Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the Kennedy political dynasty whose independent bid for president was bankrolled by his running mate and was plagued by humiliating personal revelations, will withdraw from the race and endorse Donald Trump for president, NBC News reports.
Two sources familiar with the plans told NBC News that talks between the two campaigns are ongoing. Kennedy previously announced he would hold a news conference in Phoenix on Friday. Trump will hold a rally outside Phoenix that same day.
Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance told NBC News on Wednesday that there has been “a lot of communication back and forth” between Kennedy and the GOP campaign.
The end of Kennedy’s presidential bid, which culminated in an endorsement of Trump, is not entirely unexpected. His running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said in a podcast interview released Tuesday that their campaign considered dropping out of the race to help Trump. Later that day, Trump said he would be open to offering a role in Kennedy’s administration, though Vance separately suggested that a potential Cabinet position would not be contingent on Kennedy’s support for the former president.
Despite his long odds from the start, Kennedy had worked hard to be seen as a serious candidate. He fought to get his name on state ballots (though his methods drew scrutiny) and to appear on stage at the June debate. To voters dissatisfied with the major party options, he presented himself as a leader who would reject corporate influence in politics, a position bolstered by his conspiratorial worldview.
Yet his campaign never really got off the ground. He struggled in the polls and had trouble raising money, relying heavily on Shanahan, a philanthropist and former Silicon Valley lawyer, to finance his campaign. His political agenda also had little impact: As a third-party candidate, he ran on a platform that was too haphazard to be a movement candidate, and his campaign was too weak to be a deal-breaker.
What Kennedy’s candidacy did do was raise his national profile — and seriously damage his already questionable reputation in the public eye. His conspiracy theories were intensely criticized, and he was publicly ignored by other Kennedys, with 15 of his family members — including six of his 10 siblings — publicly endorsing Joe Biden before the president left office.
There were also some disturbing revelations from his past. Kennedy told The New York Times that he had recovered from the cognitive effects of a parasitic worm that was eating away part of his brain. After a woman who babysat his children accused him of sexual abuse, saying he had groped and touched her inappropriately on several occasions, Kennedy responded, “I am who I am.” Asked by The Boston Globe whether more women would come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct, he said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Kennedy also had to deny to Vanity Fair that he had ever eaten a dog and recently revealed that he once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park as a bizarre prank.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
