Now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is backing Donald Trump, he wants people to rethink the Republican’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
The long-shot presidential candidate turned to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday morning to share a lengthy reinterpretation of the right-wing’s motto, which has long been read as Trump’s shorthand to turn back the clock on rights to reproductive freedom, the social welfare system, immigration access, and more.
In a post that proclaimed to detail “what ‘MAGA’ really means,” RFK wrote, “The phrase has troubled liberals who think it is a call for a return to an America before civil rights, gay rights, and women’s rights,” before offering a “more generous interpretation” of the phrase.
Claiming his definition of MAGA was “one that is truer to my experience of Donald Trump as he is today,” the Kennedy family scion said. “‘Make America Great Again’ recalls a nation brimming with vitality, with a can-do spirit, with hope and a belief in itself.”
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“It was an America that was beginning to confront its darker shadows, could acknowledge the injustice in its past and present, yet at the same time could celebrate its successes,” he went on.
“It was a nation of broad prosperity, the world’s most vibrant middle class, and a idealistic belief (though not consistently applied) in freedom, justice, and democracy,” Kennedy continued. “It was a nation that led the world in innovation, productivity, and technology. And it was the healthiest country in the world.”
“I have talked to many Trump supporters. I have talked with his inner circle. I have talked to the man himself,” he concluded. “This is the America they want to restore.”
Though RFK offered his own take on the MAGA movement on Sunday, former president Trump’s official platform, known as “Agenda 47,” offers a blueprint for enacting sweeping reforms on American progress.
The platform promises to weed out “wokeness” from the American education system, push back rights for the LGBTQ+ community, and close the border to refugees and asylum seekers, among other things.
