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RFK Jr. plans to end presidential campaign, will endorse Trump over Harris
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to drop out of the presidential race and endorse Donald Trump, NBC News reports, ending a longshot independent bid that nonetheless threatened to upend the major-party contest between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Kennedy, 70, ran an unorthodox campaign that at times seemed to be simultaneously driven and bogged down by his contrarian views and controversies on a range of hot-button issues.
While he never approached the level of support amassed by the Republican and Democratic nominees, polls of the presidential race showed Kennedy making one of the strongest third-party showings in decades.
In a presidential map where victory can hinge on swaying slim margins of on-the-fence voters in a handful of swing states, Kennedy’s appearance on 19 states’ ballots could have had a decisive impact.
In turn, Kennedy took flack from both parties, who accused him of essentially running a spoiler campaign that would siphon votes away from their preferred candidate.
For their part, Kennedy campaign officials repeatedly expressed a greater kinship with Trump’s operation than Harris’.
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, suggested in August that the campaign was mulling whether to stay in the race or “join forces with Donald Trump.”
The problem with continuing the third-party campaign, Shanahan explained, was that they “run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency because we draw … somehow more votes from Trump.”
A leaked video in April had already showed a Kennedy campaign staffer calling President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee at the time, the “mutual enemy” of Trump and Kennedy voters.
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