“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference in Phoenix today, where he announced he would be suspending his campaign in 10 battleground states. He urged his supporters in those states to vote instead for former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy blamed media and government censorship for suppressing his campaign message and attacked the Democratic Party’s legal efforts to keep him off the ballot.
While the two men still had major disagreements, Kennedy said that Trump would be the superior candidate on his three major, “existential” issues of “free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.”
In a long, wide-ranging speech, Kennedy reiterated many of the heterodox concerns that had motivated his campaign, including that processed foods, seed oils, and pharmaceuticals were causing an explosion of chronic disease in children, that the U.S. was “addicted” to forever wars, and that the government was weaponizing agencies to suppress free speech and independent messages like his.
Speculation had been mounting over this past week that Kennedy would drop out and endorse Trump. His running mate Nicole Shanahan said Tuesday that Kennedy might end his campaign to lower the risk of a Kamala Harris presidency. Trump responded that he would consider appointing Kennedy to a position in his administration.
Still, Kennedy’s endorsement of the Republican candidate wasn’t inevitable.
Just last week, Kennedy was reportedly angling for a position in the Harris administration in return for an endorsement. A few months before that, Kennedy was (somewhat half-heartedly) seeking the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president.
At his Phoenix rally today, Kennedy said he had several meetings with Trump, in which the former president committed to giving him a role in his administration. Kennedy said he’d use that role to clear out the influence of big food and pharmaceutical companies in government.
Harris, he said, had refused to speak with him.
Kennedy’s quixotic campaign message of opposition to COVID-19 mandates; extreme skepticism of vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and processed foods; criticism of foreign intervention; support for more environmental regulation and tougher border security; and condemnation of Big Tech censorship attracted support from a cross-ideological collection of anti-establishment oddballs.
Polls put support for the independent candidate as high as double-digits earlier this year.
But as the election has worn on, Kennedy-curious liberals, conservatives, and independents have mostly made their way back to the two major parties. More recent polling puts Kennedy’s support in the mid-single digits.
Some bizarre scandals about whether Kennedy ate a dog and his planting of a dead bear cub in Central Park likely didn’t help his chances.
At his rally today, Kennedy said that he’d accepted that he couldn’t win the election. He said that his name would remain on the ballot in deep red and blue states and urged his supporters in those states to still vote for him.
Absent his ability to win the race, Kennedy urged people to vote for Trump where it would matter. Doing so was potentially the last chance to save democracy from Democratic Party subversion and “millions of children” from Big Ag and Big Pharma.
