A Journey to the Center of RFK Jr.’s Dark, Public Slack Channel

The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign has a public Slack channel—and they don’t seem to care who joins it.

They probably should.

The link is being shared on Twitter. It doesn’t have any barriers to entry. And they texted an invitation—accidentally, it seems—to a reporter from The Daily Beast.

What’s even more odd about the longshot campaign so halfheartedly protecting its communications is that inside that Slack channel, which the campaign is effectively endorsing by promoting it, there are a number of cringeworthy exchanges and grim portraits of Kennedy’s supporter base.

The channel, which has more than 800 members, is primarily composed of volunteers and supporters who have been elevated to leadership positions. Whether those labeled as leadership are paid or unpaid is unclear. Members labeled as leadership had posted that the space would be moderated.

The success of that moderation, however—what’s acceptable and what’s not—seems murky.

Much of the Slack is used as a sounding board for supporters’ thinking on how to sell Kennedy to voters—and sometimes, where they think he’s falling short.

In one exchange, a user under the name “Natasha,” labeled as the “Media Coordinator / Midwest Leadership,” was publicly fretting about conservative Black journalist Candace Owens announcing she was inviting Kennedy on her show. One user said it’d be great. But the coordinator insisted it’s not something to be done before the primary. She argued it’d maybe help get “some Trumpers during the general but it’s a potential liability before the primary.”

“It’s no problem with going on totally crazy extreme shows… After the primaries,” she added. “It’s kind of like getting into the club with your fake ID… you’re not going to turn up until you’re sure you’re past the door man, understand?”

Natasha argued Kennedy would need to do more interviews with Black journalists before the primary in order to be electable, but she insisted Kennedy should be selective.

“The only other black interviewer he has had so far was with CNN and I feel like this is going to be a red line for a lot of people… and if he blows this, by going on an ‘uncle Tom’ black show first before any other independent black hosts since the campaign started, he might blow the whole election… I’m dead serious here,” the media coordinator wrote.

One user twice suggested Kennedy do an interview with Kanye West, but later said he was joking. Steve Harvey, Sway in the Morning, and Joe Budden were other suggestions.

In a number of other instances, a popular topic of conversation was how to fix the perception that Kennedy was anti-vax. In one thread with more than a hundred replies, a user said “this is clearly the pivotal issue of his campaign” and that “thus far his handling of the opposition has not been ideal.”

The solution, echoed below in the comments, was that Kennedy needed to be rebranded as a “vaccine safety expert.” (Users weren’t especially skeptical of Kennedy’s outright position that vaccines pose medical risks like autism.)

“My experience is that my lefty friends are closed to him only bc of the vaccine issue…” another user wrote. “​​Maybe instead of: He believes in vaccine safety, we can make it more broad. He believes in the safety of all pharmaceutical products.”

In another thread posted after Kennedy’s interview with Joe Rogan—where he talked extensively about vaccines—other supporters worried he might have talked about vaccines too much, while some insisted that “the more people who hear his reasonable arguments and evidence, the more people will vote for him.”

Users broadly compared vaccines to cigarettes, opioids, and 1900s-era suggestions that household cleaners could be used as a vaginal douche. Some echoed the autism claims outright, adding their own conspiracies into the mix, like one that bioweapons tech in vaccines allegedly causing an increase of autism in African American children.

Plenty of the space is actively used for organizing support for Kennedy, like a push to walk in Fourth of July parades around the country, which happened this past weekend. There’s also plenty of leadership team members telling supporters who live in states with closed-party primaries that they must be registered as a Democrat in order to vote for Kennedy in the primaries next year.

At the top of one “welcome” channel, a user listed as “Sophia Erik - Campaign Kennedy24 Contact,” who is also one of the listed owners of the Slack, said the space would be used “to share campaign missions with volunteers,” including “High priority missions the campaign needs our HELP for.”

“I belong to the campaign and am bridging communication the [sic] campaign and the volunteers. I am here to hear, see and understand your needs and wants and forward your feedback and experiences on everything ‘Bobby,’” she wrote.

