Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated he was “suspending” his impartial presidential bid and endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump on Friday, a day after Kennedy withdrew from the poll in Arizona.
Kennedy was anticipated to announce he was withdrawing from the race at a speech in Phoenix on Friday afternoon, however a Pennsylvania court docket submitting earlier within the day confirmed he would withdraw from that state’s poll and endorse Trump.
In a little bit of a twist, Kennedy stated he was not “terminating” his marketing campaign, solely “suspending” it, and inspired his supporters who should not in battleground states to however vote for him.
In 10 battleground states, nevertheless, together with Arizona and Pennsylvania, he’s eradicating his identify from the poll and urged voters to not vote for him, fearing he would play the function of a spoiler candidate by siphoning votes away from Trump.
“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” Kennedy advised the gang. “In a system with open debates, with fair primaries … and with a truly independent media untainted by government propaganda and censorship, everything would be different.”
Justin Sullivan through Getty Photographs
Kennedy thanked the marketing campaign’s volunteers for serving to the ticket make the poll on a state-by-state foundation, navigating an “insurmountable tangle of arbitrary rules for collecting signatures.”
Then, veering into conspiracy, Kennedy launched into a protracted assault accusing the Democratic Social gathering of colluding with the media to undertake a ”systemic assault on democracy.”
Kennedy additionally returned to acquainted themes from his marketing campaign, criticizing ultra-processed meals and poisonous chemical substances for inflicting all kinds of bodily and psychological well being points, from diabetes to varied cancers to consideration deficit dysfunction.
“We are mass-poisoning all of our children and adults,” Kennedy stated.
Kennedy’s endorsement was instantly disavowed by his prolonged household, who known as it “a betrayal” and endorsed the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
“We believe in Harris and Walz,” Kennedy’s siblings stated in a press release. “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.”
Rumors concerning the marketing campaign had swirled since Tuesday, when RFK Jr.’s working mate, Nicole Shanahan, stated on a podcast that the 2 have been exploring their choices for the race.
“One is staying in, forming that new party but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump or we draw somehow more votes from Trump,” Shanahan advised Tom Bilyeu, the host of “Impact Theory.”
“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump, and we walk away from that, and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision,” she continued.
The Washington Put up beforehand reported that Kennedy requested for a high-level function within the Trump administration in change for his endorsement. Trump signaled an openness to the likelihood in a CNN interview earlier this week.
Kennedy tried to barter an identical settlement with Harris however the vice chairman’s crew confirmed no curiosity, he advised The New York Instances.
The long-shot candidate noticed nationwide polling numbers as excessive as 16% this spring, although they’ve fallen beneath 5% in latest months because the marketing campaign failed to search out buy.
Kennedy’s marketing campaign wasn’t helped by quite a few experiences of previous conduct that led him to answer accusations of sexual assault from the household’s former nanny, deny a Vainness Truthful story about having eaten a canine (he says it was a goat), breathe life into 9/11 conspiracy theories, come clean with having dumped a lifeless bear cub in Central Park, and make sure a parasitic worm ate a portion of his mind.
