The hardest deal to judge is one you helped sell.
In 2024, I served as North Carolina state director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign and co-founded We The People of North Carolina, the independent party that put him on our state’s ballot.
When Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, those of us who had worked the campaign faced a difficult choice: Who would we vote for?
My answer carried implications beyond my own choice. As the party’s vice chair, I signed the letter officially requesting Kennedy’s removal from North Carolina’s ballot, closing the door on a campaign I helped build and clearing the path for Trump. As Election Day neared, I made the case for Trump to Independents and Kennedy voters.
Our coalition was large enough to matter. In North Carolina, Kennedy was drawing an estimated 240,000 votes before leaving the race. Trump carried the state by roughly 183,000 votes. A similar pattern appeared across all the battlegrounds, where small shifts among Independent voters helped Trump sweep all seven.
After Trump won, I wrote an article stating Kennedy’s selection to lead HHS showed that our trust in Trump’s “unity administration” was “well-founded.” I said we should move forward together as a country, but also hold Trump accountable.
Trump won us over with five central promises, each meant to fix problems we laid at Biden’s feet. (Independents had been pivotal to Biden’s victory four years earlier.) Trump’s promises spoke to a broad range of Independents, from kitchen-table voters most concerned about the economy and border to medical-freedom advocates, anti-interventionists, and anti-corruption reformers drawn to Kennedy, Gabbard, and Rogan.
Each promise gets one of three verdicts: Kept, Broken, or Monkey’s Paw, meaning we got what we wished for, but not what we bargained for.
Promise 1: “Make America Affordable Again”
Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again.” (Trump, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Aug. 17, 2024) For Independents feeling the strain of inflation, the promise of lower prices sounded like much-needed relief.
Record: The administration’s first major economic move had the perverse effect of raising the price of practically everything. In February 2025, Trump began imposing new tariffs on imports, and by April they hit nearly every U.S. trading partner. The center-right Tax Foundation called them “the largest tax increase since 1993,” as American households absorbed roughly $1,000 in tariff-related costs.
We were told the tariffs would revive U.S. manufacturing and increase jobs. Instead, manufacturing jobs fell by 108,000 in Trump’s first year.
Homeownership remains out of reach. The median existing home now sells for about $440,000, with an average mortgage rate of 6.66 percent. Affording a home requires more than $110,000 a year, while the typical household earns about $84,000.
Trump did not create the affordability crisis, but that isn’t the point. He promised to end it. Independents gave him our votes to reduce prices that had risen under Biden, but all we’ve gotten is more partisan finger-pointing. The party in power has changed, but the strain on our wallets has not. Remember those “I did that” gas pump stickers? The honest version shows both presidents pointing together: “We did that.”
This promise had the broadest appeal and the most immediate effect on daily life. As of June 2026, consumer prices were 4.3 percent higher than when Trump took office. He promised prices would fall. They rose.
Verdict: Broken.
Promise 2: “Secure the Border”
I will end the illegal immigration crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall.” (Trump, Republican National Convention, Milwaukee, July 18, 2024) Independents overwhelmingly supported securing the country, but many of us didn’t anticipate what that enforcement would look like.
Record: Strictly speaking, Trump delivered on border security. Southwest border encounters fell to fewer than 10,000 a month, and the fiscal-year total dropped to its lowest since 1970, according to Pew. While these numbers are a positive result, the deportation methods are much harder to reconcile: chained transfers, raids at school drop-offs, agents posted outside courthouses, and unaccompanied children, some as young as six, facing deportation proceedings without lawyers.
Federal courts repeatedly confronted the administration over compliance with immigration orders. In one instance, deportation flights to El Salvador continued after a judge ordered them turned around.
ICE also detained U.S. citizens and removed citizen children from the country with their deported mothers, including a four-year-old with stage 4 cancer.
Between September 2025 and February 2026, DHS officers shot at least 14 people, four fatally, including U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good. In 2025, 32 people died in ICE custody, the highest number in more than two decades. While you may argue the merits of any particular case, it is difficult to explain them all away.
Trump promised to secure the border, and he did. But Independents didn't sign up for enforcement that repeatedly ran afoul of the courts, made good law enforcement agents look like villains, spread fear through our communities, and saw dozens die, including American citizens.
Verdict: Monkey’s Paw.
Promise 3: “Drain the Swamp”
We are going to drain the swamp, and we’re going to do it once and for all.” (Trump, Mosinee, Wisconsin, Sept. 7, 2024) Few promises spoke more to Independents. We wanted an end to corporate capture, cronyism, and officials cashing in on their office.
Record: Trump promised to drain the swamp and instead let the Reflecting Pool turn into one.
For decades, presidents of both parties kept their personal finances separate from the presidency through blind trusts or divestment. Trump broke with tradition. Trump disclosed more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures in 2025.
Nearly a million wallets bought the $TRUMP memecoin, which has no underlying business or revenue. Most held relatively small amounts, suggesting ordinary buyers. The value of their holdings fell by a combined $3.81 billion. The Trump family took in $636 million.
USD1, World Liberty’s stablecoin, offers Trump another path to profit. Each coin is backed by a dollar’s worth of reserves, and those reserves earn interest. By February 2026, Binance, a crypto exchange, held about $4.7 billion in USD1, potentially generating $150 million a year in interest. A Trump-family entity indirectly owns 38 percent of a World Liberty company entitled to a share of that interest.
And where did the billions earning that interest come from? In large part, Abu Dhabi.
In May 2025, Abu Dhabi’s state-backed MGX used USD1 to invest $2 billion in Binance, boosting the interest its reserves could earn. Two weeks later, Trump announced he was expanding the UAE’s access to advanced American AI technology. Five months later, he pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had served four months in prison for failing, of all things, to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.
