A campaign staffer working for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s independent presidential bid recently raised the prospect of blocking President Joe Biden from being re-elected by sending the election to the House of Representatives, where House members could elect former President Donald Trump, instead.
Rita Palma, a longtime New York-based critic of vaccination mandates, appears in a recently uploaded video to be giving a presentation aimed at persuading Republican voters to help Kennedy qualify for the state’s presidential ballot this fall. She identifies herself in the video as the campaign’s New York state director, though the campaign said Monday that she is a "ballot access consultant" and that her comments don't reflect overall campaign strategy.
In those comments, Palma says that she knocked on doors for Trump's campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and has "more Trump T-shirts than I do Bobby Kennedy T-shirts" but that Trump "lost" her because of "the vaccines."
Palma goes on to declare Biden the "mutual enemy" of the Trump and Kennedy voter and says her "No. 1 priority" is depriving Biden of his re-election, not helping Kennedy win.
"Whether you support Bobby or Trump, we all oppose Biden. And my thoughts are that, you know, that’s the No. 1 priority in the country," she says in the video.
And she outlines a specific way to do just that. While national Democrats focus on cutting Kennedy down in key swing states that typically decide elections, Palma pitches the prospect of depriving Biden of wins in blue states like New York. That, according to Palma, could keep both Trump and Biden short of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidential election, leaving the choice to the currently GOP-controlled House, which she says would choose Trump.
In a statement, Kennedy campaign manager Amaryllis Fox described Palma as a "ballot access consultant responsible for scheduling volunteer shifts for our upcoming signature collection drive in the Empire State" and said it should be no surprise that different Kennedy backers come from different ends of the ideological spectrum.
“As an independent movement, our supporters, volunteers, and field organizers come from all sides of the political spectrum and their reasons for supporting Mr. Kennedy are as disparate as their backgrounds,” the campaign statement said.
“She is not involved in electoral strategy, nationally or in New York. This was not a campaign event. Palma was speaking as a private citizen and her statements in no way reflect the strategy of the Kennedy campaign, which is to win the White House with votes from former Trump and Biden supporters alike," the statement continued.
The video once again highlights how the presence of Kennedy and other third-party contenders in the presidential election could scramble the outcome. Previously, NBC News reported that No Labels last year was floating the prospect of its presidential efforts’ sending the election to the House. The organization ultimately decided not to field a ticket.
In the video, Palma describes her outlook: "I’m going to vote for Bobby. However, if Trump — if I wake up Nov. 6 and Trump wins, I’m not going to be overly upset. But if Biden wins, we’re all going to be terribly upset, because he’s ruining America, and the people that control him are ruining our country. "
She called her blue-state 2024 strategy "Make Your Republican Vote Count," one she said she started preaching well before she joined the Kennedy campaign.
"If Republicans accepted the fact that New York, Maryland, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, most of the Northeast is going to go blue, why wouldn’t we put our vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and ... give those 28 electoral votes [in New York] to Bobby rather than to Biden?" Palma says in the video.
"If it's a Republican Congress, they'll pick Trump, so we're rid of Biden," she says.
"All we need is, like, four blue states and there's no way he can get in," she adds, speaking about Biden.
As she speaks, Palma stands in front of a slideshow that outlines a path to "block Biden from winning the presidency #1 priority," which includes both supporting Kennedy and also "Go to Pennsylvania to help Trump."
CNN first reported on the existence of the video, a truncated version of which has been making the rounds on social media Monday and drawing criticism from Democrats.
NBC News obtained a 36-minute version of the video from a source who downloaded it before it was deleted from YouTube. The source said the YouTube description for the video said it took place at a church in Poughkeepsie and was uploaded Friday. The video has a small handful of cuts in it, but it includes fuller conversation than the short version published to social media Monday, and it includes a question-and-answer session with attendees.
Palma confirmed the authenticity of the video to CNN. She requested that NBC News send her questions by text message and hadn't yet replied to a request for comment.
In the video, Palma says that when the Kennedy campaign hired her, she told it she wouldn't stop making this specific appeal, admitting it is an "unusual campaign message."
"If I’m allowed to preach that, if I’m allowed to, you know, get that message out there, then yeah, I will definitely work for the campaign. But I don’t want to be restricted in what I say, because I think this is a really winning strategy," she says she told the person hiring her for a role on the campaign.
"And my boss said, well, OK, you know, you have to. He suggested I isolate it to certain markets, which of course I do. I don't go into Manhattan talking about this," Palma says.
Fox, the Kennedy campaign manager, added in her statement that it's "looking into whether any misrepresentations were made."
"Our campaign champions freedom of speech for all our supporters, volunteers, contractors and staff, as long as they do not claim to speak on our behalf," she continued.
Palma also didn’t answer a question from NBC News about whether she's serving as the New York state director, as she claims in the video, or as a ballot access consultant, as the campaign claims. She's listed as attending a "private reception" for donors in Melville, New York, featuring Kennedy later this month.
