{"id":31347,"date":"2024-08-25T03:51:16","date_gmt":"2024-08-25T08:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=31347"},"modified":"2024-08-25T03:51:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-25T08:51:19","slug":"rfk-jr-joins-trump-onstage-at-arizona-rally-hours-after-endorsing-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=31347","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr. joins Trump onstage at Arizona rally hours after endorsing him"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Donald Trump welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. onstage during his rally in Arizona on Friday night, saying the independent ran an &#8220;extraordinary campaign&#8221; hours after Kennedy&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2024-election\/rfk-jr-says-court-filing-endorsing-trump-ending-presidential-hopes-rcna165936\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">endorsed the former president<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;With all those votes he was getting, he has a lot of votes that he could have gotten &#8230; I think he&#8217;s going to have a huge influence on this campaign,&#8221; Trump said near the beginning of his event in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Trump went on to say that if elected, he would establish a commission on assassination attempts in honor of Kennedy. Kennedy\u2019s father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, were both assassinated. The commission, Trump said, would be tasked with releasing remaining documents on the 1963 presidential assassination \u2014&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2024-election\/kennedy-was-assassinated-decades-ago-2024-campaign-push-final-sets-doc-rcna95389\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">records&nbsp;<\/a>that Trump didn&#8217;t release when he was in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In his remarks, Kennedy recounted having talked with Trump<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>about issues that he said &#8220;bind us together,&#8221; including &#8220;having safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Don&#8217;t you want a president that&#8217;s going to make America healthy again?&#8221; asked Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine advocate who suspended his presidential campaign Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The alliance between the Trump and Kennedy marks a new phase in their relationship after years of criticizing each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Trump has called Kennedy a &#8220;phony radical left fool,&#8221; a &#8220;Democratic &#8216;plant,'&#8221; and a &#8220;liberal lunatic,&#8221; despite many of Kennedy&#8217;s views conflicting with those of Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Kennedy said in a 2018&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/has-america-become-plutocracy-opinion-1224041\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Newsweek op-ed&nbsp;<\/a>that the Trump &#8220;presidency has not just discredited our nation, but the entire American experiment in self government.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In a separate\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/think\/opinion\/my-family-believed-ideals-american-democracy-donald-trump-s-policies-ncna875406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">op-ed\u00a0that year\u00a0published by NBC News<\/a>, Kennedy called Trump&#8217;s policies a &#8220;discredit to democracy.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;President Trump\u2019s policies have been not to actively encourage democracy abroad, but to reach out to some of the most tyrannical governments in the world and to give them sustenance and encouragement,&#8221; he wrote at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Those views appeared to take a back seat on Friday when Kennedy endorsed Trump at an event in Phoenix. Kennedy said he would remove his name from the ballot in &#8220;about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler.&#8221; However, he encouraged voters in states where he remains on the ballot to still vote for him this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Some Kennedy supporters in Arizona who spoke with NBC News said they&#8217;re throwing their support behind Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Bruce Brimacombe, a resident of Scottsdale, said that he now plans to vote for Trump because of Kennedy&#8217;s involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It\u2019s not that I\u2019m not going to vote for Trump for being Trump,&#8221; said Brimacombe. &#8220;I\u2019m going to vote for Trump because if Bobby is able to do what he\u2019s been asked to do, I\u2019ll be behind it. Because that\u2019s going to build a platform.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Casey Westerman, a Trump voter in 2016 and 2020 who was going to back Kennedy in November, now plans to support Trump. The Chandler resident is going to back Trump again because &#8220;I trust Bobby.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2024-election\/rfk-jr-joins-trump-onstage-arizona-rally-hours-endorsing-rcna167948\">nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump welcomed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. onstage during his rally in Arizona on Friday night, saying the independent ran an &#8220;extraordinary campaign&#8221; hours after Kennedy&nbsp;endorsed the former president. &#8220;With all those votes he was getting, he has a lot of votes that he could have gotten &#8230; I think he&#8217;s going to have a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2031,8730],"class_list":["post-31347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-arizona","tag-rfk-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31349,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31347\/revisions\/31349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}