PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is anticipated to announce Monday that he’ll drop his Democratic bid for president and run as an impartial or third-party candidate, including a brand new wrinkle to a 2024 race at the moment heading towards a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy’s marketing campaign has teased the announcement within the days main as much as a Monday afternoon speech in Philadelphia. In a latest video, Kennedy stated there’s corruption “in the leadership of both political parties” and stated he desires to “rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”
The video got here shortly after Mediaite reported he deliberate to launch an impartial bid.
A member of one in all America’s most well-known Democratic households, the 69-year-old Kennedy was operating a long-shot Democratic major bid however has higher favorability scores amongst Republicans. It’s unclear whether or not GOP help would translate to a basic election when Kennedy would even be operating in opposition to Trump, the early front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. Allies of each Biden, a Democrat, and Trump have at occasions questioned whether or not Kennedy could be a spoiler in opposition to their candidate.
Biden’s allies to date have dismissed Kennedy’s major marketing campaign as unserious. Asked for touch upon his potential impartial run, a Democratic National Committee spokesman responded with a watch roll emoji.
Monday’s announcement comes lower than every week after the progressive activist Cornel West deserted his Green Party bid in favor of an impartial White House run. Meanwhile, the centrist group No Labels is actively securing poll entry for a yet-to-be-named candidate.
Kennedy has spent weeks accusing the DNC of “rigging” the get together’s major in opposition to him and threatening that he would possibly want to think about options.
In marketing campaign emails and movies, he blasted the DNC’s choice to not host debates between Biden and different candidates and railed in opposition to the committee’s plan to present South Carolina reasonably than Iowa or New Hampshire the leadoff spot on the first calendar this election cycle.
“If they jam me, I’m going to look at every option,” he stated in September at a New Hampshire barbecue held by Republican former Sen. Scott Brown.
Far-right and anti-vaccine influencers near Kennedy even have despatched robust alerts on social media suggesting he ought to or will depart the Democratic Party. Last month, Joseph Mercola, an influential anti-vaccine physician who’s allied with Kennedy, ran a ballot on X, previously generally known as Twitter, asking if Kennedy ought to stop the get together.
While Kennedy has lengthy recognized as a Democrat and continuously invokes his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle President John F. Kennedy on the marketing campaign path, he has constructed shut relationships with far-right figures in recent times. He appeared on a channel run by the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and headlined a cease on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist highway present put collectively by Trump’s former nationwide safety adviser Michael Flynn.
Polls present way more Republicans than Democrats have a positive opinion of Kennedy. He additionally has gained help from some far-right conservatives for his fringe views, together with his vocal mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines, which research have proven are secure and efficient in opposition to extreme illness and loss of life.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, at the moment has a lawsuit pending in opposition to quite a lot of information organizations, amongst them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust legal guidelines by taking motion to determine misinformation, together with about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took depart from the group when he introduced his run for president however is listed as one in all its attorneys within the lawsuit.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”