Trump dismisses RFK Jr as ‘not a serious candidate’ when asked if he would debate him

Donald Trump has dismissed the idea of debating independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., slamming him as “not serious”.

“I don’t know anything about him,” Mr Trump said. “Look, RFK is polling very low, he is not a serious candidate.”

The former president was responding to a question about whether he would debate Mr Kennedy Jr., who he has frequently sparred with throughout his campaign.

“They say he hurts Biden; I don’t know who he hurts, he might hurt me, I don’t know. But he has very low numbers, certainly not numbers that he can debate with. He’s got to get his numbers a lot higher before he’s credible,” Mr Trump added.

A recent NBC News poll found that the third-party vote — especially RFK Jr — is cutting deeper into Trump’s support than President Joe Biden’s.

Mr Trump is currently leading Mr Biden by two percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, the poll found, but when the ballot is expanded to five named candidates, Mr Biden is the one with the two-point lead.

The poll found that a greater number of Trump voters in the head-to-head matchup were backing RFK Jr. in the expanded ballot, with fifteen per cent of respondents who picked Mr Trump the first time picking Mr Kennedy Jr. in the five-way ballot, compared with seven per cent of those who initially picked Mr Biden.

In addition, the poll found that Republican voters view Mr Kennedy Jr much more favorably than Democratic voters do.

RFK Jr, who is the son of the late US senator Robert F Kennedy, initially filed candidacy papers for the Democratic nomination in April but later switched to running as an independent candidate.

Following his announcement that he was running for president, his family members released a statement denouncing him as