Robert F Kennedy Jr is suspending his candidacy for the US presidency and will support Donald Trump’s campaign.
Mr Kennedy, 70, who has been a member of the Democratic Alliance for many years of his life and a supporter of the Kennedy dynasty, said the principles that led him to leave the party have now forced him to “throw in my support for President Trump”.
He insisted at a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday that he will not quit, although he will seek to remove his name from the election in 10 battleground states.
Trump later praised Mr Kennedy as “amazing” and “brilliant” as he welcomed him on stage at a rally in Glendale, Arizona. Democratic challenger Kamala Harris said she would “get” the support of Kennedy voters.
As the November election approached, Mr. Kennedy’s polls dropped by double digits as funding and national coverage dried up.
The son of US Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, he comes from a very famous family in Democratic Alliance politics.
His decision to support a Republican in the White House has angered his relatives, who criticized his use of his last name in a Super Bowl ad in February.
Kerry Kennedy, his sister, said her support for Trump “is a betrayal of the values my father and our family hold dear. It’s a sad ending to a sad story.”
“This decision saddens me because of the hardship it has caused my wife, my children and my friends,” Mr Kennedy said on Friday.
“But I am sure that this is what I am meant to do. And that confidence gives me inner peace, even in storms.”
He is married to Cheryl Hines, star of the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. She wrote on X, which was previously on Twitter, that she deeply respects her husband’s decision to stop his campaign. He did not comment on his support for Trump.
Mr Kennedy told reporters on Friday that Trump’s insistence that he could end the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Russia “in itself would prove my support for his campaign”.
“There are still many problems and methods that we continue to disagree on. But we agree on some important things.”
He said he would remove his name from 10 states where his presence would be a “destroyer” of Trump’s efforts. He has already withdrawn from the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.
But it’s too late for him to pull out of the swing states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, election officials told the Associated Press.
Mr Kennedy said he launched his campaign in April 2023 as a “Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle… the champions of the Constitution”.
But he left because “it has become a group of war, research, corruption, big pharma, big technology, big money”.
He blamed his decision to suspend his campaign on “media control” and efforts by his former party to block his entry, adding: “In my heart I no longer believe that I have a realistic way to win in the face of endless and systematic scrutiny.
Mr. Kennedy hovered around 14% – 16% in the polls when he was most popular. However, her ratings have dropped to single digits since Ms. Harris’s Democratic nomination.
He said in his press conference that he promised to work with Ms. Harris and her bid to run for the White House.
Democrats sounded unfazed by his announcement.
“Donald Trump is not getting the endorsements that will help build support, he is inheriting a failed candidate. He’s backsliding,” Democratic National Committee senior counsel Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement.
Mr. Kennedy’s campaign was similar to the anti-vaccination movement as he often praised his leadership of the Children’s Health Defense organization, which was known as the World Mercury Project.
In recent weeks, Mr Kennedy recounted how he disposed of a dead bear cub that had been hit by a car in New York’s Central Park in 2014 as a joke.
Earlier in his campaign, it was revealed that he suffered from a stroke a decade ago that caused severe memory loss and brain fog.
His announcement capped days of rumors that Mr Kennedy had promised to endorse Mr Trump for his next administration.
Trump told CNN earlier this week that he would be “open” to Mr Kennedy taking part, while Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, said he was ready to “blow up” the agency.
Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, told the BBC that Mr Kennedy’s decision highlighted the two-party system in the US and “how hard it is to get new ideas and new people into the system”.
Mike Wendling also contributed to this report.
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