Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced on Monday that he would continue his run for president as an independent candidate, ending his Democratic primary bid against Joe Biden that included a rabid dissection of Kennedy’s conspiratorial views on vaccines, Wi-Fi, and chemically-altered water inducing “sexual dysphoria” in kids.
In his announcement speech from the Independence Mall in Philadelphia, Kennedy said he was “declaring independence” from the “tyranny of corruption that robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future, and our respect for each other.”
“People suspect that the divisions are deliberately orchestrated,” Kennedy said, according to Axios. “They’re fed up with being fooled and they’re ready to take back power.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Kennedy’s siblings, who have repeatedly railed against their brother’s worst ideas, criticized his continued pursuit of the presidency.
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment,” his siblings wrote in a message Monday shared by his sister, Kerry Kennedy, on social media. “Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
Kennedy’s long-shot bid to make Biden the first-ever incumbent president to lose his party’s primary generated a summer of headlines, though nearly all of them focused on his conspiratorial mindset. Last month, Kennedy last month questioned the “official explanation” of 9/11; raised the idea in August that COVID-19 was ethnically engineered; and said in May the CIA’s involvement in his uncle John F. Kennedy’s assassination was “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Such headlines, however, never amounted to much polling success. No poll that emerged since Kennedy announced his run had him overtaking Biden, and a Morning Consult poll in early September showed Biden with his largest lead yet.
