Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is most famous for his well-known family name, his opposition to vaccines, and his surprising run for president as a third-party candidate. He is not widely recognized for his interest in reforming the criminal justice system. However, next month, he is set to give the main speech at the Detroit stop on the New Dawn for Justice Criminal Reform Tour. The tour's website states that it “amplifies the collective voice calling for fair and compassionate reform” and encourages people from all backgrounds to help reshape the justice system. scheduled The tour’s lead organizer is Angela Stanton King, a member of the Kennedy campaign team, who brings her own experience to the fight for change. As her promises explains, “With a personal narrative of overcoming incarceration and championing prison reform, she has become a pivotal figure in advocating for justice.
The tour's lead organizer is a Kennedy campaign staffer named Angela Stanton King, who brings her own experience to this fight for change. As her bio explains, “With a personal narrative of overcoming incarceration and championing prison reform, she has become a pivotal figure in advocating for justice.
Here’s what her bio doesn’t say: Stanton King, who is 47, vociferously supported Donald Trump—until she was hired by RFK Jr.’s campaign as its Black outreach director, where she now works. On culture war issues, she has little in common with Kennedy: Stanton King has several times been the subject of media attention for her anti-gay and anti-trans activism, issues Kennedy doesn’t touch. A staunch opponent of abortion, she is the founder of Auntie Angie’s House, an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center and home for pregnant women and new mothers, while Kennedy has been generally pro-choice. But despite all that, Stanton King may be promising Kennedy something he desperately needs: an inroad with Black conservatives who are increasingly supporting Donald Trump—about 17 percent, according to a January poll.
The idea that a member of America’s most famous Democratic family could lure Trump voters in this tight race may appear counterintuitive: Until recently, it was a foregone conclusion that Kennedy’s candidacy could only help Trump. Yet Kennedy’s anti-vaccine crusading has curried favor with some on the right—and with Black conservatives, Kennedy may see an opportunity.
“I think she’s completely full of it, and [Kennedy] should be able to see right through it.”
And if he can appeal to those voters, Kennedy could potentially peel off Black conservatives from both parties, Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie told me. Gillespie, who studies politics in the Black community, noted that unlike white conservatives, Black conservatives sometimes still vote Democrat. Stanton King, said Gillespie, “could possibly attempt to make the claim that her conservative cachet could possibly pick off Republicans, and could possibly pick off some Democratic voters,” some of whom might have soured on Biden because of his support for Israel. Whether Stanton King will be able to deliver, though, is another question. “I think she’s completely full of it,” Gillespie said, “and [Kennedy] should be able to see right through it.”
After a childhood spent bouncing back and forth between Buffalo, New York, and the South, when she was a young adult, Angela Stanton settled in Atlanta—where she became involved in a car-theft racketeering scheme. She was convicted in 2004 and went on to serve two years in state prison. About a decade later, Stanton self-published a memoir called The Real Housewife's Lies: Being Honest and Defying the Devil, and claimed that Phaedra Parks, who stars in the reality TV show Real Housewives of Atlanta, was involved in the same criminal scheme for which Stanton had been convicted. (Parks later sued Stanton for defamation, but she ultimately decided agreed to drop the lawsuit with prejudice.)
During that chaotic time in her life, Stanton met Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is a vocal supporter of Trump and a prominent figure in Atlanta’s Black conservative community. In her 2018 memoir, Life of a Real Housewife: The Angela Stanton Story. , Stanton wrote that King saw her as someone who needed a fresh start. According to Stanton, King brought her in to assist at the crisis pregnancy center and home for new mothers that she was managing at the time. Stanton found the work especially meaningful because she had been restrained on a bed while giving birth to one of her daughters in prison. King became her mentor and godmother, and Angela Stanton changed her name to Angela Stanton King.
In 2020, President Trump officially pardoned Stanton King, stating in a statement that she “works tirelessly to improve reentry outcomes for people returning to their communities upon release from prison, focusing on the critical role of families in the process. This pardon is supported by Alveda King.”
Later that year, Stanton King leveraged the momentum from Trump’s pardon to launch a bid for the Georgia congressional seat previously held by the late civil rights leader John Lewis, who had recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. Stanton King’s campaign manager was Trevian Kutti, who had previously worked as the publicist for Kanye West and would later become charged connected with Donald Trump for his involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. In an interview about her campaign with the Guardian, Stanton King denied allegations that she believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory. When the reporter confronted her with a tweet she had posted referring to the debunked QAnon rumor that the furniture company Wayfair was trafficking children, she replied, “You know they are. You saw it. You watched the news just like I did.”
