What Senator Robert F. Kennedy Could Teach Donald Trump 

Election night is magic for me. The TV ads and campaign hoopla have vanished. One side has won; the other hasn’t. The truth alone abides. 

But only the loser can confirm it. It takes the concession speech, delivered on live television, to make it real for the side that fell short. 

I will never forget sitting with my dad on my first election night. I felt his sympathy for New York Governor Averell Harriman as he conceded defeat to Nelson Rockefeller in 1958. All these years later, I recall his sympathy for that old-money (compared to Rockefeller) gentleman. 

That is why Donald Trump stands before us as a thief. It’s not all those old carny tricks—the Trump sneakers, the Trump University tuition, the failed Atlantic City casinos, or the bills never paid—it’s his denial to the American voter of an honest accounting of his 2020 presidential loss and the Capitol riot he torched on January 6, 2021. 

Today, my latest book, Lessons from Bobby: Ten Reasons Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters, is being published. Among its chapters is No. 9, Know When to Concede. 

One of Bobby Kennedy’s gifts was the moral ability to accept defeat, which he did in the 1968 Oregon Presidential primary, a week before his assassination.  

Here is that chapter and with it Bobby’s lesson:  

Donald Trump refused to concede the 2020 presidential election. He refused to halt the January 6 “Stop the Steal” attack on the US Capitol. He refused to attend the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.  

This may have been Trump’s worst crime against the American constitutional system. It definitely gets to the heart of it. The honest transfer of presidential authority is one of this country’s highest traditions. American citizens are proud to have elections that are carried out honestly, and proud to have this transfer of power seen by the world. I think of all the concession speeches in my life: Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, Al Gore (after the long recount), John Kerry, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris. In his selfish interest, Donald Trump chose to undercut that tradition. 

Here’s a rule. Don’t run for office if you’re incapable of telling the truth about the results. Again, Bobby Kennedy offers the perfect model. 

Weeks before his death, Robert Kennedy could already see himself losing the Oregon presidential primary. The strongest reason had been his own delay in entering the race. Eugene McCarthy offered his anti–Vietnam War challenge in November 1967. Bobby Kennedy had waited until March. He could see himself about to be punished by Oregon’s antiwar Democrats.  

I recall watching Roger Mudd of CBS News interview Kennedy in an airport. When the newsman asked him if it bothered him that so many college students had stuck with McCarthy, the look on his face told us the answer. Boston Globe reporter Robert Healy said that really “gnawed” at Bobby. 

Another problem, close to home, was his lack of a gifted campaign manager, someone whose work would match what he himself had done for his brother Jack in 1960. It meant that his campaign was unable to change direction quickly as it needed to in Oregon. 

But on some issues, Bobby didn’t want to change course. “This just may not be my time,” he admitted. He was doing what he wanted to be doing. He was talking about the people in the cities and about their problems. Some of his advisors told him that the problems of the cities were remote to the voters of Oregon and might cost him votes in the primary if he did not change.  

Just a week before his death, he lost the Oregon presidential primary. It was the first time Bobby had lost an election, either as Jack Kennedy’s campaign manager or as a candidate himself. 

Columnist Jules Witcover described him “in his shirtsleeves, tie off but still wearing the PT-109 tie clasp that had been the symbol of Kennedy political invincibility. He had a heavily watered-down drink in his hand, and he was in a quiet, reflective mood—not bitter, not shocked, not even transparently disappointed, just resigned.” 

Bobby said that he could sense days before the Oregon primary that he was in trouble when he failed to get a responsive reaction from Portland factory workers. He could tell, he said, that they weren’t tuned in, that he wasn’t communicating with them. He asked aides where he had run well and where poorly, and he took the information much like the campaign manager he once was. One reporter asked him if he thought Oregon had hurt him, and it made him laugh. “It certainly wasn’t one of the more helpful developments of the day,” he said. 

But he refused to blame his campaigners. “If I’d won it, it would have been my victory, and I’ve lost it and it’s my defeat. I sometimes wonder if I’ve correctly sensed the mood of America. I think I have. But maybe I’m all wrong. Maybe the people don’t want things changed. I do better with people who have problems.” 

Pat Buchanan, then a campaign researcher for Richard Nixon, was impressed by the way Kennedy absorbed the shock of losing. “His graciousness in conceding defeat and congratulating Gene McCarthy was impressive. This is the first time I’d seen Bobby in person. He could not have shown himself better in victory than he did in defeat that night.” 

Bobby told Jack Newfield. “If that happens, I will just go back to the Senate, and say what I believe, and not try again in ’72. Somebody has to speak up for the Negroes, and Indians, and Mexicans, and poor whites. Maybe that’s what I do best. Maybe my personality just isn’t built for this. . . . The issues are more important than me now.”  

Looking forward to the California primary, Bobby raised the stakes. 

First, he agreed to meet Gene McCarthy in a nationally televised debate. “I’m not in much of a position now to say he’s not a serious candidate. Hell, if he’s not a serious candidate after tonight, then I’m not a candidate at all.” 

Second, he promised to end his campaign if he lost in California.  

The honest acceptance of his loss in Oregon showed that Kennedy wasn’t the “ruthless” figure he’d been called. 

Bobby Kennedy matters because he acknowledged defeat. That is the enduring reality here. If the loser in an election refuses to offer a public, televised concession speech, he is sharing his denial with his followers. That’s what Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, told his MAGA crowd as they headed to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

I have long taken pride that we as Americans participate in a vibrant democracy—living in a country where those who lose elections give a public accounting of their loss. They don’t blame the count; they don’t blame the democratic system itself 

I recall sitting in our basement rec room with Dad watching the 1958 midterm election results. New York Governor Averell Harriman came on to offer his concession speech. He’d just lost the race to Nelson Rockefeller. My father felt an immediate emotional connection with the governor’s loss. As a middle-class guy, he could nonetheless identify personally with the moment the fabulously wealthy Harriman was facing. 

That was my introduction to watching national election results and to truly understanding our democracy. For years, through election after election, I have looked forward to the concession speech. It is a bittersweet time for those who fought hard in a campaign, especially for the candidate who just learned he or she had lost. 

But it is a clear sign that the campaign is over. All the TV ads and bumper stickers have done their business. Now we saw that the people have had their say. The winner has been decided. The loser has just told us so. It brings a crackling reality to the whole exercise. Our great democracy has won again. 

I especially took pride in our free and open democratic system when I served in the Peace Corps. As I hitchhiked my way up through East Africa, I saw young democracies where the losers would predictably claim that the election had been stolen. I have also personally witnessed a good number of elections in my career. I lost a primary myself running for Congress in 1974. I saw my first boss, Senator Frank Moss, lose his reelection bid in Utah two years later, and in 1980, I watched my boss, Jimmy Carter, go down. In both those cases, the losing candidates, my candidates, gave public concession speeches. 

Yet on January 6, we saw the same cheap charges—“Stop the Steal”—being thrown here in the United States. 

President Trump, defeated in the November 2020 election by seven million votes in the popular count, told a crowd of unruly supporters to head to the Capitol. Once there, they tore through the doors and left a trail of mayhem. It took the combined U.S. Capitol and Metropolitan Police to stop them before they could bring real harm or worse to members of Congress and to Trump’s own vice president. 

This piece is adapted from Lessons from Bobby: Ten Reasons Robert F. Kennedy Still Matters by Chris Matthews. Copyright © 2025 by Christopher J. Matthews.  Reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.