In a statement, the Kennedy campaign acknowledged helping to create the channel, but attempted to distance themselves from the space, telling The Daily Beast in a statement that the Slack channel is “just one of many community groups that have self-organized on Slack with the support of the campaign but they do not represent the campaign in any official way.”

“We obviously cannot comment on the views of Mr. Kennedy’s more than 100,000 volunteers or supporters.”

The campaign also repeatedly declined to define Erik’s role on the campaign—and to answer what the rationale was for sharing the Slack publicly if it was not representative of the campaign itself.

After The Daily Beast reached out for comment on the matter, the resident reporter in the Slack was removed from channels one-by-one, and the meme channel was deleted altogether, before the reporter’s account was outright deactivated.

A cursory glance shows quick requests here and there for help on quick tasks, like asking for help formatting a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or help with social media. Sometimes users coordinated to “fact check” posts online criticizing Kennedy’s record.

But the Slack channel also includes a number of other less professional, potentially more embarrassing, topics. There is a meme channel, which consists of a mix of posts about the war in Ukraine, images of Biden going up against Kennedy, memes mocking transgender people and other sentiments. There are also channels for supporters to organize by region and a channel for “random” posts, among others.

Kennedy’s viral moments often inspire breakout conversations. The video of Kennedy doing pushups with the caption caused quite a ruckus on his slack channel. As did YouTube censoring an interview between Kenendy and podcaster Jordan Peterson over vaccine misinformation.

It’s not unusual for campaigns to have Slack channels for volunteers and volunteer coordinators. It is unusual, however, for them to be shared so casually with the public.

The slipup of sending an invitation directly to a reporter was perhaps a long time coming.

When The Daily Beast tried to make contact with the Kennedy campaign in March to arrange an interview, it was difficult to locate an actual campaign contact—a misstep many campaigns make. A treasurer for the campaign did not respond to an email inquiring about a campaign contact. A spokesperson for Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vax group, did respond, but said they would “inquire with his CA team.”

Nothing came of that. So, The Daily Beast tried contacting a generic number on their site with the phrase “Hello Bobby!”—which was what the campaign individuals to write in order to get in touch. After a generic response saying someone would “be in touch soon,” the reporter texted two more times to no response.

(It’s common for reporters to sign up for generic campaign text and email updates as a means of tracking campaign messaging.)

This Daily Beast reporter finally got in touch with the campaign in April via email. The campaign ultimately did not follow through on arranging an interview.

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But eventually, this reporter received from someone who was “here to point you in the right direction for the Kennedy campaign.” The text offered three links: one to donate, one to volunteer, and one to a Slack channel titled the “Kennedy24 Slack Workspace.”

The channel was also shared publicly on Twitter at least two other times by top Kennedy supporters. (One user responded to one of the Twitter posts by saying, “Please create a more secure channel to work with supporters.”)

In at least one instance in May, someone trolling the Kennedy campaign joined and interrupted a video call that was organized in the group in Slack. The infiltrator shared apparently pornographic images to the screen for all to see. “It was a great meeting until the hackers arrived,” one supporter posted afterwards.

Still, as of July, it took no donation, pledge of allegiance, or commitment to volunteer in order to join the Slack group, where such Zoom links were shared.

Kennedy is an overwhelming longshot for the Democratic nomination. Head-to-head among Democratic voters, he polls at 17 percent against President Joe Biden, who polls at 70 percent.

But as Kennedy’s campaign soldiers on, other fandoms have emerged, including those outside of the campaign’s official organizing space. A page called “Bobby Bros,” which was frequently alluded to in the Slack, has become a bit of a catchphrase for Kennedy supporters.

The Bobby Bros group on Instagram posts a series of pro-Kennedy memes and imagery, like one meme of a text exchange where the first texter asked, “Do you like Biden or trump?”

The other responded, “RFK JR IN 2024, BEEYATCH!”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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