Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed censorship by the Democratic Party for his decision to quit the presidential race, and endorse former president Donald Trump. “It became clear to me that I did not have a path to victory. Sixteen months of censorship, of not being able to get on any network really except for Fox,” he told Fox News on Sunday.
Seventy-year-old Kennedy, who ditched the Democratic Party to run as an independent in the race for the White House, announced on Friday, August 23rd that he is suspending his campaign.
Kennedy, who has never held elected office but was a Democrat until last year, initially sought to challenge U.S. President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination (Biden himself dropped out and endorsed his vice president, 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.
He argued that his campaign had failed to gain ground due to censorship by the media. “When Ross Perot ran [as an independent in 1992], in the ten months that he ran, he had thirty-four appearances on the networks. I had two appearances in sixteen months, so I was blocked out of the networks, and I was blocked out of the debate. I had no path to victory,” explained Kennedy.
Supporting this theory, Kennedy posted a footage of CNN’s live reporting of his announcement. As the video reveals, the liberal news channel instantly cut away from Kennedy’s speech as soon as he started criticising Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Despite his well-known family of Democratic politicians—his uncle was former President John F. Kennedy, and his father was former Attorney General and Senator Robert Kennedy Sr.—Kennedy endorsed former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. He even joined Trump onstage at an Arizona rally on Friday, where the crowd applauded him and chanted his name.
Kennedy said his internal polls had shown that his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Kamala Harris. Kennedy also cited free speech, the war in Ukraine and “a war on our children” as the principal causes “that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump.”
Kennedy is an anti-establishment figure who has accused 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 has pointed to his removal from social media platforms, which he attributes to pressure from the Biden administration, as evidence.
Kennedy is a forceful critic of vaccine mandates, U.S. foreign interventions, big corporations influencing politics, and gender transformation surgery for children.
He said he met Trump and his aides several times and learned they agreed on issues like border security, free speech and ending wars. There have been media rumours that Trump could even offer Kennedy a position in his potential administration. According to Kennedy, “no commitments” were made about being offered a position, “we just made a general commitment that we are going to work together.”
Kennedy said he isn’t ending his campaign formally, and his backers would still be able to vote for him in the majority of states where they are unlikely to sway the outcome. However, in the battleground states he would try to remove his name from the ballot to help Trump.
Kennedy has been polling at around 5% in recent weeks. His endorsement could provide a big boost to Trump, who is trailing Kamala Harris by 2-3 percentage points.
