By Ismail Shakil and Stephanie Kelly
(Reuters) -Unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. deserted his marketing campaign on Friday and endorsed Republican Donald Trump, ending a run that he started as a Democrat buying and selling on probably the most well-known names in American politics.
Hours after saying the endorsement in a press convention, Kennedy joined Trump at a marketing campaign occasion in Arizona, the place the group cheered the impartial loudly.
“His candidacy has inspired millions and millions of Americans, raised critical issues that have been too long ignored in this country,” Trump stated of Kennedy.
Strategists stated it was unclear whether or not Kennedy’s endorsement would assist Trump, who’s in a good contest with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris forward of the Nov. 5 election.
Kennedy, 70, instructed a information convention earlier that he met with Trump and his aides a number of instances and realized they agreed on points like border safety, free speech and ending wars.
“There are still many issues and approaches on which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned on other key issues,” he instructed reporters.
He reiterated a lot of that when he joined Trump on the Arizona rally and repeated positions on his core problems with combating continual sickness and ridding the atmosphere and meals provide of hazardous chemical compounds.
With Kennedy on stage, the previous president stated that if he regained the White Home, he would create a presidential fee on assassination makes an attempt and launch information associated to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Robert Kennedy, recognized by his initials RFK Jr., stated he would take away his identify from ballots in 10 battleground states prone to decide the end result of the election and stay as a candidate in different states.
An environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist and son and nephew of two titans of Democratic politics who have been assassinated throughout the turbulent Nineteen Sixties, Kennedy entered the race in April 2023 as a challenger to President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
With some voters on the time turned off by each the getting older Biden and the legally embattled Trump, curiosity in Kennedy soared. He later determined to run as an impartial, and a November 2023 Reuters/Ipsos ballot confirmed Kennedy with 20% assist in a three-way race with Biden and Trump.
He ran a high-profile commercial throughout the February 2024 Tremendous Bowl that invoked his father, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, President Kennedy, and drew outrage from a lot of his high-profile household.
His sister Kerry Kennedy stated on Friday that his resolution to endorse Trump betrayed the household’s values. “It is a sad ending to a sad story,” she stated on social media.
For a time, each the Biden and Trump campaigns confirmed indicators they have been fearful that Kennedy may draw sufficient assist to alter the election final result.
However because the race modified shortly within the final two months — with Trump surviving an assassination try and the 81-year-old Biden bowing to stress from his personal occasion and passing the marketing campaign torch to Harris — voter curiosity in Kennedy waned.
An Ipsos ballot this month confirmed his nationwide assist had fallen to 4%, a tiny quantity however one that would nonetheless be significant in a good race comparable to the present Trump-Harris matchup.
Democrats shrugged off Friday’s announcement.
“Donald Trump isn’t earning an endorsement that’s going to help build support, he’s inheriting the baggage of a failed fringe candidate. Good riddance,” Democratic Nationwide Committee senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill stated in a press release.
Drexel College political science professor William Rosenberg stated the transfer was unlikely to have an effect on the race, given Kennedy’s low ballot numbers.
Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio argued that extra of Kennedy’s supporters would again Trump than Harris in battleground states. “This is good news for President Trump and his campaign,” he wrote in a memo.
In trade for endorsing Trump, Kennedy hoped for a job in a possible Trump administration, an excellent PAC supporting Kennedy instructed Reuters on Wednesday.
Kennedy painted himself as a political outsider. He instructed Reuters in an interview in March that if elected president he would repeal many provisions of Biden’s signature Inflation Discount Act and would search to shut down the southern border to immigrants coming into the U.S. illegally. He additionally supplied staunch assist for Israel.
BEAR, BRAIN WORMS
Kennedy stated this month in a video posted on-line that he dumped a useless bear in New York Metropolis’s Central Park a decade in the past and staged it to seem like a motorcycle had hit it. He proclaimed he had “so many skeletons in my closet” after a former household babysitter accused him of sexual assault. He denied {that a} image of him posing with the barbecued carcass of a giant animal belonged to a canine.
After which there was the mind worm. Kennedy’s marketing campaign confirmed that he had a parasite in his mind greater than a decade in the past, however has since absolutely recovered, drawing widespread ridicule.