Robert F. Kennedy suspends his independent presidential campaign and backs Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suspending his long-shot independent presidential candidacy. He announced Friday that he is seeking to remove his name from ballots in battleground states, and is instead asking supporters to back Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Kennedy — a scion of a famous American political family who is now known broadly as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist — vowed to upend the two-party system but failed to gain the traction needed to compete in the race.

Speaking in Phoenix on Friday, Kennedy said in an “honest system” he believed he would win the election and railed against the media and the Democratic Party for perceived slights against his campaign.

“In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path of electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control,” he said.

Throughout the lengthy address, Kennedy constantly bemoaned what he called attacks on democracy — while backing a candidate in Trump who tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

Kennedy said he and Trump have spoken in recent weeks, and said that while he disagrees with Trump on several issues, they agree on certain important things, like the war in Ukraine, alleged censorship and childhood safety.

He also indicated the two of them have discussed a possible role for Kennedy going forward.

“[P]harma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these [government regulatory] agencies,” Kennedy said. “With President Trump's backing I'm going to change that. We're going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors who are free from industry funding, or make sure the decisions of consumers, doctors and patients are informed by unbiased science.”

After Kennedy’s running mate signaled in recent days that they could end their campaign and back Trump, the former president told CNN that he would consider giving Kennedy a role in a potential second Trump administration if Kennedy dropped out and endorsed him.

In remarks in Nevada Friday, Trump thanked “Bobby” for the endorsement and called him “a great guy.”

Kennedy’s campaign has upset many members of his family. Five of his siblings wrote in a statement Friday that, “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

RFK saw diminishing support in recent months

Kennedy initially challenged President Biden in the Democratic primary before switching to an independent run, promising to deliver another choice for voters unhappy with what was then a rematch between Biden and Trump.

While his campaign launched with an ambitious plan to appeal to voters across the ideological spectrum, RFK leaned into conspiracies about America, the government and vaccines that appealed especially to a smaller swath of voters and those who do not normally cast a ballot.

In part due to his famous political name, Kennedy appeared poised to siphon votes from Democratic-leaning voters who soured on Biden’s age and perceived fitness for office, but Kennedy focused his efforts more toward communicating with the right.

Kennedy frequented right-wing podcasts and television shows, and unsuccessfully attempted to woo the Libertarian Party at their national convention. He saw a barrage of negative headlines overshadow his campaign, from allegations of sexual assault to eating a barbecued dog to a recent revelation he was responsible for dumping a bear cub in Central Park.

His campaign faced significant challenges obtaining access to state ballots, but it ran the most successful independent national ballot access effort in 30 years, navigating onerous state laws and fighting off well-funded legal challenges to submit more than a million signatures across 50 states. As of Friday, his campaign was on roughly 20 state ballots.

But those efforts did not translate to much electoral support, especially after Vice President Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Kennedy dropped from a high of around 15% to the low single digits in national election polls. In the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, conducted earlier this month, he enjoyed 5% support.

The latest financial disclosures showed signs of Kennedy’s struggles, too, with the campaign ending July with $3.9 million cash on hand, $3.4 million in debt and a nearly $1 million refund to his running mate Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy California attorney who poured in $15 million of her own money to help with ballot access measures.

What happens next?

So what happens next in places where Kennedy is already on the ballot, and what impact does his endorsement of Trump potentially have on the outcome in November? It depends.

Each state has its own deadlines for finalizing the slate of candidates and preparing ballots for voters, and differing rules for removing those names.

Kennedy withdrew his name from the Arizona ballot Thursday, for example, and a Pennsylvania filing obtained Friday seeks to remove him from that state's ballot. But he reportedly missed Nevada’s Aug. 20 deadline to back out there — though Nevada is one of several states where legal challenges to his candidacy are still pending.

Many recent polls show Kennedy drawing slightly more support away from Trump than Harris, so Kennedy might have an incentive to remove his name from the ballot in battleground states to avoid playing a spoiler for his newly endorsed ally.

In a campaign memo Friday, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio pointed to survey results and wrote, “This is good news for President Trump and his campaign – plain and simple.”

Democrats disagree, with a party memo sent Friday morning arguing that his candidacy was a “a tool to mislead voters and hurt Democrats, and RFK Jr.’s exit is an admission their gambit failed.”

Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat and still has certain political views that align more with the party, especially around climate change and environmental activism, that could prevent some supporters from switching to Trump.

Supporters who backed RFK Jr.’s campaign because they wanted an option other than the Democratic and Republican parties could switch to another independent campaign. Others, who told NPR that Kennedy was the only candidate they would vote for, could also sit out this election.