Bobby Kennedy Jr. is still talking. Up in the hills of Los Angeles, in a house studded with family memorabilia, the scion of the Kennedy clan and Democratic presidential candidate has been expounding for 90 minutes on everything from Latin American populism to the CIA, from cryptocurrency to the war in Ukraine. His phone is pinging with messages from politicians and Twitter celebrities, and he needs to jump on a flight to Las Vegas, where he’ll address a tech convention. But Kennedy waves off his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, as she pops into the living room to remind him he still needs to pack. He wants to talk about how people are finally listening to him. “I am constantly surprised by it,” Kennedy says of the attention to his long-shot campaign. “It’s just very weird.”
Weird is one word for Kennedy’s bid, which has won support from figures as disparate as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Alicia Silverstone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It’s a guerrilla operation staffed by longtime friends and colleagues from Kennedy’s many previous lives—as an environmental lawyer, prolific author, master falconer, Hollywood husband, and antivaccine crusader. So far, the candidate has spent more time chatting on podcasts and livestreams than visiting with voters. Instead of dropping in on New Hampshire coffee shops, he’s given a speech at a Miami Bitcoin conference, appeared on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, and is slated to be interviewed on June 14 on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast.
More striking than the medium is the message—a kind of MAGA for Democrats that stands in stark contrast to the optimism that
