Donald Trump has added former White House hopefuls Robert F. Kennedy Jnr and Tulsi Gabbard to his transition team if he wins November’s US presidential election, his campaign said on Tuesday.
Kennedy and Gabbard hail from outside the Republican Party sphere where former president Trump draws most of his support.
“As president Trump’s broad coalition of supporters and endorsers expands across partisan lines, we are proud that Robert F. Kennedy Jnr and Tulsi Gabbard have been added to the Trump/Vance Transition team,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Kennedy, 70, an environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist and descendant of a Democratic political dynasty, was running as an independent presidential candidate until he suspended his campaign last week and endorsed Trump.
He joined the race for the White House as a Democratic challenger to US President Joe Biden before switching to run as an independent.
A former Democratic congresswoman, Gabbard ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. She left the party in 2022 to become an independent.
Increasingly critical of Biden and his administration, she is now popular among conservatives, frequently appearing as a guest on far-right television and radio programmes.
In an interview posted on X on Monday, Kennedy told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson he had been asked to join Trump’s transition team “to help pick the people who will be running the government”.
In exchange for endorsing Trump, Kennedy is hoping for a job in a potential Trump administration, a super PAC supporting Kennedy told Reuters last week.
Strategists have said it was unclear how Kennedy’s endorsement would help Trump, who is in a tight contest with Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Voter interest in Kennedy waned this summer as Trump survived an assassination attempt and Biden passed the campaign torch to Harris.
Also on Tuesday, Trump said he had “reached an agreement” for a September 10 debate with Harris, two days after he threatened to pull out.
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Kamala Harris confirmed as Democratic presidential nominee after ceremonial roll-call
Kamala Harris confirmed as Democratic presidential nominee after ceremonial roll-call
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that the rivals had agreed that the ABC showdown would run under the same rules as CNN’s June 27 debate, with no studio audience and each candidate’s microphone muted when the other is speaking.
Calling ABC “by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business”, Trump said the network had given him assurances that the debate in Philadelphia would be “fair and equitable”.
But the Harris campaign – which had been pushing for a clash with microphones switched on throughout – responded by accusing Trump of moving the goalposts and was coy about whether it was accepting the terms.
“Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates – but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!” the Harris campaign said in a statement.
Meanwhile, more than 200 employees for four previous Republican presidential nominees have endorsed Harris’ White House bid, cautioning that the notion of a second term for Republican nominee Trump is “simply untenable” and “will hurt real, everyday people”.
In an open letter, first written about on Monday by USA Today newspaper, 238 people who worked for former President George H.W. Bush, former President George W. Bush, former Arizona Senator John McCain and Utah Senator Mitt Romney call on their fellow “moderate Republicans and conservative independents” to join them in backing Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, over Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.
“Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz,” the Republicans wrote, noting the significance of a handful of battleground states that proved crucial to Democrat Joe Biden’s slim margin of victory in 2020.
“That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”
Signatories include Reed Galen, a George W. Bush and McCain campaign alum who co-founded the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, and Olivia Troye, a former members of George W. Bush’s staff and homeland security adviser to Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence. The range of jobs represented runs the gamut from chief of staff to intern.
“Another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership,” the signatories warn, “this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions.”
The letter goes on to warn that “broad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardised as Trump and his acolyte J.D. Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies”.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the letter “hilarious because nobody knows who these people are”.
“They would rather see the country burn down than to see President Trump successfully return to the White House to Make America Great Again,” Cheung said.
Many of the same signatories also issued a letter in 2020 supporting Biden’s candidacy over Trump.
Additional reporting by Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
