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Washington DC: The upcoming presidential elections in the United States are witnessing new twists and turns every day. In the latest surprise, Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday (local time) suspended his campaign and extended his support to former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the New York Times reported. Kennedy announced this during a speech in Phoenix, stating that he was withdrawing his name. He criticized the Democratic Party, accusing it of “abandoning democracy” and engaging in “continued legal warfare” against him and Trump. Kennedy’s announcement was pre-empted on Friday by his own legal team, in a filing in a Pennsylvania court case challenging his ballot access in the battleground state.
A lawyer for Kennedy wrote that the campaign was dropping its opposition to the complaint “as a result of today’s endorsement of Donald Trump for the office of President of the United States.”
Kennedy, 70, the scion of a Democratic political dynasty, ran a campaign that combined populist economic rhetoric, isolationist foreign policy leanings and government skepticism. He found a base of support among Kennedy-curious independent voters and disaffected Democrats and Republicans, according to the NYT.
He began his presidential campaign last year as a Democrat, seeking to challenge President Biden for the nomination. But when he found his path there blocked — which he blamed on the Democratic Party — he embarked on an independent campaign that unnerved both major parties, as allies of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump feared he could siphon support from their candidates.
As Kennedy began to get on state ballots, his poll numbers, once in the double digits, began to soften — a trend that is often seen among third-party and independent candidates as the general election approaches. By the end of August, polls put him at around 5 per cent nationwide. Additionally, his campaign was running out of money, campaign finance filings showed.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has emerged over the past two decades as a prominent opponent of vaccine mandates, promoting widely refuted claims that childhood vaccinations cause autism and railing against what he called the “corporate capture” of the federal government by pharmaceutical companies.
During his campaign, Kennedy was known for opposing US aid to Ukraine, supporting Israel’s military operations in Gaza, and pushing for tighter border security. His stance on abortion wasn’t fixed; it evolved over time and eventually leaned towards setting restrictions based on the fetus’s viability. Though he tried to link himself with the political legacy of his family, often referring to his father and uncle, Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, his family members didn’t reciprocate. Instead, they chose to endorse President Biden and openly criticized Kennedy’s campaign, as noted by the New York Times.
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