Outside the Beltway

Meanwhile in North Korea…

Truly unbelievable praise for Dear Leader.

Steven L. Taylor · Sunday, March 29, 2026 · 3 comments

So, RFK, Jr. had a remarkable anecdote that he shared at CPAC about Trump:

While the clip should be viewed, here are the basics (plus some added info not in the clip) via The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. Gushes Over ‘Empath’ Trump in Wild Lovefest.

“President Trump is exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be,” Kennedy told the crowd.

“I basically drank the Kool-Aid—that he was this bombastic narcissist who didn’t read books and was ill-informed. But now I know the exact opposite,” he said.

“He’s an empath.”

To which I can only say, I guess Kennedy doesn’t know what words mean. Unless Trump is truly a radically different person behind closed doors (and all available evidence suggests he is not), then “empath” is one of the last words I would apply to the man.

An empath doesn’t say things like this.

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges the possibility. “I guess,” he says. “But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die” (source).

But back to the glaze-fest:

He also marveled at Trump’s supposed intellectual range, claiming he has “encyclopedic, molecular knowledge” of everything from Broadway to Wall Street.

To illustrate his point, he recounted a moment on the campaign trail when Trump allegedly flipped over a placemat mid-flight and drew a “perfect map of the Mideast,” complete with troop levels along each border.

“I think Donald Trump understands the use of power better than probably any president that we’ve had, maybe in American history,” Kennedy said.

First, either the map thing didn’t happen or, perhaps, Kennedy doesn’t have any clue what the Middle East looks like and is impressed by gibberish.

Second, the notion that what we are witnessing in Iran (and Ukraine and our relationships with NATO and other allies) demonstrates that Trump understands power better than any previous president calls into question Kennedy’s grasp on reality. Granted, Kennedy already has demonstrated a lack of such tethering, so none of this is a surprise, per se.

And a side note: liking Cats and Phantom of the Opera and having a playlist doesn’t make one some amazing aficionado of Broadway and music. But that is the least of it.

Yes, there is a non-zero chance that a man who is a recovering addict, once had a worm in his brain, and has any number of bizarre views on the world (ranging from the usage of jeans as workout gear, to eating roadkill, to utter insanity on vaccines), is just delusional.

However, this also feels very much like trotting out the party elite to inform the party congress that the Leader is truly a giant among men and that all is well in the high castle. Certainly, the fawning host and applauding audience feed that view.

Here’s the whole event:

I did not watch the whole thing, but kind of scrubbed through it. Bonus clip is around the 25-minute mark, wherein Kennedy says he “prayed every day for nineteen years to God” to be put in a position to deal with his autism concerns, and “God sent me Donald Trump.” This led to a standing ovation. This just adds a dash of Christian Nationalism to the whole affair that I usually do not associate with Kennedy.