Third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has shelved his hopeless run for the White House and is instead supporting the Republican candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Friday’s announcement was the culmination of weeks of speculation as Kennedy fell in the polls, but he still sent a defiant message and condemned the “naysayers” on his campaign team.
“We proved them wrong,” Kennedy said at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. “Under the radar of the mainstream media, we inspired a huge independent political movement.”
“I think in an honest system I would have won the election,” he later added.
Still, he acknowledged that his chances were slim. “I can’t in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working so many overtime hours, or ask my donors to keep giving, if I can’t honestly tell them that I have a real shot at the White House.”
Kennedy stressed that he would not “end” his campaign, but would only suspend it. However, he announced that he would remove his name from the ballot in states where he feared he would take votes away from Trump.
“In about ten swing states where my presence would be a disruptive factor, I will withdraw my name. And I have already begun that process and am urging voters not to vote for me,” he said.
He said he and Trump shared concerns about “free speech, the war in Ukraine and the war on our children.”
In the run-up to Kennedy’s remarks, his campaign team had indicated that his speech in Arizona would address “the current historical moment and his path forward.”
Speculation about a possible alliance between Kennedy and Trump was fueled by the location of the speech. Trump himself was scheduled to arrive for a rally in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, just three hours after Kennedy’s speech.
On Thursday, Kennedy filed paperwork to withdraw his candidacy in preparation for his speech in Arizona on Friday.
Who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer, launched his presidential campaign in April 2023, initially running 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 the launch of his campaign.
His decision to run sent shockwaves through the political community. Kennedy is the scion of a distinguished political family with close ties to the Democratic Party: his uncle John F. Kennedy was president in the 1960s and his father Robert F. Kennedy was a U.S. senator and attorney general.
Both were assassinated, one during his term in office, the other during his election campaign.
The younger Kennedy’s decision to run for president in 2024 put him in direct competition with President Joe Biden, a fellow Democratic candidate who was also seeking re-election at the time.
This also brought him into conflict with members of his own family, who condemned his decision to challenge Biden.
Kennedy’s youngest brother, Rory Kennedy, voiced his opposition before announcing his presidential candidacy in April.
“I admire his past work as an environmentalist,” Rory told CNN. “But because of the wide range of Bobby’s positions, I support President Biden.”
Kennedy has faced heavy criticism, including from his family, for spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines and promoting unsubstantiated treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also spread false claims about the origins of HIV and the health effects of Wi-Fi internet.
Under pressure from Democrats, Kennedy eventually changed his tactics and restarted his campaign in October 2023 as an independent third-party candidate.
However, this did not mitigate criticism from Democrats. Some feared that he could emerge as a “spoiler candidate” in the general election, stealing votes from the party.
What happened to his campaign?
Kennedy’s campaign ultimately failed to make much difference. An ABC News poll released earlier this month found his support among voters had fallen to 5 percent from a high of 12 percent in April.
This was well below the ratings of the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Trump, who both received 45 to 50 percent approval in the polls.
His campaign team also made negative headlines due to bizarre revelations during Kennedy’s term in office.
In early August, for example, Kennedy appeared in a video with comedian Roseanne Barr in which he recounted how he left a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park, pretending it had been run over by a bicycle.
Kennedy stressed that he did not kill the bear himself, but rescued it from the road after it was hit by a car in upstate New York.
As his poll numbers began to falter, rumors of a possible alliance with Trump grew louder.
In July, Kennedy’s son Bobby Kennedy III posted a video on social media showing his father on the phone with Trump. In the conversation, Trump recounts surviving an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania and appears to be courting the independent candidate’s support.
“I would love it if you would do something,” Trump says to Kennedy over speakerphone. “I think that would be so good for you and we will win.”
The video was later deleted and Kennedy apologized to Trump for publishing the private conversation.
Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate, attorney Nicole Shanahan, also appeared on the Impact Theory podcast earlier this week to discuss possible paths for the future of her campaign.
One way, she said, would be to form a new party. The other would be to join forces with Trump.
“We’re now going to walk away and align ourselves with Donald Trump,” Shanahan said, suggesting that was a possible path forward. “We’re going to walk away from that and explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”
On Thursday, Trump himself told the news program Fox & Friends that he would gladly accept Kennedy’s support.
“If he would endorse me, it would be an honor,” Trump said.
What did Kennedy say in his speech?
When Kennedy finally announced the suspension of his campaign on Friday, he began with a broadside against the Democratic Party.
“I began this journey as a Democrat, as a member of my father’s party, my uncle’s party, the party to which I pledged my allegiance long before I was old enough to vote,” Kennedy said.
“Back then, the Democrats were the defenders of the Constitution and civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of the working class.”
But times have changed, Kennedy explained, and with them his party affiliation.
“I left this party in October because it had moved so dramatically away from the basic values I grew up with,” he said. He also devoted part of his speech to criticizing the mainstream media for “systematic censorship.”
“Are we really still a model of democracy in this country? Or have we turned it into some kind of joke?” he asked, claiming that he and Trump faced media censorship and “ongoing legal battles” during the campaign.
Kennedy also took direct aim at Harris, calling her speech Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party nomination “belligerent” and “aggressive.”
In contrast, Kennedy praised Trump for his desire to distance the U.S. from Ukraine, an ally trying to fend off a large-scale Russian invasion.
“I was a fierce critic of many of the policies of his first term, and there are still issues and approaches on which we continue to have very different views,” he said.
“But we agree on other important issues, such as ending the perpetual wars, containing the epidemic of childhood diseases and securing the border.”
Kennedy said Harris had rejected his request for a meeting, but Trump had “demanded to include me in his administration” and “to come together as a united party.”
“Suspending my candidacy is a heartbreaking decision for me, but I am convinced that this is the best hope for ending the war in Ukraine and the epidemic of chronic diseases that is undermining the vitality of our nation from within,” he said, citing widespread health problems such as diabetes and obesity.
But while Kennedy said he felt “inner peace” about his decision, his family again condemned his political maneuvers.
“We want an America full of hope and united by a shared vision of a better future,” wrote five of his siblings, including Rory, in a opinion on Friday.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to support Trump today is a betrayal of the values that are most important to our father and our family. It is a sad end to a sad story.”
