Presidential candidate and brain worm survivor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “plans to take part in the presidential debates” later this year and “meets every threshold to warrant his participation,” his campaign spokeswoman told The Post.
“This week, Mr. Kennedy posted an open letter on X challenging President Trump to a debate while they are both at the Libertarian Convention later this month,” added campaign Press Secretary Stephanie Spear.
The Commission on Presidential Debates — which has overseen the process since 1988 — mandates that any eligible candidate can participate in the process if they are polling at 15% nationally and have won entry to enough state presidential ballots to have “a mathematical chance of winning a majority vote in the Electoral College.”
All three presidential debates have been scheduled by the commission.
The first is set for Sept. 16 at Texas State University, followed by Virginia State University on Oct. 1 and the University of Utah on Oct. 9.
Team Kennedy says it will meet the criteria.
“We will have ballot access in every state by the end of July,” Kennedy boasted during a recent rally in Des Moines. Kennedy is currently on the ballot in Iowa, Utah, Michigan, California, and Delaware and the campaign has collected enough signatures for ballot access in New Hampshire, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio, a campaign rep said.
On the polling front, a CNN survey at the end of April showed Kennedy polling at 16%.
A Quinnipiac poll also showed Kennedy with 16%.
“I offer to eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate. I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap,” Kennedy jeered on X Wednesday — an allusion to recent news that a parasitic worm had eaten a portion of his brain.
A third-party candidate has not made it to a presidential debate since Ross Perot in 1992.
Kennedy’s participation depends on whether the debates happen at all — a situation that has long been in limbo.
While former President Trump has been raring to go, team Biden has spent months demurring on whether the president — now in his ninth decade — would be willing to take on his old rival in a public forum.
Biden finally agreed to a debate with Trump in principle during an interview with Howard Stern.
But his campaign repeatedly refused to confirm the president’s statement or offer any details.
A top Democratic insiders said his team was “scared” of a high-stakes contest.
“I think it is the result of the narrative that has been built around him — older, incapable, all of that — but they have partly built this by locking him up,” the insider said.
“I have seen his staff hold him back in ways that holds back the party and forces unpleasant questions to be asked about the White House and its leader.”
