Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run for president as impartial

In a transfer that might shift the panorama of the 2024 presidential election, lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated on Monday that he has give up the Democratic major and can run for president as a third-party candidate.

Throughout a 48-minute speech in Philadelphia, Kennedy painted a darkish image of a rustic torn aside by corrupt elites, saying he had “declared independence” from the Democratic Social gathering as a result of voters deserve higher than “two candidates anointed by shadowy establishments.”

“The nation is sitting atop a powder keg,” Kennedy stated. “Individuals are indignant at being ignored, left behind, swindled, cheated and belittled by a smug elite that has rigged the system in its favor.”

Kennedy’s announcement caps months of friction with the Democratic Nationwide Committee, which has not scheduled any major debates the place Kennedy or self-help writer Marianne Williamson, one other presidential hopeful, may attain a wider viewers.

Polling launched after Kennedy launched his marketing campaign in April confirmed assist from as many as 1 in 5 Democratic voters, although these numbers later sagged. Some Democrats nonetheless concern that Kennedy’s candidacy, and the attract of his household identify, may cloud Biden’s path to reelection.

Kennedy’s reputation stays larger with Republicans than with Democrats, in keeping with current polls, sparking concern amongst some Republican operatives that he is also a “spoiler” for President Trump.

“The reality is, they’re each proper,” Kennedy stated on Monday. “My intention is to spoil it for each of them.”

Kennedy, referred to as Bobby or RFK Jr., is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of Robert Ok. Kennedy, who each had been assassinated within the Nineteen Sixties.

He labored as an environmental lawyer for years, preventing to scrub up polluted waterways, after which based the anti-vaccine group Youngsters’s Well being Protection.

Kennedy lives half time in Los Angeles together with his spouse, the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines, who launched him on Monday morning.

Kennedy, 69, has tried to color himself as a unifying power whereas leaning closely on divisive and conspiratorial language, telling voters that authorities businesses, the media, main firms and different establishments are mendacity to them. He described himself Monday as “merely the bowsprit of a ship that’s going to chop by means of the armada of corruption, of secrecy, of lies.”

Throughout Kennedy’s speech, 4 of his siblings launched an announcement denouncing his third-party candidacy, which they stated is “harmful to our nation.”

“Bobby would possibly share the identical identify as our father, however he doesn’t share the identical values, imaginative and prescient or judgment,” stated Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

The Republican Nationwide Committee on Monday referred to as Kennedy “simply one other far-left Democrat” who endorsed Hillary Clinton, donated to Democrats for many years and desires to finish hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil extraction technique generally referred to as fracking.

The committee additionally highlighted current media appearances by which Kennedy has pushed conspiratorial views, together with his assertion on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that WiFi radiation “opens up your blood-brain barrier” and might trigger most cancers.

A vocal critic of mainstream media, Kennedy has relied closely on different media to publicize his marketing campaign, together with podcasts hosted by Dr. Mark Hyman and the actor Russell Model.

Kennedy has zeroed in on points as wide-ranging as cryptocurrency, massive pharmaceutical corporations, agriculture and corrupt firms, all in an effort to succeed in people who find themselves already pissed off with American establishments, stated Derek Beres, a co-host of the “Conspirituality” podcast, which tracks the wedding of conspiracy theories and spiritualism.

“He’s choosing off all the perimeter communities and talking on to them,” Beres stated in a current interview. “He’s an opportunist, and the place he sees he can choose off a special a part of the citizens, he’s going to go for it.”

Beres, a Democrat, stated his chief issues had been that Kennedy would siphon sufficient votes from Biden to assist Trump get reelected in 2024 — and that his rhetoric may make some Individuals “so disaffected with the method that they find yourself not voting.”

That blend of voters was on show at a Kennedy marketing campaign occasion in August on the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, the place aged girls in turquoise jewellery and tie-dyed T-shirts mingled with middle-aged males in tailor-made blazers and 20-somethings in Bitcoin T-shirts. They’d come to listen to Kennedy debut a quick documentary about his go to to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Ariz.

Although border safety was the subject of the day, a lot of the crowd was there for different causes.

Los Angeles resident Carlene Brown, an 82-year-old practitioner of holistic drugs, stated she had admired Kennedy for years due to his work with Youngsters’s Well being Protection and his vocal advocacy for holistic medical doctors and different anti-establishment healthcare professionals who’ve been “censored and silenced.”

Brown stated she was raised as an evangelical Christian however left the church as an grownup as a result of she thought faith was bleeding an excessive amount of into the American public faculty system. She nonetheless doesn’t agree with evangelical church buildings on a lot, however she allied herself with them once more through the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of “they had been those that stood towards the vaccine mandates.”

That’s only one instance, Brown stated, of how Kennedy “is bringing individuals collectively.”