Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Friday suspended his bid for the 2024 U.S. presidential election to endorse Donald Trump.
Taking the stage with Kennedy in Arizona, hours after the announcement of the endorsement, the former U.S. President vowed to release all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F Kennedy if he wins the election.
Trump, who survived an assassination attempt in July, said the initiative would form part of a proposed new commission on presidential assassination attempts.
A member of the Kennedy family of iconic U.S. politicians, Robert F. Kennedy Jr is a nephew of assassinated former president John F. Kennedy and the son of Bobby Kennedy, who was killed while running for the White House.
In a written statement, five of his siblings expressed their condemnation of Robert Jr’s decision to endorse Trump.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr announces suspension of presidential bid
In a televised speech on Friday, Kennedy described the considerations that led him to pull out of the presidential race.
First was the censorship, media blockade, and legal warfare that kept his message from reaching vast swaths of the electorate. Second was the fact that, since the time that he announced his candidacy, many of his core issues have been adopted by Donald Trump.
“Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech and restore our Constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of government, or to defy the Neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism,” Kennedy described.
“But now, one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own, to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration to tackle those issues. I am speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.”
Kennedy declared his intention to join President Trump’s cabinet to address them, and concluded his address with a call for unity.
“My dad and my uncle made such an enduring mark on the character of our nation not so much because of any particular policy, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by shared ideals,” Kennedy observed as he concluded the speech.
“That is the spirit on which I ran my campaign, and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump.”
Following his decision, Kennedy will remain on the ballot in most of the states for which he has qualified, but in about 10 battleground states where his presence “would be a spoiler,” he will remove his name and urge voters not to vote for him.
Trump, Kennedy family react to Robert F. Kennedy Jr withdrawal
Hours after the decision announcement, Kennedy joined President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on stage during his campaign rally at Glendale, Nevada.
Trump said Kennedy is a “phenomenal person” and referenced his uncle and father, saying: “I know they are looking down right now and they are very, very proud of Bobby.”
The Republican nominee described Kennedy as an advocate for health, and promised he will entrust him with a panel to investigate into the increase of chronic childhood condition in the country if he is elected President in November.
In the meantime, five of the independent candidate’s siblings had denounced his endorsement of Trump with a public statement signed by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Chris Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.
“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story,” they wrote, also expressing their support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
In April, more than a dozen of members of the Kennedy family had expressed their support to Joe Biden’s second run.
John F. Kennedy assassination documents released
Ninety-seven percent of the documents related to the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy have been made public so far.
The latest release took place in December 2022, when 13,173 new documents were publicly disclosed by the US National Archives, following a similar release of files in 2021 and 2017 by the Trump administration.
The bulk of the documents released in 2022 concerned Lee Harvey Oswald, who was convicted of assassinating Kennedy in November 1963.
At the time, U.S. President Joe Biden had pledged that “any information withheld from public disclosure that agencies do not recommend for continued postponement” would have been released by June 30, 2023.
