He is a member of one of the most famous Democratic families in American history.
But on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — son of RFK and nephew of John F. Kennedy — not only dropped out of the race for president, but also endorsed the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, and appeared alongside him at a rally.
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The Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate — in an impassioned address Friday touching on his family’s long history in American political life — suspended his campaign for the presidency and shamed the Democratic Party of his forebears just days after speculation started swirling that he planned to axe his campaign and endorse Trump instead.
“I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of six in 1960 and back then, the Democrats were the champions of the Constitution, of civil rights,” said the Kennedy scion of the decade in which his father Robert F. Kennedy and uncle John F. Kennedy were both assassinated at the height of their political influence.
“The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars,” he went on. “We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the full world against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy.”
“As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag and Big Money,” Kennedy lamented.
Though Trump is staunchly Republican, even he agreed that the Democratic Party had significantly shifted as Kennedy joined him onstage at a rally Friday night.
“Gone forever is the old Democratic Party of FDR, JFK … even Bill Clinton,” he mused, comparing today’s Democrats to their predecessors.
He was influenced by talks between Trump allies and his team, as well as being shut out of a primary challenge by his former party and mired in legal war over his independent candidacy, Kennedy confirmed in his remarks.
“I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues,” Kennedy said of himself and the 45th president. “He suggested that we join forces as a Unity Party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s Team of Rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and fiercely, if need be on issues over which we differ, while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance.”
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“This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children, my friends,” he said as his voice quavered with emotion. “But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do, and that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.”
In a nearly hour-long speech in Arizona, he mocked party operatives for puppeteering legacy media outlets to their advantage, for shielding President Biden through a “sham primary” process and then abandoning him when it was untenable to install Vice President Kamala Harris “without an election.”
“President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot,” he charged. “But here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot, and our television networks exposed themselves as Democratic Party organs.”
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Despite having delivered an unprecedented more than 1 million signatures, the independent’s campaign had only gotten onto the ballot in 24 states due to Democrats’ “continual legal warfare” — three of which are battleground states: North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada.
“When a predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election, they installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate,” he said.
Trump thanked Kennedy – a name once synonymous with Democratic royalty – in remarks at a Las Vegas restaurant shortly after the announcement.
“But I just want to thank everybody, and I want to thank Bobby; that was very nice,” he said. “That was really – that’s big. He’s a great guy, respected by everybody.”
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At his rally that evening in neighboring Arizona, Trump said that his 2024 for campaign is focused on unity – making the addition of Kennedy to his list of supporters a natural fit.
“Our movement is not about Democrat versus Republican. It’s about patriotism and common sense,” he said. “That’s why we’re welcoming support for millions and millions of disaffected Democrats. And they are joining like wildfire now.”
“We’re welcoming the support from millions of disaffected Democrats, independents, moderates, old fashioned liberals who still believe in things like little things like borders,” he added.
