Independent US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. announced Friday (23) that he has suspended his campaign for the White House and declared support for Republican Donald Trump.
At a news conference in Phoenix, Arizona, he said he was not ending his campaign. “I am simply suspending it, not ending it,” Kennedy said.
“My name will remain on the ballot [de votação] in most states. If you live in a blue state [estados onde os democratas sempre vencem as eleições, como Califórnia e Nova York]you can vote for me without harming or helping the [ex-]President Trump or the Vice President [Kamala] Harris [candidata democrata]”, he stated.
“In about ten battleground states [onde não está claro qual partido vencerá]where my presence would be an interference, I will remove my name, and I have already started that process and I ask voters not to vote for me,” Kennedy said.
“In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to election victory in the face of this relentless and systematic censorship and control of the press. So I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to continue working long hours, or ask my donors to continue giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a realistic path to the White House,” he said.
In the part of the press conference where he spoke about his support for Trump, he claimed that his reasons are “freedom of speech, war in Ukraine and the war against our children.”
“[Essas] “Three major causes led me to enter this race in the first place, primarily, and these are the main causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support behind President Trump,” he added.
According to CNN, before the press conference, Kennedy had already informed a court in Pennsylvania, one of the battleground or swing states, that he was withdrawing a lawsuit to have his name included on the ballot “as a result of today’s endorsement” of Trump.
Kennedy aides later told The Washington Post that the portion of the statement that spoke of support for Trump had been written by a lawyer and had not been reviewed by the campaign, and that the protocol would be updated.
Kennedy’s withdrawal from the race had been speculated since the beginning of the week, and sources from a committee supporting the independent candidate told Reuters on Wednesday (21) that he would condition support for Trump in exchange for the promise of a position in a possible Republican government.
Kennedy had been having difficulty getting his name on the ballot, due to the rules imposed by each American state to run for president, and on Thursday (22) he had already decided to withdraw his name from the race in Arizona.
Criticism of Democrats
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, is the nephew of former President John Kennedy and the son of former Attorney General and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s.
A Democrat until 2023, he decided to run independently for president of the United States given his former party’s stance of practically not considering alternatives to the current president, Joe Biden – who, ironically, would end up leaving the presidential race before him.
At Friday’s news conference, Kennedy said he left the Democratic Party “because it had moved so dramatically away from the core values I grew up with.”
“It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech… and big money. When it abandoned democracy, canceling the primaries to hide the cognitive decline of the incumbent president, I left the party to run as an independent,” he said.
Kennedy even appeared in polls with levels that placed him as a possible point of imbalance in the dispute between Democrats and Republicans, but his performance has been worsening in more recent surveys.
Still, in a race as close as this year’s, the migration of voters could still have a major influence on the final result.
“If he would endorse me, I would be honored by that,” Trump told Fox News Thursday. “He really means well.”
The Republican had previously told CNN that he was “open” to the possibility of giving Kennedy public office if he is elected in November.
At the press conference, Kennedy said that in two recent conversations with Trump, the Republican offered him a position in the White House.
“At these meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals; this arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly, privately, and angrily if necessary, on issues on which we differ, while working together on the fundamental issues on which we agree,” he said.
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