RFK Jr. thanks God for Trump, says Charlie Kirk is 'looking down' on RNC

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thanked God for President Donald Trump and said he believes late conservative activist Charlie Kirk was “looking down” on the GOP's midterm convention as he reflected on his transition to the Republican Party.

Kennedy was one of several speakers to address the Republican National Midterm Convention Thursday. Kennedy, who ran for president as a Democrat before launching an independent campaign and ultimately suspending his bid to endorse Trump in 2024, spent his speech describing what he sees as the changes in the Democratic Party throughout his lifetime and how he unexpectedly found common ground with Trump.

Noting that his speech occurred on the first anniversary of the murder of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, he addressed the solemn occasion in his remarks, recalling how he came to endorse Trump and eventually appeared on stage with him at a TPUSA rally. Kennedy declared: “That moment would never have happened without my friend Charlie Kirk.”

After remembering Kirk as someone who “believed that people from all different political traditions could find common ground in their love of country” and who realized that “the only way that we were going to rescue our country is if we started talking to each other and having congenial conversations,” Kennedy said, “I like to believe that Charlie is looking down on all of us now and … seeing the seeds that he planted.”

“Charlie played a critical and indispensable role in bringing me and President Trump together,” Kennedy asserted. “I am so grateful to God for giving our country a leader like this.” 

Kennedy then turned to his reasons for leaving the Democratic Party, lamenting that the Democrats, whom he had supported his whole life, began to depart from their longstanding principles during the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing draconian worship bans and social distancing measures.

Kennedy alleged that the Democrats, whom he had supported for his whole life, began to depart from their longstanding principles during the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing worship restrictions and social distancing for the stated purpose of combating the spread of the disease. “Democrats violated the third leg of the First Amendment, the freedom to worship,” he lamented. “They closed every church in our country for a year.” 

“In a single year, my party obliterated 250 years of constitutional guarantees,” he said. “The party of ‘my body, my choice’ forced citizens to wear masks and to submit to invasive and intrusive medical interventions against their own wills.” 

Kennedy, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, maintained that “neither my father nor my uncle would recognize the Democratic Party of today.” He identified his campaign for the Democratic nomination as an attempt to return his party to its “bedrock values.” 

In addition to taking issue with the positions his former party embraced during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy criticized what he described as the Democrats’ actions ahead of the 2024 presidential election and the events that ultimately led to President Joe Biden ending his reelection campaign. The election season culminated with Biden’s replacement as the Democratic nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris.

“No voter ever cast a primary ballot for Kamala Harris. No elected delegate was ever consulted,” he recalled.

“The party of ‘No Kings’ simply anointed a queen,” he quipped, referring to the “No Kings” rallies organized to demonstrate opposition to Trump.

Kennedy characterized Harris as a candidate “hand-picked by secretive party elites who nobody even knows who they were,” calling them “faceless guys with lanyards who are calling all the shots from the upper decks of that convention center.”

“They canceled the convention, and they held a coronation,” he added. 

Kennedy detailed how, shortly after Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, he called Kennedy to request a meeting. “I realized that everything that I had heard about President Trump, everything I believed about him from the mainstream media, was a lie.” 

Kennedy praised Trump as a “self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues” as well as “a near-reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies.” 

“I found a man who cared deeply about transparency in government, who believed in protecting free speech more than anything and the entire United States Constitution. We talked about lowering drug prices, supporting farmers, ranchers, standing up for working Americans, restoring law and order, and protecting public safety and security and national safety as well,” Kennedy recounted. “I realized that many of the foundational values of the Democratic Party had found a new home, and it was called the Republican Party.”