A day after Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference to announce he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind Republican nominee Donald Trump.
"Many months ago, I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler," Kennedy said Aug. 23 in Phoenix. "In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship and media control."
Despite his deep Democratic family roots, Kennedy in October dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination in order to run as an independent. His campaign drew voters who were often otherwise undecided between the Republican option — former President Trump — and Democrat President Joe Biden, whose candidacy drew low voter enthusiasm, polls showed.
After Biden exited the election July 21, the president threw his support behind Harris, a change that altered dynamics in what surveys show is a very tight race.
Delivering comments that touched on everything from war to processed foods to the drug Ozempic, Kennedy described his campaign being influenced by "censorship and media control" by news organizations, tech companies and Biden — a claim that PolitiFact has investigated before. Kennedy said he would seek to remove his name from ballots in about 10 battleground states.
"If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris," he said. "In red states, the same will apply. I encourage you to vote for me."
Already, Kennedy has filed paperwork to withdraw his name from the ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Kennedy’s campaign was unconventional and made for unconventional headlines.
In May, for example, The New York Times reported that Kennedy once said a doctor believed an abnormality on his brain scans in 2010 was "caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." Experts told PolitiFact that’s unlikely.
And in early August, Kennedy posted a three-minute video on X saying he’d dumped a dead bear cub’s carcass in Central Park nearly a decade ago.
But Kennedy’s work has long centered around false and misleading antivaccine claims. His campaign of conspiracy theories earned him PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year. Among the falsehoods he repeated: that vaccines cause autism, that childhood vaccines are untested and psychiatric drugs cause mass shootings.
His remarks on other topics caught our attention, too. Here are six times we put Kennedy on the Truth-O-Meter in 2024.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is broadcast on a large screen as he speaks during an anti-vaccine rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Jan. 23, 2022. (AP)
Claim: "President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech ... to censor his opponent."
Rating: False
When he said this in an April CNN interview, Kennedy was referring to his lawsuit against the federal government in which he alleges the government censored his antivaccine social media statements. His claim was flawed in multiple ways.
Kennedy — who declared his presidential run in April 2023 — wasn’t Biden’s political opponent in January 2021, when a Biden administration official contacted Twitter over Kennedy’s antivaccine post. Experts told PolitiFact that Biden administration efforts to get social media platforms to moderate false posts is not the same as censoring opponents.
History shows that other U.S. presidents have taken extreme measures to silence political dissent. Presidents John Adams and Woodrow Wilson signed sedition legislation that made it a crime to criticize the federal government. Those laws led to the prosecution of political figures.
Claim: U.S. Border Patrol agents take migrants "to the Yuma, (Arizona,) airport, put them on a plane to any destination they want. ... And they pay their ticket. And then they get reimbursem*nt from FEMA."
Rating: False
Kennedy made this statement during a June 27 X livestream that he described as "the real debate" to compete with the televised Biden-Trump debate airing at the same time.
Federal immigration officers do not provide migrants financial assistance, including plane tickets, the Department of Homeland Security told PolitiFact.
Migrants must pay for their own flights or transportation after they’ve been released from Border Patrol’s custody. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gives money to nonprofit organizations and local governments that help immigrants. Transportation services are eligible under the programs. But FEMA does not reimburse Border Patrol.
The federal government arranges flights for some migrants in specific scenarios: when the migrants are being deported, taken to a detention center or when minors who crossed the border alone are being reunited with family members in the U.S. or sent to licensed U.S. shelters.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talks during a campaign event, in West Hollywood, Calif., June 27, 2024. (AP)
Claim: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals "just ruled Covid vax mandates unconstitutional."
Rating: False
On June 7, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit from Los Angeles school employees who opposed COVID-19 vaccination mandates. But legal experts who follow vaccination and health law told PolitiFact in June that the appeals court did not rule on whether a vaccine mandate is constitutional, as Kennedy had said in a June 12 Facebook post.
(Screenshot from Facebook)
Claim: "Congress prohibits (The National Institutes of Health) from researching the cause of mass shootings."
Rating: False
Kennedy made this claim in an April 21 X post, but it is based on outdated information. In 1996, Congress passed a provision of an appropriations bill called the Dickey Amendment, which federal officials widely interpreted as barring federally funded research related to gun violence — though some observers say that was a misinterpretation. In 2018, Congress clarified that the provision didn’t bar federally funded gun-related research, and funding for such efforts has been flowing since 2020.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks to supporters during a campaign event April 21, 2024, in Royal Oak, Mich. (AP)
Claim: On Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol "protestors carried no weapons."
Rating: Pants on Fire!
When Kennedy made this statement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported that 129 defendants charged in the Capitol attack were "charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer." (Now, that number exceeds 160 people.)
PolitiFact also found numerous examples of convicted defendants who brought firearms or used other weapons that day. After our fact-check published, Kennedy retracted his statement.
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP)
Claim: "The much-trumpeted job growth in the last year was ENTIRELY part-time jobs."
Rating: Half True
When Kennedy said this in March in an X post, we found his statement was partially accurate but ignored important information.
Available data at the time showed that from February 2023 to February 2024, the net increase in part-time jobs exceeded the net increase in total jobs.
However, economists warned that the numbers can shift wildly month to month and experts advise against fixating on a specific timespan. For example, focusing on January 2023 to January 2024 showed that overall employment rose by 1 million while part-time employment rose by 559,000.
PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe, Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman, Chief Correspondent Louis Jacobson and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
RELATED: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign of conspiracy theories: PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year
