should be legal in the third trimester.

Welcome to Thunderdome. When Joe Biden ran for president, he did the same thing he always does when he does anything: invented an obviously fictional story casting himself as a rescuing hero. In his framing of the situation, he — a lifelong politician who has demonstrated nothing but constant ambition for the White House — was a reluctant candidate pulled from the sidelines by the roaming threat of a dangerous Orange Man and his tiki-torch-carrying supporters in Charlottesville. Biden wasn’t running because he’d been trying to get the job for decades; he had the nobler purpose of healing the soul of the nation.

“If there’s anyone who deserves impeachment, it's Alejandro Mayorkas. Not only has he failed to enforce the law, he’s violated his oath of office with impunity.” Greg Abbott is not mincing words. The Republican governor of Texas is at the center of the biggest issue on the minds of many 2024 voters — the border, where his policy clashes with Joe Biden’s White House and administration have become a focal point for Republican candidates nationwide and will be a major part of the 2024 Trump campaign. Multiple polls show the border/migrant issue to be top of mind for voters, especially for Republican-leaning independent voters — more on that below.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed to shock a CNN reporter when he said in a recent interview that he could make the argument that President Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than former president Donald Trump. “Him trying to overthrow the election clearly is a threat to democracy,” Kennedy said about Trump. “But the question was, who is a worse threat to democracy and what I would say is... I’m not going to answer that question, but I can argue that President Biden is.”Kennedy pointed out that he recently won a court case in which he accused the Biden administration of weaponizing federal agencies to censor the political speech of Americans.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week I want you to consider: what’s the biggest 2024 question for Democrats? You might assume that it’s Joe Biden’s age, infirmity and feeblemindedness — particularly after the Robert Hur report dropped last week. It certainly set the White House and the Biden campaign on edge — and now they’re dealing with the thorny question of whether they should release the transcript of Hur’s interviews with the president. On the one hand, it could provide information useful to Democrats pushing back against critics — see, he was just distracted by Israel, he just botched a few dates, Joe’s fine!

Welcome to Thunderdome, where the consensus view is that Ronna Romney McDaniel is a disaster. The longest tenured RNC chair in a century, McDaniel has navigated the Republican Party through one disappointing election after another, holding on to power simply because Donald Trump wants her to have the job and no one strongly qualified has chosen to challenge her for it. On the podcast today, we talk about McDaniel’s prospects, whether the RNC should ditch her, Nikki Haley’s social media botch and the rise of third-party threats to make 2024 even more chaotic. Subscribe and listen here! The blame for the off year falls on Ronna Is this the one thing Vivek got right?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Bobby Kennedy, is a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer. He's also an environmentalist lawyer, progressive talk-show host, and near-embodiment of horseshoe theory, having become something of a pin-up for Covid-era cranks. According to Scientific American, this scion of Camelot has, since 2005, "promoted anti-vaccine propaganda completely unconnected to reality." According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, his Children's Health Defense organization claims "unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children" and condemns the parents of vaccinated children for "enrolling their kids in experimental Covid vaccine trials." On Sunday, Kennedy Jr.