Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will continue campaigning for former President Donald Trump, the former independent presidential candidate has announced, just days after his first appearance at a Trump rally.
“I’m going to be campaigning actively,” Kennedy told Fox News’s Shannon Bream in an Aug. 25 appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
On Aug. 23, Kennedy announced that he was exiting the 2024 presidential race and throwing his support behind Trump. The same day, he appeared at a Trump rally in Glendale, Arizona, encouraging his followers to back the 45th president.
Kennedy expressed gratitude to his wife, who he said disagreed with his decision to back Trump but was nevertheless ultimately supportive.
Kennedy also posited that he wouldn’t be the only prominent ex-Democrat to back the Republican nominee.
“I think President Trump is going to make a series of announcements about other Democrats who are joining his campaign,” Kennedy said. “And you know, I want to make America healthy again, and so does President Trump. So those are objectives.”
In both his speech announcing his decision to exit the race and his appearance in Glendale later the same day, Kennedy explained how and why he came to the decision to back Trump.
Kennedy revealed that he and Trump had been in communication since the failed attempt on the former president’s life in mid-July.
In those conversations, Kennedy has said in multiple appearances, he found that he and Trump agreed on some of the issues that he considered most important: rooting out corruption in federal medicine and food regulation agencies, ending “the grip of neocons on U.S. foreign policy,” bringing an end to the Russo–Ukrainian conflict, and combating government censorship.
‘No Commitments’ Made for Cabinet Role
During his rally in Glendale, Trump announced that should he win reelection, he would appoint Kennedy to a panel investigating the rise in children’s chronic health problems.Namely, Trump said he would “establish a panel of top experts working with Bobby [Kennedy] to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more.”
Kennedy emphasized on Fox News that no commitments have yet been set in stone.
“Have you all negotiated over or talked about a cabinet position, or another position within a Trump government in exchange for your endorsement?” Bream asked.
“No,” Kennedy answered quickly. “There’s no commitments.”
Instead, Kennedy said, “I met with President Trump, with his family, with his closest advisers, and we just made a general commitment that we would work together.”
He said that he and Trump had decided to “form a unity government,” even though he has acknowledged in the past that “we don’t agree on everything.”
“We agreed that we'd be able to continue to criticize each other on the issues on which we don’t agree,” Kennedy said.
Despite a sometimes contentious relationship with the former president since he announced his candidacy 16 months ago, Kennedy and Trump have long hinted at their respect for each other, with both acting as anti-establishment political outsiders.
While polling does not yet show what impact Kennedy’s departure will have on the race, there are some indications that it could benefit Trump more than Vice President Kamala Harris.
