Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mentioned on Friday he would droop his marketing campaign, and endorsed Republican Donald Trump, probably ending a presidential bid that he started as a Democrat buying and selling on some of the well-known names in American politics.
His marketing campaign indicated that he feared staying within the race would siphon help from former President Trump, who’s locked in a good contest with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris forward of the Nov. 5 election.
An environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist and son and nephew of two titans of Democratic politics who had been assassinated through the turbulent Sixties, Kennedy entered the race in April 2023 as a challenger to President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
With voters on the time turned off by each the getting old Biden and the legally embattled Trump, curiosity in Kennedy soared. He shifted his plans and determined to run as an impartial, and a November 2023 Reuters/Ipsos ballot confirmed Kennedy drawing the help of 20% of Americans in a three-way race with Biden and Trump.
He ran a high-profile commercial through the February 2024 Super Bowl that invoked his father, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and drew outrage from a lot of his high-profile household, who condemned his marketing campaign.
For a time, each the Biden and Trump campaigns confirmed indicators they had been apprehensive that Kennedy might draw sufficient help to alter the election final result. He confronted an uphill battle in successful spots on the poll as an impartial however secured key positions together with in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina — half of the aggressive swing states anticipated to find out the election’s final result.
But because the race modified shortly within the final two months — with Trump surviving an assassination try and the 81-year-old Biden bowing to stress from his personal get together and passing the marketing campaign torch to Harris — voter curiosity in Kennedy, 70, waned. An Ipsos ballot early this month confirmed his nationwide help had fallen to 4%, a tiny quantity, however one that might nonetheless be significant in a good race corresponding to the present Trump-Harris matchup. His marketing campaign had signaled over the previous few days {that a} change was coming, as Kennedy set his Phoenix deal with. His operating mate Nicole Shanahan mentioned in an interview earlier that if the pair stayed within the race as independents, they might final increase Harris’ probabilities.
In change for endorsing Trump, Kennedy hoped for a job in a possible Trump administration, a brilliant PAC supporting Kennedy informed Reuters on Wednesday. He additionally needed Trump to permit his political motion to proceed in some vogue, which might embody staying on the poll in some states.
Kennedy painted himself as a political outsider. He informed Reuters in an interview in March that if elected president he wouldn’t prohibit abortion, would repeal many provisions of Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act and would search to shut down the southern border to immigrants getting into the U.S. illegally. He additionally supplied staunch help for Israel.
Trump mega-donor Timothy Mellon, an 82-year-old banking inheritor, has given hundreds of thousands of {dollars} this election cycle in help of Kennedy, and given $75 million in help of Trump, in accordance with Federal Election Commission filings by means of July 31.
Shanahan has donated over $15 million to the Kennedy marketing campaign, FEC filings confirmed.
In a video of a telephone name posted on-line final month, Trump prompt to Kennedy that the impartial candidate might do one thing to help the Trump marketing campaign. Soon after, each candidates spoke a day aside from one another at a bitcoin convention in Nashville, attempting to court docket votes.
BEAR, BRAIN WORMS
Kennedy mentioned this month in a video posted on-line that he dumped a useless bear in New York City’s Central Park a decade in the past and staged it to seem like a motorcycle had hit it. He proclaimed he had “so many skeletons in my closet” after a former household babysitter accused him of sexual assault. He denied {that a} image of him posing with the barbecued carcass of a big animal belonged to a canine.
And then there was the brainworm. Kennedy had a parasite in his mind greater than a decade in the past, however has since totally recovered, a reality unearthed by the New York Times and confirmed by the marketing campaign.
Those tales prompted ridicule from late-night speak present hosts.
The Democratic Party particularly has been ruthless of their opposition to Kennedy’s candidacy together with waging authorized challenges in opposition to his poll entry, as concern grew that Kennedy might damage the get together’s probabilities in November.
Source: www.anews.com.tr