Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to a crowd at Area 15 in Las Vegas, Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024. He has dropped out of presidential race and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS
PHOENIX — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential race on Friday and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
The controversial anti-vaccine activist, who was drawing about 4% support in polls, said he was suspending his independent bid for the White House and backing the Republican nominee.
“In my heart, I no longer believe I have a path to election victory,” Kennedy said. “I am suspending (my campaign) but not ending it.”
He added that he was “throwing my support to President Trump,” in a rambling speech.
The move was designed to step on Kamala Harris’ party after the newly minted Democratic nominee wrapped up the DNC with a rousing speech that proclaimed “a new way forward.”
Harris has forged a small lead in polls over Trump in the five weeks since President Joe Biden dropped his faltering reelection bid and endorsed Harris to take his spot as the Democratic standard bearer.
Despite RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump, it’s far from clear whether his supporters will migrate en masse to the MAGA leader’s column.
RFK Jr. was once polling strongly but has seen his support dwindle as the election cycle has gotten underway in earnest, especially since Biden pulled out.
Surveys say RFK Jr.’s backers are an ideological and demographic grab bag who may have been mostly motivated by dissatisfaction with the choice between Biden and Trump and are less likely to vote than supporters of the two major party candidates.
One recent poll suggested 41% of his support would go to Trump and 27% to Harris, suggesting Trump will get a fairly minimal short-term boost from the endorsement.
Democrats predict RFK Jr. may prove a major liability to Trump in the longer term because of his controversial views on a range of issues, like support for conspiracy theories that childhood vaccines cause autism or that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS.
He opposes aid to any school that requires any vaccines, an extreme stance that could further damage Trump’s effort to hold his own with suburban women and other swing demographics.
RFK Jr. has also won unflattering headlines with reports of past sexual harassment allegations and Kennedy himself declaring a worm had eaten part of his brain.
He raised eyebrows with a bizarre admission that he staged a fake crash in Central Park involving a dead bear cub that he found on a road side.
RFK Jr. signaled that his days in the race were numbered on Thursday when he filed official paperwork to withdraw from the presidential ballot in the battleground state of Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes confirmed.
His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, discussed “joining forces” with Trump in an interview earlier in the week, cueing up a round of bitter recriminations among the independent candidate’s online supporters.
It’s not known what if anything RFK Jr. may have been promised in exchange for his endorsement. Some of his anti-vaxxer supporters have floated him as a potential Secretary of Health and Human Services in a future Trump administration, a prospect that would disturb mainstream public health experts who call his views dangerous.
Trump had slammed RFK Jr. as a “radical leftist” earlier in the race but has warmed to him in recent weeks.
The pair chatted after Trump survived an assassination attempt, a chummy phone call that RFK Jr.’s son posted on social media. Trump suggested that he was open to “working with” the onetime rival, although no specifics were mentioned.
Democrats, on the other hand, have ignored RFK Jr.’s request for talks, suggesting they weren’t interested in vying for his endorsement.
RFK Jr. launched his independent bid after considering a Democratic primary challenge to Biden. He has enraged Democrats, especially members of his famous family, who derided his campaign as a dangerous vanity project that would only benefit right-wing extremists.
