<p>Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that &#8220;Trump could be the greatest president in history.&#8221;</p> 
<p>In a 14 December 2016 interview with CNN&#8217;s Don Lemon, Robert Kennedy, Jr. said that &#8220;I think Trump can be any kind of president he wants. I think he could be the greatest president in history if he wanted to.&#8221;</p> 
<p>Kennedy, who spoke these words prior to Donald Trump's taking office, was speaking in general terms about his hope that Trump would become a great president, seeing optimism in the fact that Trump appeared at the time to be unbound by ideology.</p> 
<p>On 14 December 2016, President John F. Kennedy&#8217;s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, <a href="https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20161215_030000_CNN_Tonight_With_Don_Lemon/start/0/end/60" type="external">appeared</a> on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon to discuss the appointment of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (a move Kennedy, an environmental activist, was strongly opposed to).</p> 
<p>In an earlier segment on that night&#8217;s show, Lemon and his guests had drawn comparisons between the Trumps and the Kennedys, referencing <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/after-talking-with-trump-bill-gates-likens-president-elect-to-jfk.html" type="external">remarks</a> made by former Microsoft head Bill Gates a day earlier, with Lemon&#8217;s <a href="https://archive.org/details/CNNW_20161215_030000_CNN_Tonight_With_Don_Lemon/start/3360/end/3420" type="external">asking</a> Kennedy Jr. how he felt about this comparison:</p> 
<q> <p>We&#8217;ve discussed this on this show during the primary season, but Bill Gates has said today that Trump could be a new JFK. Some people look how close the Trump family is and how connected the children are to the family business and any they could be like the Kennedys. [&#8230;] How do you feel about that?</p> </q> 
<p>Kennedy&#8217;s answer, essentially, was not that Donald Trump had already done and achieved things that would fairly rank him as the &#8220;greatest President in history,&#8221; but that the comparison of Trump to the Kennedy family could turn out to be fair, because Donald Trump &#8220;is less bound by ideology than any president probably that we&#8217;ve had this century.&#8221; His statement was one of optimism for the future and was not rooted in anything Donald Trump (who had yet to assume office) had actually done as President:</p> 
<q> <p>I think Trump, you know, because he doesn&#8217;t have obligations, he doesn&#8217;t owe anything to anybody, if he&#8217;s &#8212; I think if he cares about history and he understands that history is his principal audience, that he could be an extraordinary president. [&#8230;] He said to Leonardo DiCaprio the other day that he wanted to be the next Teddy Roosevelt and he can easily do that he could &#8212; but I think it&#8217;s important to start by surrounding yourself with advisers who share that idealism and not people who are just working for the oil industry.</p> <p>I think he can be any kind of president he wants. I think he could be the greatest president in history if he wanted to.</p> </q> 
<p>Since that exchange, numerous pro-Trump websites have run with Kennedy&#8217;s statement that &#8220;I think [Trump] could be the greatest president in history&#8221; without offering the any of the context that led to up to it. Numerous YouTube <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Robert+F.+Kennedy+Jr.+Drops+Bombshell%3A+%22Trump+Could+Be+Greatest+President+In+History!%22&amp;oq=Robert+F.+Kennedy+Jr.+Drops+Bombshell%3A+%22Trump+Could+Be+Greatest+President+In+History!%22&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.304j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">videos</a> excerpt this brief segment, posted under the title &#8220;Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Drops Bombshell: &#8216;Trump Could Be Greatest President In History!'&#8221;</p> 
<p>Other sites have added their own slanted <a href="http://archive.is/j1NgH" type="external">commentary</a> to Kennedy&#8217;s remark, frequently suggesting the conversation happened more recently. In a May 2017 post frequently reshared on Facebook, ConservativeFighters.com gleefully and rhetorically asked: &#8220;Can you hear the sobs coming from liberal protesters when a left-wing icon like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally admits the truth?&#8221;</p> 
<p>While Kennedy is certainly a Democrat, he has expressed willingness to work with Trump in the past, especially during the timeframe when the Don Lemon interview took place. Trump allegedly <a type="internal">offered</a> Kennedy (though Trump later disputed this) the chance to head a controversial commission on &#8220;vaccine safety&#8221; that had been widely panned by the medical community back in January 2017.</p> 
<p>However, because Kennedy&#8217;s words, in full context, were not offered as complimentary of Trump&#8217;s actions as a president (which he wasn&#8217;t at that point) but as a general hopefulness for the future, we rate this claim as a mixture.</p> 
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Said That “Trump Could Be the Greatest President in History”?