Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to finish his marketing campaign for president, a number of retailers reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources conversant in Kennedy’s plans — spelling a probable finish for the anti-vaccine activist and Kennedy household scion’s longshot bid for the White Home.
Kennedy’s marketing campaign stated in an e-mail Wednesday afternoon that he would “address the nation live on Friday about the present historical moment and his path forward.” The marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to HuffPost’s request for touch upon a number of studies that Kennedy can be dropping out.
ABC Information reported that Kennedy would finish his presidential bid by the top of the week, citing unnamed “sources familiar with the decision.” Inside a few hours, different retailers had matched the report: CNN reported Kennedy would droop his marketing campaign at an occasion in Arizona on Friday, citing “a source familiar,” and NBC Information equally reported he meant to finish his marketing campaign, citing two sources conversant in the plans.
The tales differed barely on whether or not Kennedy plans to endorse Donald Trump; a number of studies stated an endorsement was seemingly, however pressured that talks between the campaigns have been ongoing.
Kennedy’s working mate, Nicole Shanahan, beforehand expressed concern about working “the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump.” Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee, has for weeks been making obvious overtures towards Kennedy, maybe cautious of the impartial candidate’s impression on his personal probabilities in November, and Kennedy has reportedly spoken with Trump about endorsing him and probably becoming a member of a second Trump administration.
Kennedy’s outreach to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential marketing campaign this month, then again, was met with indifference, in response to Kennedy.
For years, Kennedy ― son of the late senator, lawyer basic and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy ― has parlayed his household identify and his credentials as an environmental lawyer right into a profitable profession as an anti-vaccine activist.
Although he has sought to downplay his anti-vaccine views throughout his presidential bid, Kennedy nonetheless acknowledged the function these views performed in his recognition.
“I’m proud to say that my supporters include both pro-lifers and pro-choicers, they include climate activists and climate skeptics, they include vaccinated and unvaccinated,” he stated final yr, asserting that he can be leaving the Democratic presidential major discipline and working as an impartial.
The “unvaccinated” constituency has fashioned a key pillar of Kennedy’s base, highlighting the impression of some (principally conservative) politicians’ embrace of conspiracy theories in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine. Kennedy spent a lot of his time on the marketing campaign path gabbing with media figures like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson on their podcasts.
“We need to start taking care of our own health and stop relying on the pharmaceutical paradigm,” stated Kennedy, sitting alongside his spouse, actor Cheryl Hines, on Russell Model’s present final yr.
Slipping Polls
Kennedy began his bid for the White Home as a Democrat, submitting paperwork to problem President Joe Biden for the celebration’s nomination in April 2023. He switched to an impartial bid six months later, telling a rally of supporters at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall: “What really terrifies the elites, though, is not me, it’s what I represent ― a populist movement that defies left-right divisions.”
Although surveys months earlier than Election Day are usually not predictive, early polls confirmed significant curiosity in Kennedy , who endorsed the “spoiler” label that each Democrats and Republicans utilized to his marketing campaign. A Quinnipiac ballot in late October 2023 confirmed him at 22% help as an impartial candidate working towards Biden and Trump ― greater than Ross Perot acquired in his 1992 impartial presidential bid.
This summer time, polls confirmed help for Kennedy within the low double digits, however he didn’t qualify to seem on the controversy stage alongside Biden and Trump, having fallen wanting CNN’s threshold for polling and poll entry in sufficient states to plausibly win the presidency. Each points ― lack of common help and lack of poll entry throughout a number of states ― remained key obstacles for Kennedy till the top of his candidacy.
Even earlier than Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris for the highest of the Democratic ticket, Kennedy’s numbers have been trending within the improper route. However Biden’s withdrawal was a severe blow to the Kennedy marketing campaign, which had initially been buoyed by “double-hater” voters who dreaded what had gave the impression to be an upcoming rematch between two aged males vying for one more time period within the Oval Workplace. One New York Instances ballot, carried out across the similar time because the Quinnipiac ballot, discovered {that a} fifth of voters in battleground states held unfavorable views of each Biden and Trump.
With Harris, Democrats skilled a jolt of enthusiasm, and the urge for food for Kennedy appeared to drop. On Aug. 14, Pew Analysis Middle reported that “in addition to holding on to the support of those who backed Biden in July, Harris’ bump has largely come from those who had previously said they supported or leaned toward Kennedy.”
