Trump vs. RFK Jr.: How they compare on policy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former environmental activist who ran in the Democratic presidential primary before launching his independent bid and ultimately dropped out to endorse the Republican nominee, has joined forces with former president Donald Trump as an honorary co-chair of his presidential transition team. On the campaign trail, Kennedy and Trump often traded insults at one another, with personal attacks escalating earlier this year as some polls suggested that Kennedy’s campaign could siphon votes from both Trump and President Joe Biden. Kennedy called Trump a “terrible president” on a podcast just last month, and has ridiculed his policies. Trump, by contrast, has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” and turned the phrase, “Drill, baby, drill,” into a campaign slogan. “If I were in the offshore wind industry, I would probably be pretty, pretty nervous,” Trump told executives at the dinner. “My position on fracking is that fracking should have to internalize its own costs,” Kennedy said in an interview on CNBC in February 2024. So what I say is it’s not an outright ban on it, but let’s make them pay, internalize their costs.” Coronavirus vaccines Kennedy is an outspoken vaccine critic who has questioned their efficacy and expressed opposition to vaccine mandates. Kennedy has fought against schools mandating them, and Trump has said repeatedly on the campaign trail he would cut funding for schools that do. However, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump encouraged Americans to get vaccinated against the virus and repeatedly touted the success of “Operation Warp Speed” — a Trump-era program that aimed to speed up coronavirus vaccine development in 2020. “But take credit, because we saved tens of millions of lives.” Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, unsuccessfully brought forward legal action challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency authorization of coronavirus vaccines in December 2020, while Trump was still president. Kennedy has also been critical of Operation Warp Speed and criticized both Trump and Biden for lockdowns during the pandemic, saying in an interview last month that “both of them ravaged American democracy and the republic.” Raising the minimum wage Trump has held mixed opinions on raising the minimum wage. As a candidate in 2015 and 2016, Trump said in interviews he opposed the hike but later said he was open to raising the federal minimum wage. By August 2016, his campaign had claimed that Trump supported a federal minimum wage increase to $10 an hour, but that states should set their own minimum wage as appropriate. Advertisement During a debate against Biden in 2020, Trump initially said minimum wage hikes are an issue that should be left to states to decide, but when pressed by the moderator on the issue, he later said he would consider raising the federal minimum wage. “He said we have to help our small businesses by raising the minimum wage — that’s not helping,” Trump said of Biden, who committed to a $15 per hour minimum wage, at the time. Every state is different.” Kennedy campaigned on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, saying it “will raise the floor on all wages and return a share of productivity growth back to workers.” Student loans Amid the pandemic in March 2020, the Trump administration temporarily waived interest on federal student loans and allowed student loan borrowers to suspend their payments altogether. Advertisement Kennedy campaigned to “make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and cut interest rates on student loans to zero.” “Funding higher education is not an entitlement program, it is an investment in America’s future, just as with infrastructure and environment,” Kennedy said on X after Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was struck down by the Supreme Court. “Let’s invest in America’s young people instead of in the forever wars.” As a candidate in 2016, Trump supported capping student loan repayments based on income and forgiving loans after payments were made for 15 years, but Trump’s student loan plan for 2024 remains unclear. At a rally in Wisconsin in June, Trump said “students aren’t buying” Biden’s debt forgiveness plan, adding that the president had been “rebuked” by the court system over the plan “and then he did it again.” Abortion and child care Kennedy and Trump have nuanced views on both abortion access and the role of the federal government to assist with child care. Advertisement Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, which gave individual states the power to decide on whether to provide abortions, and called it “a great victory” but the former president has been vague on his abortion position since then. But in an interview with the Daily Mail on Thursday, Trump said Florida’s six-week ban on abortion (which went into effect earlier this year) was too short, and that he wanted “more than six weeks.” Afterward, Trump’s campaign sought to position him in a neutral way with regard to the ballot measure. Advertisement Kennedy, who sent mixed signals about his position on abortion during the campaign, had previously said that he thought abortion should be allowed at full term, but he later reversed his position after blowback from conservative supporters and he said he supported abortion until “the baby is viable outside the womb.” Both Kennedy and Trump have supported increasing the child tax credit, but Trump has not directly stated how he would ease child care costs. During the June presidential debate, Trump declined to answer what he would do to make child care more affordable, instead pivoting to respond to Biden’s criticism about his alleged insults against servicemembers killed in action. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/30/trump-rfk-jr-policy-differences/