Robert F. Kennedy Jr suspends fringe White House bid, endorses Trump
International Desk
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, scion of America's storied political clan, suspended his long-shot presidential bid on Friday and endorsed Donald Trump, injecting new uncertainty into the White House race.
"I no longer believe that I have a realistic path of electoral victory," Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist who was polling in the low single digits, said at a press conference in swing state Arizona.
Kennedy, 70, condemned the selection of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic standard-bearer without a primary contest and cited a long list of grievances against his former party that he said had led him to now "throw my
support to president Trump."
Kennedy failed to get on the ballot in even half of the 50 US states and his independent candidacy featured a number of bizarre twists -- including his claim to be suffering from a parasitic brain worm and a story about dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park.
It also drew the opposition of most of his famous family.
"Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear," five of his siblings said in a joint statement in which they endorsed Harris. "It is a sad ending to a sad story."
Kennedy's withdrawal came a day after the surging Harris gave an electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, accepting the party's nomination and embarking on the final 10-week sprint to election day on November 5.