Stanton King lost by a large margin to her Democratic opponent, Nikema Williams. However, just a month later, as the Covid vaccines were about to be rolled out, Stanton King found a new cause. In December 2020, she appeared at an Atlanta conference hosted by America’s Frontline Doctors, the right-wing physicians’ group that promoted conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The speakers, including the group’s founder, a January 6 insurrectionist, told the audience that the US government was using the Black community as guinea pigs for the vaccine. This was a particularly serious accusation given the long and troubled lost relationship Simone Gold—warned between the Black community and the mainstream medical establishment. Seeing an opportunity, Stanton King, with her organization, the American King Foundation, launched a new initiative called Stop Medical Apartheid in 2022 to oppose “the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans.” In a press release, Stanton King wrote, “Medical Apartheid is Population Control. Population Control comes in different forms; Vaccines, Abortions, Mass Incarceration, and Perverted Sexual Agendas targeting children. Population Control is Racist! From the WOMB to the TOMB, it’s time Y’all!” That same year, Stanton King
Defeat the Mandates rally announced in Los Angeles, an anti-vaccine event supported by a group of activists who also arranged the anti-vaccine trucker convo. The
also had representatives from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s organization, Children’s Health Defense. Stanton King passionately spoke against vaccine mandates and also commented on abortion (“lynching Black babies in the womb”) and transgender rights. She stated, “I’m only 45 years young, and I’ve only naturally birthed and naturally raised five children, and I say ‘naturally’ because I raised my boys to be boys and my girls to be girls,” and received enthusiastic applause from the crowd. spoke at the Stanton King detailed that statement in a 2022 on the TV talk show lineup , mentioning to the in-studio audience that she would never accept her trans daughter’s gender identity. She expressed, “I believe that it may be a form of mental illness,” and added, “It’s not just that he was born male—he
a male.” Dr. Phil disagreed with her, and after the show, she posted a appearance of herself ranting about the show and trans individuals. She exclaimed, “If you were supposed to be a woman, you wouldn’t have to go and have surgeries to get titties put on your breasts, you would already be born with them,” and continued, “If you were a woman, you wouldn’t be born with a dick, you wouldn’t have to go get your dick cut off.” (Kennedy’s campaign didn’t respond to an emailed question about his response to these comments and his stance on transgender rights, or to any of the other questions I sent. Stanton King didn’t respond to my questions, either.) Dr. PhilThroughout her anti-vaccine and anti-trans campaigning, Stanton King continued to support Trump in is . “Trump can’t be President forever and I know that,” she video in 2021. “But he’s the only one bold enough to fight these evil Demonic Satanic forces from the pits of HELL and I’m standing with him.”
“Trump can’t be President forever and I know that. But he’s the only one bold enough to fight these evil Demonic Satanic forces from the pits of HELL and I’m standing with him.” media appearancesBut in late 2023, her alliances shifted. In a tweeted Twitter spaces event
in late April, she said she had soured on the Trump campaign after the former president’s team declined to visit and support Auntie Angie’s House. So she reached out to Kennedy, whom she had met at the Defeat the Mandates rally in 2022, through her “really good friend,” Capitol insurrectionist Simone Gold. She shared, “He came by, and he sat down, and he talked to us for about an hour and a half,” she recalled. “And when he left that day, his perspective on abortion had changed.”
A few months later, when Kennedy asked her to work for his campaign, she was conflicted. “I did not want my relationship with Trump to be ruined,” she said in the Twitter Spaces event. However, she had repeatedly reached out to the Trump campaign asking for a job, to no avail. “People were telling me to remember where I came from and I was nothing until Trump gave me a party and it was making it seem like because I got a pardon for Trump that you know, I wasn’t valid enough to have a paid position.” So she accepted Kennedy’s offer. By January of this year, Stanton King was asking people for support by visiting their homes with Kennedy in the historically Black neighborhood of West End in Atlanta.
Kennedy, however, has that Stanton King has influenced his views on abortion. Although he has always said that he believes women should be able to decide about abortion at any stage of their pregnancies, during a recent appearance on the conservative talk show
The Daily Wire, confirmed he shared the account of his visit to Auntie Angie’s House. He mentioned talking to mothers at a facility in Atlanta, Georgia, and expressed disagreement with pressuring women to have abortions due to financial constraints, stating that it should never be a reason for a woman to not carry her child in this country. believes Stanton King still appears uncertain about the former president. During the Twitter Spaces event, she attributed her frustrations to “his gatekeepers,” not Trump himself. She stated, “I still support President Trump, but I don’t work for him.” In April, she posted a tweet, which has since been deleted, in which she Diante Johnson, a Trump supporter and leader of the Black Conservative Federation, referred to him as “an openly flamboyant gay man.” In another recent she proclaimed, “Republicans think I’m aiding RFK to assist Trump. I have no regrets, but there’s no way on God’s green earth I’d support a party that turned their backs on Black Women & Babies while facing a Black Maternal Health Crisis. Who has their head that far up Trump’s behind cause it AINT me.”
This weekend, Stanton attacked King’s New Dawn for Justice Tour is planned to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. In an email to calling Mother Jones, tweet a spokesperson for the King Center, the King family legacy nonprofit that operates the museum at the site, clarified that the event “is not in any way affiliated with this event”—it will take place entirely outside in the public area.
Will Stanton King’s endorsement of the Kennedy campaign attract Black voters? Emory’s Gillespie doubts it. She highlighted Stanton King’s unsuccessful congressional run in 2020, where her Democratic opponent, Nikema Williams, won with 85 percent of the vote. “I think there may be a question of how expansive her networks are—like, how influential could she possibly be in some of these communities?” This made her question Kennedy’s judgment. “What does this indicate about your judgment to assemble the administration?” Stanton King mentions she has grand plans for the Kennedy administration. In her Twitter Spaces event in April, she discussed “a vision that God gave me” where there is “an Auntie Angie’s House in every Black community that has Planned Parenthood.” She mentioned working with Kennedy on a policy, known as More Choice, More Life, to realize this vision. “I’m so thankful that Bobby and his team are highlighting what we’re doing.” This articlefirst appeared on Mother Jones
. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.
And her “family member”—MLK Jr.—may actually be extremely upset.
This article first appeared on Mother Jones. It has been republished with the publication’s permission.
