Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce his run as an independent in the election.
Per an exclusive report from Mediaite, Kennedy, 69, is planning to announce his third-party run at an event in Philadelphia on Oct. 9.
According to a text reviewed by the outlet, the campaign management for Kennedy is devising a plan to release “attack ads” against the Democratic National Committee so as to “pave the way” for his announcement.
“Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” a campaign insider for Kennedy told Mediaite.
However, Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who met Kennedy at an event in Tennesse, told CNN, “I haven’t heard anything official or unofficial about him switching.”
On Sept. 29, Kennedy released a short video for the upcoming event and also teased a “major announcement.”
“I understand that deeply felt concern that people have about the way corruption has overtaken our government. It’s in the executive branch. It’s in Congress,” he said, adding, “It’s in the leadership of both political parties.”
He noted that “some people” have developed “a kind of cynicism alongside the hope or they lose hope entirely because they’ve been disappointed so many times.”
“I want to tell you now what I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory. We all recognize that there’s a genuine possibility of national transformation and its source is the goodness in the American people,” Kennedy assured.
In May, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States during a campaign event in Boston.
“My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign, and throughout my presidency, will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism on our country,” he said.
Kennedy is an attorney and avid environmental campaigner. He was a prominent vaccine sceptic, especially over COVID-19.
Kennedy is a son of the former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of the former President John F. Kennedy.