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Pro-Trump RFK Jr. Campaign Staff Member Fired for ‘Misrepresentation’: Report
Rita Palma, a Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidential campaign New York State staffer and pro-Trump election denier who attended the pre-insurrection January 6, 2021 rally, has been terminated for “misrepresentation,” according to multiple news outlets and the campaign.
Palma made headlines earlier this week when unearthed video of her promoting a plan to “get rid” of President Joe Biden to help elect Donald Trump went viral.
Palma was identified as the campaign’s New York State director, but RFK Jr.’s national campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, on social media claimed Palma is “a ballot access consultant” and distanced the campaign from Palma’s remarks, saying she was “speaking as a private citizen and her statements in no way reflect campaign strategy.”
Fox Kennedy, CNN reports, “said on Wednesday that New York campaign staff member Rita Palma was fired after she told GOP voters in a meeting last week that preventing President Joe Biden’s victory was her ‘number one priority’ and encouraged them to volunteer for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.”
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Fox Kennedy Wednesday night, in response to an RFK Jr. supporter angered by Palma’s remarks, wrote on X: “We terminated her contract for misrepresentation immediately upon seeing the longer video in which she gave an inaccurate job title and described a conversation that did not happen.”
Palma had told Kennedy supporters the goal is to use RFK. Jr. to block President Joe Biden from obtaining 270 Electoral College votes, throw the election to the Republican-majority House of Representatives, which she said would put Trump back in the White House. She also declared President Joe Biden the “enemy” of both the Trump voter and the “Bobby” Kennedy voter.
“We’re all on the same team right now, and we’ll be on the same team later, as long as Trump or Kennedy wins,” Palma said, CNN had reported. “If it’s Trump vs. Biden, Biden wins. Biden wins six days, seven days a week. With Bobby in the mix, anything can happen.”
Responding to the video, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison wrote: “As we have been saying… RFK Jr. = Trump,” and added, “They share the same donors… the same extremist agenda.”
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Earlier this week CNN’s KFile reported Palma “previously promoted false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and attended ‘Stop the Steal’ rallies after the election, including the rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC, that preceded the deadly riot at the US Capitol.”
She “also repeatedly called Trump her ‘favorite president,’ according to tweets along with comments she posted on the conservative social media site Parler that have since been made private.”
On Wednesday, Vanity Fair‘s Eric Lutz wrote, “The big question here is whether Kennedy is knowingly playing into Trump narratives, or if he’s actually buying into some of this as a noted conspiracy theorist himself.”
“But whether this is gullibility or bad faith, the effect in November could be the same: to create chaos in November that could ultimately help Trump, an aspiring authoritarian, reclaim the White House. ‘RFK Jr.’s campaign isn’t building a plan or a strategy to get 270 electoral votes,’ Matt Corridoni, spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, told CNN. ‘They’re building one to help Trump return to the Oval Office.'”
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