Today, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his withdrawal from the presidential race.
“I am not terminating my campaign, I am simply suspending it, not ending it,” said Kennedy. “My name will remain on the ballot in most states.”
But Kennedy said that after “deep prayer,” he had decided to throw his support behind former president Donald Trump and would be joining his campaign. He said his fervent concern about chronic disease, and Trump’s promises to address these issues if elected, ultimately shaped his decision.
“I only have maybe 10 more years to be effective,” Kennedy said. “If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that burdens and bankrupts the country will disappear.”
Before endorsing Trump, Kennedy noted that he could still win in a contingent election, but that he would remove his name from the ballot in the 10 states where his candidacy could act as a spoiler. “If you live in a blue state you can vote for me,” he said. “I encourage you to vote for me.”
Kennedy also used his speech to accuse the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of waging legal warfare against himself and former president Donald Trump, comparing Biden and the organization to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He took aim at Harris for not doing unscripted interviews with the press, while he and Trump have.
“Are we still a role model for democracy in this country, or have we made it kind of a joke?” he asked. Kennedy noted that he was compelled to leave the race when it became clear that he would “hand the election to the Democratic Party.”
Indications that Kennedy and Trump were inching toward a political alliance has been building for months. In July, Kennedy traveled to the Republican National Convention, where a video of Trump and Kennedy appearing to discuss a possible endorsement surfaced. Trump campaign donor Timothy Mellon also supported the Kennedy campaign with $25 million. Earlier this week, Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, suggested in a podcast appearance that he might drop out and endorse the former president.
In a Thursday post on X, Shanahan said that Democrats are “terrified of the idea of our movement joining forces with Donald Trump.”
“MAGA Republicans elevated RFK Jr.’s sham candidacy as a tool to mislead voters and hurt Democrats, and RFK Jr.’s exit is an admission their gambit failed,” DNC spokesperson Ramsey Reid said in a statement.
The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy launched his campaign as a Democrat in April 2023 and then as an independent in October 2023, and appeared to be a potential spoiler candidate who could meaningfully impact the results of the election. Throughout his campaign, Kennedy appeared to have mastered the art of taking up whatever digital space was offered to him. He appeared on podcasts and in TikTok Lives, and courted crypto donors. When he was not offered a place on the debate stage alongside Trump and President Joe Biden, Kennedy hosted a parallel debate, streamed online and on X, viewed by over 9 million people.
A scion of the famous Kennedy family, Kennedy rose to prominence as an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist. In 2014, he joined the board of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit that falsely asserts that conditions like ADHD, autism, and cancer are caused by exposure to radiation and harmful chemicals, and in particular focuses on disproved claims about the links between vaccination and conditions like autism.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy’s profile rose substantially as he became a noted anti-vaccine activist. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy as one of the “disinformation dozen,” a group of 12 people that it found were responsible for 65 percent of the anti-vaccine content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Meta banned Kennedy from Instagram in 2021 for spreading vaccine misinformation, but not before seeing his following on the platform jump from 121,000 to 750,000 in 2020. CHD was banned from Facebook and Instagram in 2022. Kennedy’s account was eventually reinstated in 2023, when he announced his presidential campaign.
“I started thinking, well, the one place that they couldn’t censor me was if I was running for president,” Kennedy told The New Yorker in an interview earlier this month.
Though Kennedy tried to distance himself from the anti-vax movement after declaring his presidential bid, he continued to surround himself with anti-vax advisers and styled himself as a “truth teller,” citing his ban from Instagram as evidence that he was willing to challenge big government and big corporations. On Thursday, the campaign released a video on YouTube where Kennedy “explains his stance” on vaccines. In the video, Kennedy reads out the many side effects of the hepatitis B vaccine, and cites a New York Times article about people who say they’ve experienced negative reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine. In the video, he alleges that Biden violated the Nuremberg Code by imposing consequences for those who did not get the Covid-19 vaccine (he didn’t).
He has also filed lawsuits against Meta, Google, and Yahoo, alleging censorship. Representatives for Meta did not respond to questions about whether the company would allow Kennedy’s Instagram account to remain active once he leaves the presidential race.
During his speech, Kennedy also accused traditional and social media companies of censoring him by denying him interviews and removing his content from platforms. “Even today, people who try to post my videos on social media are told they are violating community standards,” Kennedy said in the press conference.
Kennedy faced hurdles getting onto the ballot in several states, and earlier this month, reports began to surface that his campaign was running out of cash. Advertising data from X, on which the campaign consistently spent money, showed a drop-off in ad purchases at the end of July. Meta’s ad library shows that the campaign continued to buy ads until the day before the DNC.
