Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ditched the Democratic Party to run as an independent in the race for the White House, may decide to quit his election campaign and support former President Donald Trump to avoid a Kamala Harris presidency.
“We are taking a very serious look at making sure that the people that have corrupted our fair and free democracy do not end up in office,” Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee Nicole Shanahan said in an interview on Tuesday, August 20th.
Shanahan, an attorney and entrepreneur, said there are two paths for the Kennedy campaign to go down: one is to stay in the race and create more legitimacy for independent presidential candidates, the other is to suspend the campaign and endorse Republican nominee Trump. “Is the risk of a Harris-Walz presidency worth us staying in?” she asked in a rhetorical question.
According to the latest polls, Kennedy, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, and the son of former Attorney General and Senator Robert Kennedy Sr., is expected to receive only around 5% of the votes at the presidential election on November 5th. Democratic Party nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is polling between 46 and 47%, while Trump is at 44%.
However, Trump has a slight advantage over Harris in crucial battleground states, which will effectively decide the outcome of the election. An endorsement by Kennedy would likely further boost Trump’s chances of winning.
“If we are splitting hairs, I would say that I trust the future of this country more under the leadership of Trump … than I do right now under Harris,” Nicole Shanahan said.
Seventy-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has never held elected office but was a Democrat until last year. He initially sought to challenge U.S. President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination (Biden himself dropped out and endorsed Kamala Harris) but accused the Democratic National Committee of “rigging” the party’s primary against him. He announced his decision to run as an independent last October.
Despite his well-known family of politicians, he is an anti-establishment figure who has criticised the Democratic and Republican parties for functioning as a “uniparty.” He is a forceful critic of vaccine mandates, U.S. foreign interventions, and big corporations influencing politics, and is a supporter of freedom of speech, environmental regulations, and higher taxes.
He has accused current Democratic President Joe Biden of being a “much worse threat to democracy” than Donald Trump because he is “the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech.” Kennedy pointed to his removal from social media platforms, which he attributes to pressure from the Biden administration, as evidence.
Donald Trump welcomed his rival’s possible endorsement by saying he would “be open” to Kennedy playing a role in his administration: “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.”
