RFK Jr. suspends presidential campaign and endorses Trump
By Aaron Pellish and Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
(CNN) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced at a news conference in Phoenix Friday that he is suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump.
“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. So 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,” he said.
Kennedy then said he will now “throw my support to President Trump.”
“Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place, primarily, and these are 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,” he said.
His announcement came shortly after a court filing in Pennsylvania said he was withdrawing from a ballot access challenge in the state “as a result of today’s endorsement” of former President Donald Trump.
“Respondents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan as the We The People candidates for President and Vice President of the United States, as a result of today’s endorsement of Donald Trump for the office of President of the United States hereby withdraw their opposition to the Petition of Alexander Reber and Janneken Smucker’s,” the filing stated.
Earlier Friday, Kennedy’s campaign said he hadn’t endorsed Trump, and the attorney who made the filing, Paul Rossi, said that he had “misstated” Kennedy’s plans.
But his support for Trump was clear on Friday afternoon. He noted during his Friday speech, that the former president had asked to “enlist him in his administration.”
Kennedy said the offer came in two meetings with Trump, first in the days after the assassination attempt on the former president in July, and a second meeting weeks later.
“In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals, that arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and furiously, if need be on issues over which we differ, while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance,” he said.
Trump is also holding a rally in Arizona on Friday, where the campaign has teased the appearance of a “special guest.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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