Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Friday that had President Joe Biden debated independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he would have forgone his reelection aspirations much sooner.
Biden's widely panned debate performance in June exposed what many on the conservative side had long suspected: that Biden apparently has suffered severe cognitive decline.
McCarthy said that if the Democrats had gone through a normal nominating procedure, Vice President Kamala Harris would not have been the party's presidential nominee.
One person McCarthy thinks would have exposed Biden sooner was Kennedy. On Friday afternoon, Kennedy announced the suspension of his campaign and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump.
"And think about how the Democratic Party treated him," McCarthy told Fox News.
"They kicked him out. They wouldn't even let him debate. Had he debated Biden, Biden would have collapsed a year earlier."
"They would have known, and the whole country would have known, Kamala had been lying the entire time about Joe Biden. But she could not have won the nomination if she had to go through a primary. The only way she could become the nominee is the way they did it here."
McCarthy said Kennedy's endorsement could be just enough to move the former president past the finish line.
"I mean, Joe Biden won by 48,918 votes, and he was polling about nine points higher than where Kamala is polling today. So this could be the election," McCarthy said.
"And if you're a Democrat, the Kennedy family is the closest there is to political royalty in that party. And it makes you wonder would John F. Kennedy be a Democrat today because his positions were much different than the Democrat Party is today."
Prior to Kennedy's Friday announcement, he took his previous party to task via a lengthy X post that began by attacking the modern Democratic Party as being "unrecognizable" to his father, former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, former President John F. Kennedy. The environmental lawyer said he could not "reconcile" how far present-day Democrats have drifted from his values.
"I don't think Kennedy is going to bring you 20%, but President Trump doesn't need 20%, he just needs — last time, he only needed less than 50,000 votes," McCarthy said on Friday.
"So this whole race really comes down to Pennsylvania and Georgia, when you're talking that this could be less than 100,000 votes; but Kennedy attracts libertarians, independents, disgruntled Democrats."