In a tweet on X, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman wrote that he was considering voting for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this year. Needless to say, the remark is being met with mixed reviews online.
“I have not decided whether or not I will vote for RFK, but I have spent considerable time with him over the last few months and believe that he is both a viable candidate and one worthy of serious consideration,” Ackman wrote in the tweet.
Ackman, a longtime Democratic Party donor who runs the $18 billion financial firm Pershing Capital, started breaking with the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas in Israel which killed over a thousand civilians and soldiers.
The billionaire criticized the handling by campus administrators of pro-Palestine protests at elite universities such as MIT and Harvard, where he’s an alumnus. That battle led to the ousting of now former Harvard President Claudine Gay in a campaign led by anti-woke crusaders over her defense of the free speech of pro-Palestine demonstrators, which eventually snowballed into a multipronged scandal surrounding previous plagiarism allegations against Gay.
Since then, Ackman has extended his criticism of campus politics to include broadsides against DEI initiatives, and publicly questioned whether Biden should still be the party’s nominee this year.
Because of his skepticism of Biden, Ackman initially threw his support behind Democratic primary challenger Dean Phillips, who he donated a million dollars to, and criticized the Democratic Party for not including Phillips on primary ballots in several states.
“As Biden falls further and further behind in the polls as his health and cognitive health sort of obviously deteriorates, I think there’s got to be grave concern,” Ackman said in an X space in January. “All of that being said, [no] one wants to say the emperor has no clothes.”
But now that Phillips has bombed out of the primary which Biden’s wrapped up without much trouble, Ackman is looking for other options.
“I have decided that I am not going to vote for Biden for various reasons which I will enumerate at another time, but I am seriously considering @RFK and @realDonaldTrump,” Ackman wrote on Saturday.
“I have a favorable impression of RFK based on the hours that we have spent together and his willingness to take on controversial views even when any campaign adviser would advise him to not go there,” Ackman continued. “One of the most important qualities for a president in my opinion is a willingness to make decisions based on principles regardless of what the polls might say. RFK has shown time and again that he is willing to do so. This is a mark of strong character in my view.”
Ackman’s tweet came in reaction to a biographical documentary about RFK Jr. which a pro-RFK PAC has been promoting to reporters and supporters the past few days.
In the documentary, which is narrated by Woody Harrelson, Kennedy responds to common attacks against him and introduces his biography and policies. Kennedy, who’s running as an independent, is polling around 10% nationally in most polls.
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