Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Donald John Trump: More in common than you might think

Robert and Donald, two men with different dispositions, public policy positions, and disparate pasts, are also quite similar in that they represent, wholeheartedly, what America used to be, what it ought to be, and what it still can be: that is, a safe-haven for self-expression, individuality, and entrepreneurship.

Their stories, while dissimilar, also have commonalities. 

Frederick Trump, Donald’s grandfather, emigrated from Germany in 1885; he worked as a barber, and then, like most men of his time, left the big city for the untamed west where he established a saloon and brothel. Donald’s grandmother started the Trump organization in Queens; his father, Fred, expanded the business into low budget housing; and Donald, ever the ambitious type, and with the idealism and optimism common among youth, single handedly transformed the Trump organization’s low budget brand into the bombast of luxury high rise buildings that reshaped the New York City skyline.

In the mid-80’s, in perhaps his most iconic moment, Donald chided and berated Ed Koch’s incompetent management, proving once again, and perhaps once and for all, that if you want something done right then you ought to ask an entrepreneur. He convinced Koch to let him fix the city-owned ice rink, a project that Koch had been fiddling with for years; and after fixing it within months he instantaneously became a media darling; so much so that in the golden age of the 80’s Donald was the hero of New York City, an entrepreneur with the “Midas Touch,” with a golden family, living on top of a golden city, in his golden penthouse suite; nothing could go wrong, and all the glamour and glory he could ever want — and that which he didn’t want — followed him into the depths of the decade.

In 1849, 40 years before Frederick Trump arrived on our shores, a good and decent man named Patrick Kennedy, a descendent of Irish nobility, traveled from Ireland to America in search of opportunity and prosperity; Patrick’s son, P.J. Kennedy, like Frederick, was a saloon owner who later became a state legislator in Massachusetts; soon after his son, Joseph, built a substantial fortune on Wall Street and the Kennedy name became world renowned.

And so with the gift of Irish charm and storytelling, the Kennedys emerged as America’s favorite political dynasty. Indeed, there was always something deeply romantic about JFK’s Camelot, for even those who disagreed with their policy proposals respected them for who they really were: good men who loved their country, who fought for liberty, who valued the Constitution on which our nation was founded, and who were unafraid to take on the corrupt. Like the ancestors of that old Irish clan from which they came, they symbolize goodness and truth and love and liberty.

So perhaps we should not be surprised that in America’s darkest hour a Kennedy has materialized, yet again, to battle the centralized actors, the oligarchical pharmaceutical companies, the global censorship, and the plutocracy that is emerging from the dystopian halls of the WEF. And similar to his father, and much to the chagrin of the establishment, Robert is positioning himself on that threshold between love and truth, and the manipulation and prevarication of those who seek to gain power through hate and division.

Trump, while he may lack the charm of an Irish aristocrat; nevertheless, won over the hearts and minds of millions. His fearless and bombastic disposition; his courage, wit, and rugged individualism have been an inspiration to those who want a champion who’s willing to kick over a few tables inside Washington’s snooty, supercilious, politburo; he’s a no-nonsense businessman, a symbol of production, and a real estate developer whose much too busy to care about the refined sensibilities of polite society, and/or some half-wit paper-pushing academic promulgating anti-enlightenment dogma at a third-rate diploma mill. Like most Americans, he has no tolerance for political correctness, lists of speech, safe spaces, or nimini-piminy personalities.

Sometimes he’s crude, sometimes rude, but when the dust settles, we know this wealthy New Yorker, like the populist Theodore Roosevelt, will deliver the unvarnished truth. He’s as American as American can be. There are those who say he’s too rugged, too inconsiderate, and too unelectable; and yes, Donald is probably more like his wild west grandfather than his MIT uncle, but there is no denying he’s as gifted and talented as both. In short, he’s become the epitome of Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena.”

The policy solutions these two men propose are quite different, but both are populists; both are champions of capitalists, farmers, factory workers, and perhaps more importantly, the individualism that built America; and both, if elected, would protect our civil liberties and free markets. Let’s hope for the sake of our country, and for Earth’s last bastion of liberty, that one of these two patriots wins the presidency.

Eireahmon Feidhlim Ruaidhri is an Irish/American Attorney with an LL.B and LL.M from the University of London.

Photo montage by Monica Showalter with use of image by Daniel Schwen, via Wikimedia // CC BY-SA 4.0, and public domain images from the White House, and OpenClipart