Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his independent campaign for the White House and endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, a late-stage shakeup of the race that could give the former president a modest boost from Kennedy’s supporters.
Kennedy joined Trump onstage at an Arizona rally, where the crowd burst into “Bobby!” cheers.
Kennedy said his internal polls had shown that his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, though recent public polls don’t provide a clear indication that he is having an outsize impact on support for either major-party candidate.
Kennedy cited free speech, the war in Ukraine and “a war on our children” as among the reasons he would try to remove his name from the ballot in battleground states.
“These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump,” Kennedy said at his event in Phoenix.
However, he made clear that he wasn’t formally ending his bid and said his supporters could continue to back him in the majority of states where they are unlikely to sway the outcome. Kennedy took steps to withdraw his candidacy in at least two states late this week, Arizona and Pennsylvania, but election officials in the battlegrounds of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin said it would be too late for him to take his name off the ballot even if he wants to do so.
Trump invoked John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, saying he knows “that they are looking down right now and they are very, very proud.” He said that, if he wins this fall, he will establish a new independent presidential commission on assassination attempts that will release all remaining documents related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
And Trump repeated his pledge to establish a panel — “working with Bobby” — to investigate the increase in chronic health conditions and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity and infertility.
Five of Kennedy’s family members issued a statement Friday calling his support for Trump “a sad ending to a sad story” and reiterating their support for Harris. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” read the statement, which his sister Kerry Kennedy posted on X.
Kennedy first entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat but left the party last fall to run as an independent. He built an unusually strong base for a third-party bid, fueled in part by anti-establishment voters and vaccine skeptics who have followed his anti-vaccine work since the COVID-19 pandemic. But he has since faced strained campaign finances and mounting legal challenges.
Story By The Associated Press
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