No public evidence proves either decision was exchanged for the investment. The conflict is that the president's family could profit from the very actors seeking decisions only his administration could make.
The crypto deals are only one part of the swamp.
The Campaign Legal Center counts 47 former lobbyists in senior posts; more than 15 likely would have faced limits under earlier ethics restrictions. Trump imposed no such rules. His chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is a former lobbyist, and six former clients lobbied White House offices she oversees. Her former firm, Ballard Partners, became Washington’s top-grossing lobbying firm in 2025, taking in $88 million from clients hoping it had Trump’s ear.
In his 2026 State of the Union, Trump mocked Nancy Pelosi while calling for a congressional trading ban. Yet that quarter, his accounts recorded 3,642 trades, roughly 40 a day, worth between $220 million and $750 million. Trump says managers placed the trades, but that doesn’t remove the conflict or the hypocrisy.
Nothing’s been drained except our trust.
Verdict: Broken.
Promise 4: “Make America Healthy Again”
I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on the medicines.” (Trump, Madison Square Garden, New York City, Oct. 27, 2024) Winning over Kennedy voters and the MAHA movement was critical to Trump’s coalition. We expected him to give Kennedy real power and the freedom to use it.
Record: On April 22, 2025, Kennedy and the FDA announced the phaseout of six petroleum-based synthetic dyes that have colored America’s food for generations. Advocates had spent four decades seeking their phaseout — Kennedy did it in ten weeks.
In January 2026, Kennedy and the USDA overhauled the Dietary Guidelines, reviving the Food Pyramid, tightening limits on added sugar, and drawing a hard line against ultra-processed foods. States led by both parties followed with similar reforms. \
That same month, Kennedy overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule, cutting recommendations from 17 diseases to 11 and bringing it closer to Denmark’s. The backlash crossed party lines. Democrats condemned the move, while Republican Senate health chairman Bill Cassidy called it “based on no scientific input.” Medical groups sued, and a federal judge blocked the changes. Trump nevertheless backed Kennedy with an executive order on August 10 to formally cut the schedule.
For many Independents, these moves showed what Kennedy could accomplish when he had freedom to act. But there were limits to that freedom.
Those limits were clearest on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and a longtime Kennedy target. Trump made boosting its production a national priority. Kennedy publicly backed the order but later admitted on Rogan he was “not particularly happy” with it. Trump’s Justice Department later backed Monsanto before the Supreme Court, which issued a ruling undercutting thousands of Roundup cancer claims.
Kennedy moved to close the “generally recognized as safe” loophole, which lets food companies declare ingredients safe without FDA review. Industry lobbying against the proposal surged, and the White House sat on it for six months. His definition of ultra-processed food, a category linked to chronic disease, met the same resistance and still awaits White House approval. Kennedy needs the federal definition before he can require companies to label their products as ultra-processed.
The MAHA promise has come closest to being kept. Kennedy moved quickly and won meaningful reforms, but the freedom Trump promised has proved conditional. His authority is real, but it narrows when those efforts threaten industry profits.
Verdict: Monkey’s Paw.
Promise 5: “End the Forever Wars”
I will end the endless wars.” (Trump, Bitcoin Conference, Nashville, Tennessee, July 27, 2024) For Independents tired of forever wars, we believed Trump would stop feeding the military-industrial complex.
Record: U.S. strikes on Iran began Feb. 28, 2026. After notifying Congress on March 2, Trump had 60 days under the War Powers Resolution to end hostilities or seek congressional authorization. He did neither. At the deadline, he declared the hostilities “terminated,” even as the blockade of Iranian ports continued and missile strikes resumed.
Joe Kent resigned as counterterrorism director, saying Iran had posed no imminent threat. Thomas Massie, one of the few Republicans to oppose the war and a Trump critic on several other fronts, lost to Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein after roughly $37 million flooded the race, making it the most expensive House primary in history.
Trump has repeatedly called the war almost over, but the U.S. and Iran were still exchanging strikes well into July. Eighteen American service members have been killed and 624 wounded. The Pentagon put the war’s cost at $37.5 billion and is seeking another $67 billion.
The war machine slouches toward profit under either party. In 2020, Trump requested $741 billion for national defense. Biden’s administration asked for $895 billion. Trump now proposes $1.5 trillion for national defense in 2027. Each administration outbids the last.
Never-ending war is the duopoly’s business model.
Verdict: Broken.
In the end, none of the five promises have been fully kept. Three were broken outright, and two came with a catch. Trump still has more than two years to make good on them, but I am not optimistic.
A partisan promise is either a straight lie or a Monkey’s Paw.
So long as each party can keep our votes by making the other seem worse, neither has to earn them by keeping its promises. I made the case to Independent voters and wrote that our trust was “well-founded.” The record says otherwise.
It's easy to blame Republicans now, just as it was easy to blame Democrats then. But we cannot keep blaming the parties while casting our ballots for them. Independents are the country's largest political group, but we don't yet act like one.
We must organize, stop fighting over the same voters, and build shared infrastructure like ballot-access operations, candidate pipelines, and donor networks. And we must stop bargaining away our votes.
The lesser of two evils is still evil, and we will never get leaders we trust by voting for parties we don’t.
Ryan Rabah is an attorney and founder of Independent Campaign Strategies, a political consulting firm serving Independent candidates and organizations. He served as North Carolina state director for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign, co-founded We The People of North Carolina and Our House PAC, and will speak at the Independent National Convention in Washington, D.C., this September.