The drop in help seemingly wasn’t helped by Kennedy’s non-denials in response to allegations of sexual assault ― or by his weird admission that he as soon as dumped a bear carcass in New York Metropolis’s Central Park.
Blended Attraction
The implications of Kennedy seemingly dropping out of the race aren’t instantly clear, notably in probably election-deciding swing states the place outcomes could possibly be decided by just some thousand votes.
A part of the confusion comes from Kennedy’s political coalition. Although he began out as a Democrat, a lot of his early cheerleaders have been Republicans, and several other of Kennedy’s deepest-pocketed donors supported each his and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bids, Axios reported. DeSantis as soon as commented that, if elected president, he would “sic” Kennedy on the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention or the Meals and Drug Administration.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, specifically, spent years selling Kennedy’s views, and believed Kennedy’s presidential bid “could be both a useful chaos agent in [the] 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country,” CBS Information’ Robert Costa reported in April.
To additional muddy the waters, most of Kennedy’s vital monetary supporters are troublesome to profile. In March, Politico discovered that, of roughly 21,000 donors who’d given Kennedy’s marketing campaign no less than $200 since he switched to an impartial candidacy, “74 percent of them did not make any political donations during the 2020 cycle.”
Meg Kinnard by way of Related Press
As a candidate for president, Kennedy has pledged to cease the Nationwide Institutes of Health’s work on infectious ailments. Different coverage priorities aren’t so clear. Kennedy stated he personally favored a “Medicare for All” well being care mannequin, for instance, however argued that really pursuing that coverage can be “too much of a heavy lift.” In August, Kennedy stated he would help a nationwide abortion ban after the primary three months of being pregnant ― solely to stroll again the place the identical day. The flip-flops are a part of a sample for the candidate.
Kennedy’s remarks have usually been inflammatory. In 2022, months earlier than launching his presidential bid, Kennedy criticized vaccine mandates by saying that “even in Hitler’s Germany you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” (He later apologized for the comment.)
In July 2023, Kennedy falsely stated of COVID-19: “There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately … COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” (Kennedy stated the New York Submit, which first reported his remarks, was “mistaken,” and that he by no means believed the virus was “deliberately engineered” to focus on sure ethnicities. Nonetheless, he stated, “it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons.”)
Members of Kennedy’s household have denounced his marketing campaign on account of his anti-vaccine work. A number of of his siblings wrote on social media that they believed his candidacy was “perilous for our country.” (“There’s a lot of members of my family who are working for the Biden administration and they have their own opinions about issues,” Kennedy stated of the denunciation.)
An Anti-Vaccine Candidate
A long time in the past, Kennedy started selling defective analysis that claimed, falsely, to point out a hyperlink between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. (Earlier than HuffPost shuttered its unpaid contributor platform in 2017, Kennedy wrote a number of weblog entries denigrating vaccines. These posts, together with others spreading misinformation about vaccines, have since been eliminated from the positioning.)
Kennedy’s trendy place atop a crowded neighborhood of anti-vaccine activists started with the publication of his piece “Deadly Immunity” in Rolling Stone and Salon in 2005. The article falsely advised a hyperlink between a former vaccine preservative and autism, and accused the scientific neighborhood of conspiring to bury proof of that supposed connection. Rolling Stone ultimately eliminated the piece from its web site and Salon issued a prolonged retraction, however the article made Kennedy a hero to the anti-vaccine motion. (Kennedy has stood by the piece by means of the years. Final June, he known as it “my award-winning article” in a notice to Nationwide Overview.)
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, Kennedy switched gears, falsely referring to the COVID-19 jab because the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” In the meantime, Youngsters’s Health Protection, the anti-vaccine group he based, doubled its income to just about $7 million in 2020, in response to The Related Press. Kennedy reported a $516,000 earnings from the group, a part of tens of millions in general earnings, within the yr earlier than he entered the presidential race.
Kennedy’s impression on American public life will seemingly lengthy outlast his presidential marketing campaign. Final November, the CDC reported {that a} record-high 3% of kids getting into kindergarten had acquired a vaccine exemption from their state.
