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Kennedy, a conspiracy-minded anti-vaccine activist with a bizarre history, had been running for president as an independent.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the gadfly independent candidate for president, is ending his campaign and throwing his support to Donald Trump.
“Kennedy’s campaign first confirmed the endorsement in a court filing in Pennsylvania before he took the stage for the speech in battleground Arizona” on Friday, NBC News reports.
“Many months ago I promised the American people I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler. ... In my heart, I no longer believe I have a realistic path to electoral victory,” he said in the speech in Phoenix, according to NBC. He is removing his name from ballots in battleground states to avoid being a spoiler.
During a campaign stop in Nevada, Trump welcomed Kennedy’s endorsement and called him a “great guy” who is “respected by everybody,” The Washington Post reports. However, Trump declined to say if Kennedy would have a role in his potential new administration. Kennedy joined Trump at a rally in Glendale, Ariz., later in the day.
Kennedy Jr. is one of 11 children of Robert F. Kennedy, a revered and martyred Democratic politician. The senior Kennedy was U.S. attorney general when his brother John F. Kennedy was president, then a senator from New York. He ran for president in 1968 but was assassinated just after winning the California primary in June of that year.
Although Kennedy Jr. often mentioned his famous father and his uncle JFK during his campaign, his family has repudiated his candidacy. He was originally going to seek the Democratic nomination, then switched to an independent bid.
Members of of the Kennedy family were quick to denounce his embrace of Trump. "We want an America filled with hope and bound together by a shared vision of a brighter future, a future defined by individual freedom, economic promise and national pride," said a statement signed by five of his siblings: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy, and Rory Kennedy, as reported by NBC and many other outlets.
"We believe in Harris and Walz," the statement continued. "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."
Joe Kennedy III, a diplomat and former congressman who is a grandson of RFK Sr. and nephew of RFK Jr., shared the statement on X and called it "well said."
Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President Kennedy who appeared at the Democratic convention this week, posted on X as well, saying, "RFKjr is for sale, works for Trump. Bedfellows and loving it. Kamala Harris is for the people — the easiest decision of all time just got easier."
Before running for president, Kennedy Jr. was best known as a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist. His campaign has been marked by many strange stories. He had been “accumulating negative headlines — an allegation that he groped a former family babysitter (to which he responded to by declaring, ‘I am not a church boy’); a revelation that he used a dead bear he found on a roadside to stage a fake bicycle accident in New York’s Central Park; and a claim by Kennedy that doctors found a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, among other things,” NBC reports. He has painted both himself and Trump as victims of the media and the political establishment, and contended that President Joe Biden and now Vice President Kamala Harris have a dictatorial hold on the Democratic Party.
On LGBTQ+ issues, he has asserted that chemicals in the environment turn children transgender and claimed that poppers cause AIDS. He has come out against puberty blockers and hormone therapy for trans minors, calling such treatments chemical castration, which is not accurate. His running mate, Silicon Valley investor Nicole Shanahan, wrote on X this year, “Just to be clear: You can be supportive of LGBTQ causes AND ALSO believe that children are too young to be able to consent to puberty blockers.”
Sam Lau of the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Votes PAC released this statement on Kennedy’s embrace of Trump: “Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are both, as Kamala Harris said, ‘unserious’ men whose shared MAGA agenda would have serious consequences for our families and our democracy. They are weird and radical conspiracy theorists who peddle dangerous attacks on LGBTQ+ people and want to interfere with our personal health care decisions — as laid out in Project 2025. That’s why the 75 million Equality Voters across the country will show up for the only ticket that will protect our freedoms and move us forward — Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
