Robert F Kennedy Jr Joins Trump Rally After Dropping Out of White House Race

Independent White House candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has joined the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on stage at a rally in Arizona after dropping out of the race and endorsing the former US president.

Mr Kennedy, 70, a Democrat for most of his life and the scion of the Kennedy dynasty, said the principles that had led him to leave the party had now compelled him “to throw my support to President Trump”.

He said in a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday that he would seek to remove his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states.

Before welcoming RFK Jr to the stage on Friday, Trump promised, if elected, to release all remaining documents relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.

Trump praised Mr Kennedy as “phenomenal” and “brilliant” at the rally later in Glendale. Democratic rival Kamala Harris said she would try to “earn” the support of Kennedy voters.

With November’s election looming, Mr Kennedy’s polling has slumped from a high of double figures as funds and national coverage dried up.

The son of US Senator Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy, he is from the most famed family in Democratic politics.

Mr Kennedy’s decision to back a Republican for the White House has outraged his relatives, who previously condemned his invocation of the family name in a Super Bowl ad back in February.

Kerry Kennedy, his sister, said his support for Trump was a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

“This decision is agonising for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends,” Mr Kennedy said on Friday.

“But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.”

He is married to Cheryl Hines, the star of HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. She posted on X, formerly Twitter, that she deeply respected her husband’s decision to suspend his campaign. She did not comment on his endorsement of Trump.

Mr Kennedy told reporters on Friday that Trump’s insistence he could end the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Russia “alone would justify my support for his campaign”.

“There are still many issues and approaches on which we continue to have very serious differences. But we are aligned on other key issues.”

He said he would remove his name from 10 states where his presence would be a “spoiler” to Trump’s effort. He has already withdrawn from the battleground states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.

But it is too late for him to pull out from the swing states of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, election officials told AP news agency.

Mr Kennedy said he had launched his campaign in April 2023 “as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle… the champions of the Constitution”.

But he left because “it had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big money”.