Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy, a former Democrat, said he supports Trump because the Democratic Party has betrayed its ideals, while Trump opposes neoconservative overseas adventurism, has vowed to end the war in Ukraine and agrees with him on important public health issues.
Kennedy is apparently hoping to take a top position in the Trump administration, where his focus will likely be on ending Big Pharma's control of the federal Food and Health Department bureaucracy.
The Party of Censorship and Law
Speaking to a room of supporters, Kennedy launched into a national address on social media, saying the Democratic Party of his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, John F. Kennedy, was dead.
“At that time, the Democrats were the defenders of the Constitution and civil rights,” he said, and opposed authoritarianism, censorship, colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars.
Kennedy continues.
We were the party of workers, the party of the working class. Democrats stood for transparency in government and championed the environment. Our party was a bulwark against big money and corporate power. We were, as our name suggests, the party of democracy.
But now, he said, it has become “the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big agriculture and big money.”
Kennedy, citing the tireless work of campaign volunteers to get him on the ballot in states across the country, said he could have become president if the system had not been tipped against him. Kennedy accused Democrats of waging a legal battle against him and Trump.
The party “mobilized judges aligned with the Democratic National Committee to try to remove me and other candidates from the ballot and send President Trump to prison,” he said.
The party staged a rigged, fake primary to prevent a serious challenge to President Biden, and then, after a predictable debate debacle sparked a palace coup against President Biden, shadow operatives at the same Democratic National Committee appointed a successor to President Biden, also without an election.
They elected a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that he withdrew in 2020 without winning a single delegate.
He called the Chicago Democratic Convention a “circus,” noting that speakers on the first day denounced Trump 147 times. “What do we need policies when you have the hateful Trump?” he asked, noting that Republicans mentioned Biden twice at their convention.
Kennedy also detailed efforts by Biden's administration to censor speech it disagrees with soon after taking office.
Pause a campaign
Kennedy said he would keep his name on the ballot in Democratic states but remove it from battleground states, making it clear he wants people who voted for him to switch to Trump.
Kennedy would “stand with” Trump because the two agree on free speech, the war in Ukraine and the “war on children” – preventable obesity and other chronic diseases that plague so many of our children.
Kennedy accused the military-industrial complex of offering “cartoon-like justifications” for Ukraine's involvement in the war against Russia.
“Small Ukraine is a proxy in the geopolitical struggle launched by the US neoconservatives' ambitions for world hegemony,” he said. Russia's attack on Ukraine is an “expected response” to NATO's encirclement of Ukraine and a “hostile act.” The deployment of missile systems in Poland and Romania is also a hostile act, he said.
Biden has “repeatedly rejected Russian offers to resolve this war peacefully,” he said.
Trump's vow alone to negotiate with Russian leader Vladimir Putin “would justify my support for his campaign.”
Kennedy said he spoke to Trump within two hours of the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president, and then met with Trump, his family and aides in Florida, where they had “lengthy and intense discussions.”
“I was surprised to find that we agreed on many important issues, and at the meeting he suggested we join forces,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said that while he and Trump still disagree on many things, they “work together on the existential issues on which we agree,” including “ending forever wars, ending childhood disease epidemics, securing our borders, protecting free speech, uncovering the corporate takeover of our regulatory agencies, and freeing our intelligence agencies from propaganda, censorship, surveillance and interference in our elections.”
Harris and her team rejected similar arguments.
Kennedy spent the rest of his speech focusing on the frightening epidemic of chronic disease that afflicts Americans of all ages and is devastating the U.S. economy by costing patients so much money for health care.
As for corporate control of the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture, Kennedy said, “With President Trump's help, we intend to change that.”
Kennedy continues.
We will staff these institutions with honest scientists and physicians who are not funded by industry, ensuring that decisions for consumers, physicians and patients are based on unbiased science.
In other words, Trump has promised Kennedy either a top job or a Cabinet post.
Family reaction
Predictably, Kennedy's family, who had opposed a solo run for the White House as a “danger to our country”, quickly denounced him and said they supported the Harris-Waltz pairing.
“We want an America full of hope, united by a shared vision of a brighter future — a future defined by individual freedom, economic possibility, and national pride,” his brothers and sisters wrote to X.
“We believe in Ms. Harris and Mr. Waltz. My brother Bobby's decision today to support Mr. Trump is a betrayal of our father and the values ​​our family holds most dear. It's a sad ending to a sad story.”
Interestingly, multiple X accounts pointed out that CNN cut Kennedy's speech at the point where he described the “shadow DNC operatives” who had ousted Biden and installed Harris as the presidential candidate.
H/T: The Hill
