Fox host Sean Hannity pushed back on a guest Thursday discussing if Republican voters would still be supporting Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after exposing his “radical” record.
The Harris Poll Chairman Mark Penn appeared on “Hannity” to discuss the debate of how Kennedy could be impacting the 2024 election since his switch to the Independent ticket. Following Hannity showing a clip where Kennedy discussed that he would support abortion up till full term, the Fox host questioned Penn on who Kennedy would most likely be pulling votes from in a three person race with President Joe Biden and presumptive GOP presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. (RELATED: RFK Jr. Is Poised To Tilt The Presidential Race — But It’s Still Not Clear To Whom)
“There’s been a lot of speculation, will RFK Jr. help Republicans or help Democrats? Help Biden or help Trump? Okay, some conservatives kind of liked his position on vaccines, besides that I would say that this is probably even a little to the left of Joe Biden. So in a three-person race, who is he more likely to take votes from?” Hannity questioned.
“Well I think right now when you look at the polls, actually for a kook he’s pretty well liked. He’s taken about 15% of the vote, and he’s taking it almost equally from both. Because he’s got a lot of airtime with conservatives, as you point out, on vaccines and some of these issues. Maybe a point more from Biden, but very close, pretty equal. And whether or not people find out the rest of his views and how it plays out, they don’t know much right now,” Penn responded.
Hannity, however, jumped in to push back against Penn’s predictions, asking if Republicans would still be voting for Kennedy after they discovered his views. As Hannity spoke the show could be seen scrolling through Kennedy’s history such as blaming “America for causing 9/11,” calling “Fidel Castro ‘incredibly charming,'” stating that it’s a “‘sin’ for people not to address global warming,” and his support of “eliminating fracking.”
“Mark, let me interrupt if I may. When conservatives and Republicans — I’m scrolling his positions on the screen, I just mentioned the most radical left-wing positions. When Republicans learn what I’m now — we’ve now done our vetting of RFK,” Hannity jumped in.
“By the way I liked him, he won’t come on the show anymore. They won’t even return our calls to come on the show. I’ve offered to talk to him, I’ll be fair to him — I was fair to him during a town hall. He won’t come on because he doesn’t want his record to be exposed. So the reality is, you’re telling me that when Republicans around the country know what I’m now putting on the screen — you’re saying to me you think there’ll be Republicans voting for RFK? I say, you are dead wrong.”
“No, I think that it’ll probably drop in half if Republicans learn the views. Right now they don’t know these things. And there’s a group of Republicans who sorta don’t like anybody and he’s now the alternative to the alternative. So he’s got some votes, but I agree with you, he would lose a lot of Republican votes if this screen that you’re putting up really got out and got broadcast[ed],” Penn stated.
In a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released this week, 1,000 registered voters were asked about choosing who their support would go to in a hypothetical election including Kennedy, Trump, and Biden as some of the options. Data showed that both Trump and Biden tied with 37%, as 8% went towards Kennedy, and 5% claiming their support would be going towards other third-party contenders.
With a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, the survey additionally found that nearly 24% of voters stated they might change their minds prior to the November election, with 12% stating they had not made a choice yet, according to the USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll.