Aaron Rodgers for... Vice President of the United States?
No, that is not a joke.
Jets star quarterback Aaron Rodgers is on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s shortlist to be his running mate in his independent campaign for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Kennedy is also considering former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura.
Kennedy confirmed the Times' report, stating that he and Rodgers have been talking "pretty continuously" for the past month.
Would Rodgers really take time away from football to support a presidential campaign? The 40-year-old is a public Kennedy supporter, so it's not impossible.
Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Kennedy, 70, is running for president as an independent candidate in the 2024 general election. An environmental lawyer and activist, he is the nephew of former United States President John F. Kennedy and the son of his father and namesake, who served as a U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general, but he has never held a political position himself.
NFL fans might remember Kennedy's controversial campaign advertisement during Super Bowl 58, which caused an uproar — including among members of his own family — for mimicking an identical pitch from JFK's campaign 70 years prior.
What is RFK Jr.'s connection to Aaron Rodgers?
Rodgers has long supported RFK Jr., as the two shared similar anti-vaccine opinions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On March 8, he reposted RFK Jr.'s response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying, "This is presidential," with the hashtags "Kennedy24" and "RFK."
Rodgers hasn't publicly stated anything about running for office. Kennedy is expected to announce his vice presidential pick "in the coming weeks," according to the Times report. The newspaper also noted that the domain name "kennedyrodgers.com" was registered last week using a GoDaddy host.
Despite Rodgers and Kennedy's shared, controversial beliefs about vaccines, though, other controversial comments from Rodgers could affect his political prospects. The star quarterback has shared conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real in several private conversations, CNN reported Wednesday.
On the football field, Rodgers is expected to make a full recovery from his season-ending Achilles injury in 2023 and to be ready to start the 2024 season for the Jets. Of course, joining a presidential campaign in the fall would overlap with the start of the NFL season.
Rodgers is under contract with the Jets through the 2025 season and hopes to play for "two or three or four more years," he said earlier this month.
Watching him try and navigate his role as New York's starting quarterback on top of being a presidential running mate would be entertaining, to say the least.
