Robert F. Kennedy suspends his campaign and endorses Trump: “The Democratic Party wants to save democracy by ending it” | USA Elections

The 2024 electoral campaign is still full of surprises. This cycle leaves a new twist in the script, after the attacks against Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. The road to November 5th is now leaving the Trumpist Kennedy. Ten months after starting his journey to the White House, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy resigned this Friday. The environmental lawyer and renowned anti-vaccine activist closed the chapter this morning in Arizona, one of the seven states that will define the November 5th election. Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of the 35th president John F. Kennedy, will remove his name from the ballot in 10 states to increase Trump’s chances of returning to the White House.

“The Democratic Party wants to save democracy by destroying it,” Kennedy said in his message. The 70-year-old candidate began his path to the presidency as a member of this organization, the same one that hosts the famous political dynasty. Kennedy wanted to challenge Biden’s candidacy, but in October last year he chose the independent path, a difficult path that involved him collecting more than a million signatures across the country so that his name would appear on the ballots of all 50 states. This effort, which required an investment of at least $15 million, was hampered by a series of legal battles. Many of these lawsuits were initiated by Biden’s Democratic supporters.

“The party was the defender of the Constitution, of workers, that fought against totalitarianism, corporate power, imperialism and unjust wars. But I left it because it moved away from these values,” said Kennedy, who attended her first Democratic convention at age six. She said of the Democrats, “Who needs public policy ideas when you have Trump to hate?”

RFK Jr. immediately launched into the attack dynamics of Trumpism. Within minutes he had questioned the legitimacy of Kamala Harris’ candidacy. “My uncle and my father loved to debate. They took pride in competing with any opponent and opposing views. They would be impressed to know that their party today has a nominee who hasn’t given a single interview or had an unscheduled event in 35 days,” he said.

However, the Kennedy clan has reacted to the departure of their wayward relative. “We believe in Harris and Walz. Our brother’s decision to support Trump is a betrayal of our father and our family’s values,” Robert Kennedy Jr.’s five brothers said in a statement. The lawyer admitted on stage that his arrival in the Republican campaign would be a bitter drink for those dearest to him. He said, “Joining Trump will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children, but if there are chances, even if small, of saving the children of the United States, it is worth it.”

It’s still too early to know how Kennedy’s return plays out in Trump’s favor. The average polling of independents in the election was about 5%. Analysts warn of how difficult it is to calculate the real value of non-party candidates in a two-party system. In 2016, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein claimed 9% and 3% before the election, but they only garnered 3% and 1%, respectively. The November race will be very close and Kennedy believes he can help tip the balance. According to their calculations, Harris and Trump are tied today with 269 electoral college votes each.

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On Thursday night it was revealed that the Kennedy campaign had begun the process of dropping the election in Arizona through notarized letters. The state secretary of the entity responsible for organizing the election confirmed the news. This is despite the fact that Kennedy’s team recently announced that they had exceeded the number of signatures needed to access the ballot. They submitted nearly 110,000 names, far more than the required minimum of 42,000.

Newspaper the new York Times It was revealed this week that millions of Arizona signatures were obtained with the help of a political action committee, a PAC, and not through volunteers. Federal law prohibits a campaign from coordinating with a PAC, raising questions about the validity of signatures collected in crucial areas.

Kennedy clarified this Friday that his name will remain on the ballots in “most states.” “If you live in a blue (Democratic) stronghold you can vote for me without hurting President Trump and without helping Harris. The same applies to red (Republican) areas. I invite you to vote for me,” he said.

The signs of an exit were clear. Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate, Nicole Shanahan, said in an interview Tuesday that the campaign was already studying the possibility. “One option is to stay in the race and form a solid third party, but we run the risk of allowing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to become president because we take away votes from Trump,” Shanahan said on the Impact Theory podcast.

Kennedy has admitted he was a “fierce critic” of many of the Trump administration’s early measures. Today he tried to convince his voters to switch sides. “I always told my voters I would leave the campaign to become spoilerSomeone who has the ability to influence the outcome of an election without any realistic chance of winning. And the information we have in our hands suggests that I have become that, too, because I have no viable way of winning,” he said.

Trump and Kennedy had been negotiating the endorsement for several months. Washington Post He assured in July that the teams were in communication. The newspaper claimed that Kennedy offered to leave the race in 2025 in exchange for a position in the Republican cabinet. The lawyer revealed this morning that he had a phone conversation with Trump that month and weeks later he went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the former president and discuss a unity candidacy. “I was surprised to find that we were in unison on many key issues,” he said. Kennedy said he approached Kamala Harris to explore a similar path, but never received a response.

Shanahan speculated that the position sought could be in the Department of Health. “I think Bobby would do very well there, he has my full support,” he said in the interview. Both Kennedy and the Trump campaign have criticized Anthony Fauci’s role in the coronavirus pandemic and the pharmaceutical industry.

Kennedy devoted much of his message to talking about the chronic diseases that afflict Americans. He attacked the food and drug industry lobby, which, in his opinion, keeps two-thirds of the population sick in order to do business. “We spend more on health than any other country in the world and no one has a disease burden like us. We are the sickest country on the planet,” he said.

A campaign riddled with scandal

Americans learned in a bizarre way earlier this month that Kennedy was responsible for a decades-long unsolved mystery in New York. Kennedy admitted that in 2014 he left the body of a dead bear cub in Central Park and made it look like the animal had been hit by a bicycle. He thought the episode was funny then, but in 2024 it was a revelation he brought to light himself as damage control just hours before the magazine. the new Yorker This was made known.

A journalistic investigation in May obtained the medical history of the candidate, who claims to live a healthy life, be free of medications, and maintain a strong body for a seventy-year-old man. the new York Times He claimed that Kennedy was suffering from neurocysticercosis and that doctors had found traces of a dead parasite in his brain. When Kennedy divorced his second wife in 2012, he said he suffered from “cognitive problems” and short-term memory loss. Following the revelation of the dead worm in his head, Kennedy took to social media to shed light on it. He said in a tweet, “I could eat five more worms and still beat President Trump and Biden in a debate.”

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