Third-party presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his long-shot bid for the White House, throwing his weight instead behind the Republican candidate, former United States President Donald Trump.
Friday’s announcement was the culmination of weeks of speculation, as Kennedy receded in the polls. Still, he offered a message of defiance, denouncing his campaign’s “naysayers”.
“We proved them wrong,” Kennedy said at a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona. “Beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive independent political movement.”
“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” he later added.
Still, he acknowledged his odds were dim. “I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the White House.”
Kennedy emphasised he was “not terminating” his campaign, only suspending it. But he said he would be removing his name from the ballot in states where he feared drawing votes away from Trump.
“In about 10 battleground states, where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name. And I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me,” he said.
He explained that he and Trump shared concerns about “free speech, the war in Ukraine and the war on our children”.
In the lead-up to Kennedy’s remarks, his campaign teased that his Arizona speech would address “the present historical moment and his path forward”.
The speculation of a possible Kennedy-Trump alliance was amplified by the speech’s location. Trump himself was set to arrive in Arizona for a rally in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, just three hours after Kennedy’s remarks.
On Thursday, Kennedy filed paperwork withdrawing his candidacy in Arizona, in preparation for Friday’s speech.
Who is Robert F Kennedy Jr?
A former environmental lawyer, Kennedy launched his presidential campaign in April 2023, initially entering the race as a Democrat.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power,” he said at his campaign launch.
His decision to run sent shockwaves across the political community. Kennedy is the scion of a storied political family with strong ties to the Democratic Party: His uncle John F Kennedy was a president in the 1960s, and his father, Robert F Kennedy, was a US senator and attorney general.
Both were assassinated, the former while in office and the latter while campaigning for the presidency.
The younger Kennedy’s decision to mount a bid for the presidency in 2024 immediately put him in a match-up against President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat who was, at the time, seeking re-election.
It also put him at odds with members of his own family, who denounced his decision to challenge Biden.
Kennedy’s youngest sibling, Rory Kennedy, voiced opposition even before he announced his presidential bid in April.
“I admire his past work as an environmentalist,” Rory told the news outlet CNN. “But due to a wide range of Bobby’s positions, I’m supporting President Biden.”
Kennedy has faced widespread criticism, including from his family, for sharing vaccine-related conspiracy theories and promoting baseless treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also spread false assertions about the origins of HIV and the health effects of Wi-Fi internet.
Facing pressure from Democrats, Kennedy eventually switched tactic, relaunching his campaign as an independent, third-party ticket in October 2023.
Still, that did not allay Democratic criticism, as some feared he would be a “spoiler candidate” peeling voters away from the party in the general election.
What happened to his campaign?
Kennedy’s campaigned ultimately failed to generate much traction. An ABC News poll released earlier this month found that his voter support dwindled to 5 percent, down from a high of 12 percent in April.
That was well below the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Trump, both of whom were polling between 45 and 50 percent support.
His campaign has also generated negative publicity for bizarre revelations over the course of Kennedy’s run.
In early August, for instance, Kennedy appeared in a video with the comedian Roseanne Barr in which he recounted how he left a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park, staged to look as if it had been run over by a bike.
Kennedy insisted he had not killed the bear himself but rather scooped it off the road after it had been hit by a car in upstate New York.
As his poll numbers wobbled, rumours of a potential alliance with Trump grew louder.
In July, Kennedy’s son Bobby Kennedy III briefly posted a video on social media showing his father on the phone with Trump. In the call, Trump recounts surviving an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally and appears to court the independent candidate’s backing.
“I would love you to do stuff,” Trump is heard on speakerphone, telling Kennedy. “I think it would be so good for you, and we’re going to win.”
That video was later deleted, and Kennedy apologised to Trump for the leak of the private conversation.
Kennedy’s running mate, lawyer Nicole Shanahan, also appeared on a podcast, Impact Theory, earlier this week to talk about potential avenues for the future of their campaign.
One path, she said, would be to found a new party. The other would be to join forces with Trump.
“We walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump,” Shanahan said, offering that as a possible avenue. “We walk away from that, and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”
On Thursday, Trump himself told the news programme Fox & Friends that he would gladly accept Kennedy’s endorsement.
“If he endorsed me, I would be honoured by it,” Trump said.
What did Kennedy say in his speech?
When Kennedy finally did announce his campaign’s suspension on Friday, he began with a broadside against the Democratic Party.
“I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party I pledged my own allegiance to, long before I was old enough to vote,” Kennedy said.
“Back then, the Democrats were the champions of the constitution, of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of labour, of the working class.”
But times had changed, Kennedy explained, and his party allegiance had changed with them.
“I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values I grew up with,” he said. He also dedicated a stretch of his speech to slamming the mainstream media for “systematic censorship”.
“Are we really still a role model for democracy in this country? Or have we made it kind of a joke?” he asked, alleging he and Trump had faced media censorship and “continual legal warfare” during the race.
Kennedy also took direct aim at Harris, calling her speech on Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party nomination “bellicose” and “belligerent”.
By contrast, Kennedy praised Trump for his desire to distance the US from Ukraine, an ally that is attemping to fend off a full-scale Russian invasion.
“I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences,” he said.
“But we are aligned with each other on other key issues, like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemic, securing the border.”
Kennedy said Harris rebuffed his request for a meeting, but Trump, by contrast, “asked to enlist me in his administration” and “join forces as a unity party”.
“Suspending my candidacy is a heart-rending decision for me, but I’m convinced it’s the best hope for ending the Ukraine war and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside,” he said, pointing to widespread health concerns like diabetes and obesity.
But while Kennedy said he felt “internal peace” about his decision, his family once again denounced his political manoeuvring.
“We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future,” five of his siblings, including Rory, wrote in a statement on Friday.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
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