Third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr suspends US presidential bid

Third-party presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has suspended his long-shot bid for the White House, throwing his weight instead behind the Republican candidate, former United States President Donald Trump.

Friday’s announcement was the culmination of weeks of speculation, as Kennedy receded in the polls. Still, he offered a message of defiance, denouncing his campaign’s “naysayers”.

“We proved them wrong,” Kennedy said at a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona. “Beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive independent political movement.”

“In an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,” he later added.

Still, he acknowledged his odds were dim. “I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the White House.”

Kennedy emphasised he was “not terminating” his campaign, only suspending it. But he said he would be removing his name from the ballot in states where he feared drawing votes away from Trump.

“In about 10 battleground states, where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name. And I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me,” he said.

He explained that he and Trump shared concerns about “free speech, the war in Ukraine and the war on our children”.

In the lead-up to Kennedy’s remarks, his campaign teased that his Arizona speech would address “the present historical moment and his path forward”.

The speculation of a possible Kennedy-Trump alliance was amplified by the speech’s location. Trump himself was set to arrive in Arizona for a rally in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, just three hours after Kennedy’s remarks.

Who is Robert F Kennedy Jr?

A former environmental lawyer, Kennedy launched his presidential campaign in April 2023, initially entering the race as a Democrat.

“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power,” he said at his campaign launch.

His decision to run sent shockwaves across the political community. Kennedy is the scion of a storied political family with strong ties to the Democratic Party: His uncle John F Kennedy was a president in the 1960s, and his father, Robert F Kennedy, was a US senator and attorney general.

Both were assassinated, the former while in office and the latter while campaigning for the presidency.

The younger Kennedy’s decision to mount a bid for the presidency in 2024 immediately put him in a match-up against President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat who was, at the time, seeking re-election.

It also put him at odds with members of his own family, who denounced his decision to challenge Biden.

Kennedy’s youngest sibling, Rory Kennedy, voiced opposition even before he announced his presidential bid in April.

That was well below the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Trump, both of whom were polling between 45 and 50 percent support.

His campaign has also generated negative publicity for bizarre revelations over the course of Kennedy’s run.

In early August, for instance, Kennedy appeared in a video with the comedian Roseanne Barr in which he recounted how he left a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park, staged to look as if it had been run over by a bike.

Kennedy insisted he had not killed the bear himself but rather scooped it off the road after it had been hit by a car in upstate New York.

As his poll numbers wobbled, rumours of a potential alliance with Trump grew louder.

“We walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump,” Shanahan said, offering that as a possible avenue. “We walk away from that, and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

On Thursday, Trump himself told the news programme Fox & Friends that he would gladly accept Kennedy’s endorsement.

“If he endorsed me, I would be honoured by it,” Trump said.

What did Kennedy say in his speech?

When Kennedy finally did announce his campaign’s suspension on Friday, he began with a broadside against the Democratic Party.

“I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party I pledged my own allegiance to, long before I was old enough to vote,” Kennedy said.

“Back then, the Democrats were the champions of the constitution, of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of labour, of the working class.”

But times had changed, Kennedy explained, and his party allegiance had changed with them.

“I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values I grew up with,” he said. He also dedicated a stretch of his speech to slamming the mainstream media for “systematic censorship”.

“Are we really still a role model for democracy in this country? Or have we made it kind of a joke?” he asked, alleging he and Trump had faced media censorship and “continual legal warfare” during the race.

Kennedy also took direct aim at Harris, calling her speech on Thursday night accepting the Democratic Party nomination “bellicose” and “belligerent”.