PHOENIX – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed former President Donald Trump Friday afternoon during a lengthy speech ending his high-profile independent presidential campaign.
Kennedy’s campaign first filed for approval in a Pennsylvania court Arizona before taking the stage to perform on the battlefield. Trump has his own event Friday in nearby Glendale, where Kennedy will speak, according to three sources familiar with the planning.
Kennedy opened Friday’s speech with lengthy remarks criticizing the Democratic Party for “abandoning.”[ing] criticized the “anti-Democrats” for not believing his campaign could succeed, and accused both the media and Democrats of a conspiracy to keep him from being competitive. Then Kennedy made it official.
“A few months ago, I promised the American people that if I became a spoiler, I would withdraw from the race … I no longer believe in my heart that I have a realistic path to victory in the election,” he said.
Describing both Trump and himself as victims of Democrats’ “sustained legal warfare,” Kennedy criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to win “a single delegate” during the 2020 race, accusing her of ignoring the press and subverting her policy platform. blamed. he called it an anti-Trump campaign. And he compared Biden’s, then Harris’, control of the Democratic Party to Russia’s autocracy under President Vladimir Putin.
In contrast, Kennedy declared that he saw in Trump a partner and a victim.
“These are the principle reasons that convinced me to leave the Democratic Party and become an independent candidate, and now to support President Trump. The reasons were: free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war against our children.” he said.
“One of the two candidates took these issues as his own, so he asked to involve me in his administration. Of course, I’m talking about Donald Trump.”
Kennedy’s decision to endorse Trump comes after weeks of back-channel meetings. A person familiar with the discussions said that Donald Trump Jr. had been trying to prepare Kennedy’s father’s endorsement for six months, another source said, adding that Trump Jr. He had long felt that Kennedy’s involvement in the race hurt the GOP campaign.
For some time the polls were ambiguous on this question. But after Harris was accepted as the Democratic presidential candidate and the voting landscape changed, the situation changed dramatically.
Still, the initial conservations began earlier, about a week before the Republican convention, when right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson paired Trump Jr. with Kennedy.
From there, Trump Jr. and donor Omeed Malik served as mediators to help seal the deal. Kennedy is expected to play a role in the upcoming campaign, two sources familiar with the negotiations said.
In his speech on Friday, Kennedy detailed his talks and meetings with Trump and his advisers, saying he discovered “we agree on a lot of the key issues.”
But he stressed that this alliance with Trump would “allow us to disagree publicly and privately” while still working together on a common goal.
As for his election future, Kennedy said he would only work to get his name off the ballot in swing states because he wanted to give his supporters in “red states” and “blue states” a chance to vote for him without “hurting” him. or helps.”
And he said that by remaining on the ballot, he could technically be eligible for the presidency in 2025 if no candidate wins an Electoral College majority, a virtual impossibility. requiring him to win the votes of the Electoral College.
A long and difficult campaign
Kennedy’s bid for the presidency faltered amid fierce Democratic opposition, controversy fueled by the candidate himself, and difficulties in overcoming significant obstacles facing independents trying to get out to the polls across the country.
The decision to end his campaign was expected after Kennedy’s running mate publicly began mulling it this week. opt out to support former President Donald Trump. Even before that, his campaign had stopped revealing his events and engaged in unusual public diplomacy with Trump, a rival Kennedy had harshly criticized earlier in the campaign.
Kennedy’s expected withdrawal marks the end of one of the most compelling presidential campaigns in modern history. make the democrats panic that his proposal could jeopardize their path to victory in 2024. Initially, Kennedy wanted to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he decided against it in October 2023. act as a stand-alone proposition instead.
His support waned, as it usually does for candidates setting a collision course with the country’s two-party system — though this time, it came amid an eventful summer that rocked the campaign.
The Democratic Party’s decision to change its presidential ticket led to a decline in the share of voters who said they would support third-party candidates. By leaving out Kennedy, he largely distances himself from Trump. Before that, Kennedy and his campaign had struggled through a difficult few months that raised questions about his viability.
Kennedy’s public poll numbers are falling, and neither the candidate nor his running mate have spent much time on the trail in recent weeks. Instead, the candidate was garnering negative headlines – the claim hunted down the nanny of the former family (to which he replied:I’m not a church boy“); He was found to have used a dead bear he found on the side of the road to fake a bicycle accident in New York’s Central Park; and Kennedy’s claim doctors found a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, among other things.
He was struggling to come to terms with it career as an anti-vaccination activist with the need to appeal to a broad electorate. Kennedy has repeatedly pandered to anti-vaccine lobbyists and organizations that have been an integral part of his career, drawing heavy criticism from Democrats and other groups, pointing to their comments and associations to paint him as a radical. On Thursday, after his campaign announced his intention to provide an update on the state of the race on Friday, he tweeted an 11-minute video that he said was “an attempt to set the record straight by explaining my exact position. This is perhaps the most controversial issue of the campaign,” his position on vaccines. Just 24 hours later, he dropped out.
Kennedy also dabbled in abortion politics throughout his campaign: In August 2023, while still running as a Democrat, He told NBC News Before his campaign, he said he would support signing a ban on abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy. Then this May, Kennedy said in a podcast episode that he would support “full-term abortions.” he surprises his running mate. Days later, Kennedy he also retracted those comments.
And at the organizational level, Kennedy’s camp struggled at times under the weight of funding a mass ballot access program to get on the ballot in enough states to win the presidency. By August, only a handful of states had approved Kennedy’s place on the ballot, and he continued to face legal challenges. a court order to remove him from the ballot in New York.
While the ballot access program was short, it wasn’t cheap. Kennedy’s campaign spent more than $8 million on campaign consulting from Accelevate 2020 LLC, a ballot access firm.
In total, the campaign effectively increased its spending — raising $57.6 million and spending nearly $54 million through July. But that fundraiser included a $15 million direct contribution from Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan. heightens speculation the campaign was about to end. (The campaign also returned more than $900,000 to him last month.)
“We are looking at two options, and one remains, is to create a new party, but we are facing the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz presidency because we get votes from Trump or more votes than Trump,” he said. podcast interview aired Monday.
“Or we immediately walk away and join forces with Donald Trump. And you know, we’re going away from that and explaining to our base why we made this decision,” Shanahan continued.
On Friday, Shanahan wrote on social media: “I am not a Kamala Democrat. I am not a Trump Republican [.] I am an INDEPENDENT American who supports ideas, not a person or party. I will continue to work to give voice to the voiceless and return power to the people.”
Other funding flows came during the campaign, including millions spent on security by Kennedy, who repeatedly called on the federal government to provide him with the Secret Service, recalling the political assassinations of his famous father and uncle.
Federal campaign finance reports show that Kennedy’s campaign spent more than $3 million on security services provided by Gavin de Becker, a well-known celebrity security consultant. he is also a supporter and friend of Kennedy. The campaign also owes de Becker’s company an additional $3 million.
Campaign Received Secret Service protection after the assassination of Trump in July.
Katherine Koretsky reported from Phoenix and Ben Kamisar reported from Washington