Over a dozen members of the Kennedy family endorsed Joe Biden’s reelection at a campaign event in Philadelphia last Thursday, a clear signal that the Biden campaign views Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent run as a threat to the president, CBS News reported.
RFK Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy announced that the family backed Biden for president and wanted to “make crystal clear” their belief that America’s “best way forward” was to reelect Biden in 2024.
Standing beside Biden, Kerry described the president as a “hero” much like her late father, Robert F. Kennedy. She said like her father, Biden “stood for equal justice, human rights, and freedom from want and fear.”
While Kerry Kennedy didn’t directly mention her brother’s third-party campaign, she did warn of what would happen if Donald Trump was allowed to return to the White House. She accused Trump of seeking to take the country backward and claimed that he planned to use the presidency “to punish his enemies,” incite “chaos,” and “silence his opponents.”
When asked by a reporter if RFK Jr. should drop out of the race, his brother Joseph Kennedy II, a former congressman, said, “Of course.” He added that there could be nothing that would strip “even one vote from President Biden,” and suggested that having the Kennedy name on the ballot would leave Democrat voters “torn.”
On the same day that the Kennedy family was endorsing Biden in Philadelphia, RFK Jr.’s campaign announced that he qualified to appear on the Michigan ballot as the National Law Party candidate.
The Biden campaign is already facing strong headwinds in Michigan, a state the president barely won in 2020 and desperately needs in 2024.
In a social media post last Thursday morning, RFK Jr. showed no hard feelings for his siblings endorsing Biden.
Kennedy said he was “pleased” that his family was keeping with Kennedy tradition by remaining “politically active” and insisted that while they may be “divided in our opinions,” they remained “united in our love for each other.
Kennedy added that many in his family were supportive of his campaign, which he described as being about “healing America.”
