PHOENIX, AZ—AUGUST 23, 2024—Independent Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today announced in an address to the nation in Phoenix, Arizona, he is suspending his campaign.

Kennedy will remain on the ballot in most of the states for which he has qualified. “But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler,” Kennedy said, “I will remove my name and urge voters not to vote for me.”

In his speech, Kennedy described the considerations that led him to pull out. First was the censorship, media blockade, and legal warfare that kept his message from reaching vast swaths of the electorate. Second was the fact that many of his core issues have been adopted by Donald Trump. 

Kennedy said, “Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech and restore our Constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of government, or to defy the Neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism. But now, one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own, to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration to tackle those issues. I am speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.”

Kennedy went on to describe the existential threat posed by these issues and declared his intention to join President Trump’s cabinet to address them. 

He concluded his address with a call for unity. “Ultimately the only thing that will save our children and our country is if we choose to love them more than we hate each other,” said Kennedy.

Read the full transcript here.

Learn more at Kennedy24.com. Visit our press page here.

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