Donald Trump welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the stage during his rally in Arizona on Friday night, saying the independent ran an “extraordinary campaign” hours after Kennedy endorsed the former president.
“With all the votes that he got, he has a lot of votes that he could have gotten … I think he’s going to have a huge impact on this campaign,” Trump said at the start of his event in suburban Glendale. From Phoenix.
Trump said that if elected, he would establish an assassination attempt commission in Kennedy’s honor. Kennedy’s father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, were both assassinated. Trump said the commission would be tasked with releasing the remaining documents from the 1963 assassination of the president — information Trump did not release while in office.
During his speech, Kennedy said he spoke with Trump about issues that he said “bonded us together,” including “getting safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic.”
“Don’t you want a president who will make America healthy again?” asked Kennedy, a longtime vaccine opponent who suspended his presidential campaign on Friday.
The alliance between Trump and Kennedy marks a new phase in their relationship after years of criticizing each other.
Trump has called Kennedy an “industrial radical left-wing lunatic,” a “Democratic “plant” and a “liberal lunatic,” even though many of Kennedy’s views are at odds with Democrats.
Kennedy said in a 2018 Newsweek op-ed that Trump’s “presidency has not only degraded our nation, but the entire American experiment in self-government.”
In a separate NBC News op-ed the same year, Kennedy called Trump’s policies “a disgrace to democracy.”
“President Trump’s policy has not been to actively encourage democracy abroad, but to reach out to some of the most repressive governments in the world and give them support and encouragement,” he wrote at the time.
Those views seemed to take a backseat Friday when Kennedy endorsed Trump at an event in Phoenix. Kennedy said he would remove his name from the ballot in “about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler.” However, he encouraged voters in states where he is still on the ballot to vote for him again this fall.
Some Kennedy supporters in Arizona who spoke to NBC News said they supported Trump.
Scottsdale resident Bruce Brimacombe said he now plans to vote for Trump because of Kennedy’s involvement.
“It’s not that I’m not going to vote for Trump because I’m Trump,” Brimacombe said. “I’m going to vote for Trump because if Bobby can do what he’s been asked to do, I’m behind it. Because it builds a platform.”
Casey Westerman, a 2016 and 2020 Trump voter who planned to support Kennedy in November, now plans to support Trump. Chandler resident plans to endorse Trump again because ‘I trust Bobby.’
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
