The 2024 election campaign still has surprises in store. The cycle leaves a new twist in the script after the attack on Donald Trump and the exit of President Joe Biden from the race. The road to November 5 now leaves a Trumpist Kennedy. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy threw in the towel this Friday, ten months after having begun his path to the White House. The environmental lawyer, renowned anti-vaccine activist and popular spokesperson for conspiracy theories, closed the chapter this morning in Arizona, one of the seven states that will define the election on November 5. Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, will withdraw his name from the ballot in 10 entities to increase the chances of Trump 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 houses the famous political dynasty. Kennedy wanted to challenge Biden for the candidacy, but in October of last year he chose the independent route, an uphill climb that required him to gather more than a million signatures to appear on the ballots of the 50 states. This effort, which required an investment of at least 15 million dollars, was interrupted by a series of legal battles. Several of these lawsuits were started by Democratic supporters of Biden.
“The party was a defender of the Constitution, of workers, of authoritarianism, of corporate power, of imperialism and of unjust wars. But I left it because it moved away from these values,” said Kennedy, who attended his first Democratic convention when he was six years old. “Who needs public policy when you have Trump to hate?” he said of the Democrats.
RFK Jr. immediately entered the attack dynamics of Trumpism. Within minutes, he questioned the legitimacy of Kamala Harris’s candidacy. “My uncle and my father enjoyed debating. They took pride in competing with any opponent and contrasting ideas. They would be impressed to know that their party today has a candidate who has not given a single interview or held an unscripted event in 35 days,” he said.
The Kennedy clan, however, has responded to the departure of the wayward relative. “We believe in Harris and Walz. Our brother’s decision to support Trump is a betrayal of our father’s and our family’s values,” they said. in a statement The lawyer admitted on stage that his arrival in the Republican campaign will be a bitter pill for his loved ones. “Joining Trump will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and my children, but it is worth it if there is a chance, however small, to save the children of the United States,” he said.
It is still too early to tell how Kennedy’s withdrawal will benefit Trump. The independent had an average of about 5% in polls. Analysts have warned that it is difficult to gauge the true value of nonpartisan candidates in a two-party system. In 2016, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein boasted 9% and 3% before the election, but only managed 3% and 1%, respectively. The November contest will be very close and Kennedy believes he can help tip the balance. According to his calculations, Harris and Trump are currently tied with 269 Electoral College votes.
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Kennedy has explained that her name will remain on the ballot in “the majority of 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 in red (Republican) territories. I invite you to vote for me,” she said. Her name will disappear from a handful of states, where 93 Electoral College votes are still up in the air.
Kennedy’s campaign began the process of dropping out of the Arizona race on Thursday night. The news was confirmed by the state’s Secretary of State, which is responsible for organizing the elections. This is despite the fact that Kennedy’s team recently announced that they had exceeded the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot. They submitted some 110,000 names, a figure far higher than the minimum required of 42,000. These signatures, however, are under suspicion. The New York Times The agency said this week that they were raised with the help of a political action committee, or PAC, and not through volunteers. Federal law prohibits PACs from coordinating with campaigns.
The signs of the exit were clear. Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate, said in an interview on Tuesday that the campaign was already studying the possibility. “One option is to stay in the race and build a strong third party, but we run the risk of allowing a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz presidency because we take votes away from Trump,” Shanahan said on the Impact Theory podcast.
Kennedy has admitted that he was a “fierce critic” of many of the early measures of the Trump Administration. Today he tried to explain to his voters the change of sides. “I always told my voters that I would abandon the campaign of becoming a spoiler“Someone who has the ability to affect the outcome of the election without having any real chance of winning. And the information we have in my hands shows that I have become one, since I have no viable way of winning,” he said.
Trump and Kennedy had been negotiating support for several months. The Washington Post Kennedy said in July that the teams were in communication. The newspaper said Kennedy offered to drop out of the race in exchange for a post in Trump’s Cabinet in 2025. The lawyer revealed this morning that he had a phone call with Trump that month and weeks later visited him at Mar-A-Lago to meet with the former president and discuss a unity bid. “I was surprised to learn that we were very aligned on several key issues,” he said. Kennedy said he reached out to Kamala Harris to explore a similar path, but never received a response.
Shanahan speculates that the requested position could be at 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 address to talking about the chronic diseases that plague Americans. He attacked the lobby of the food and pharmaceutical industries, which, in his opinion, keep two-thirds of the population sick in order to make money. “We spend more on health care than any other country in the world and no one has a burden of disease like ours. We are the sickest country on the planet,” he said.
A campaign full of scandals
Americans learned earlier this month, in a shocking way, that Kennedy was responsible for a decade-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 found the episode amusing at the time, but in 2024 it was a revelation he himself brought to light as damage control hours before the magazine The New Yorker make it known.
A journalistic investigation in May obtained the medical history of the candidate, who boasts of leading a healthy life, free of medications and maintaining a muscular body for a septuagenarian. The New York Times Kennedy claimed Kennedy suffered from a case of neurocysticercosis and that doctors had found traces of a dead parasite in his brain. When Kennedy divorced his second wife in 2012, he claimed he suffered from “cognitive problems” and short-term memory loss. After the revelation of the dead worm in his head, Kennedy took to social media to make light of it. “I can eat five more worms and still beat Presidents Trump and Biden in a debate,” he said on X.
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