Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he will address the nation about the path forward for his campaign Friday in Arizona, amid advanced discussions with former president Donald Trump and his campaign team about dropping out of the race and endorsing the Republican nominee, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.
Kennedy has continued to talk privately with Trump since the Republican convention, with multiple phone conversations and at least one in-person meeting, according to a person close to Trump. Kennedy has expressed that he has talked to his immediate family about the prospect of an endorsement. Another person familiar with the conversations says Kennedy has indicated to the Trump team that he plans to endorse Trump.
The private conversations were described by people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the exchanges. The Trump campaign pointed to comments their candidate made Tuesday about being “open” to Kennedy playing a role in his administration. The Kennedy campaign responded to a request for comment by sharing an email from campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy to staff Wednesday.
Fox Kennedy asked her staff to “hold tight” until they hear directly from the candidate about the path forward. She cautioned that there were multiple options still under consideration, suggesting that Kennedy could choose something other than endorsing Trump or continuing his campaign. She suggested that the candidate’s deliberations were still fluid.
“What I can tell you is this. Bobby has been in a period of deep discernment,” she wrote. “I ask you to keep an open mind. Do not believe everything you hear. There are several paths forward — not only two. And I can bear witness to the care and examination that Bobby is investing in consideration of each.”
Kennedy said he will speak Friday in Phoenix at noon local time. Trump has announced that he will appear at a rally in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale at 4 p.m. local time.
The latest moves follow a clear shift in the public posture of the Kennedy campaign after a last-ditch attempt, through intermediaries, to reach out to the Democratic campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris in early August. The Kennedy campaign commissioned polling to show how Harris could improve her standing in the race if she announced that Kennedy would have a Cabinet-level position, and then attempted to share those results with the Harris team, according to campaign officials and a copy of the polling results obtained by The Washington Post.
Harris allies have rebuffed requests for a meeting, and dismissed Kennedy as a “MAGA-funded fringe candidate.” After that statement, Kennedy and his allies have grown increasingly fierce in their denunciations of the Democratic Party.
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, suggested in a podcast interview this week that the campaign has two primary options: to endorse Trump or to try to get 5 percent of the vote to qualify for matching funds in the 2028 election. She did not entirely rule out circumstances changing to allow the third-party ticket a competitive chance, but also said she plans to focus her political energy on electoral politics in California, including a possible candidacy for governor.
Once a major Democratic donor, Shanahan made clear that she now sees the Democratic Party as a threat to the future of the country that could make continuing with the Kennedy campaign unwise. Kennedy campaign advisers have said they believe he now draws more votes away from Trump than Harris in key states.
“The question is the risk of a Harris-Walz presidency worth us staying in,” Shanahan said on an episode of the “Impact Theory” podcast posted Tuesday. “Do we trust Trump in his personal sincerity to do the right thing for our country, to end chronic disease, balance the budget, end these forever wars? Is he somebody that is going to continue to invite people like Bobby and me into the conversation? We are weighing it all. It is not an easy calculation. We want what is best for this country first and foremost.”
Kennedy’s national polling standing has fallen sharply since Harris entered the race, after falling previously through the spring and summer. Kennedy had 5 percent of the national vote in the latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
Link Lauren, a former Kennedy adviser, said Tuesday in a text message that he supported Kennedy’s efforts to reach out to Trump.
“I’m a realist. I think it’s great,” Lauren said. “I’ve been pretty open about how I pushed for Bobby to go and speak to Trump months ago. It’s better to have a seat at the table to influence policy than to go home empty-handed.”
When asked about Kennedy on Tuesday, Trump told a CNN interviewer that he “didn’t know he was thinking about getting out,” despite their communications about the possibility. Asked about giving Kennedy a role in his next administration, Trump said, “Certainly I would be open to it.”
Kennedy and Trump began speaking by phone hours after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Their discussions, including an in-person meeting in Milwaukee, included possible jobs that Kennedy could be given in a second Trump administration, either at the Cabinet level or posts that do not require Senate confirmation. The discussion also included the prospect of Kennedy leaving the race and endorsing Trump, according to people familiar with the talks.
Those conversations reached no conclusion at the time, in part because of concern from the Trump campaign about the legal propriety of exchanging a government job for an endorsement. Days later, Kennedy blasted Trump during a news conference in Massachusetts, calling Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate “a salute to the CIA and the intelligence community and to the military industrial complex.”
“Trump has a connection to the American people, a populist connection, but in many ways it is the same populist connection that we saw with the DNC over the last year, concealing the real purpose of their objectives,” Kennedy said, in reference to his criticism of the Democratic National Committee’s handling of the Democratic nominating contest.
Days later, Kennedy went on News Nation and suggested that the reporting about his talks with Trump was not accurate.
“Is it true that you offered, in a phone call with Trump, to get out of the race in exchange for a job in the administration?” host Chris Cuomo asked.
“No, that is not true,” Kennedy replied.
Shanahan said Tuesday that she thinks Kennedy would make an excellent secretary of Health and Human Services under Trump. Both Kennedy and Shanahan have denied any conversations with Harris about a similar arrangement, after she rebuffed Kennedy’s attempts to set up a meeting.
As talks have continued between Kennedy and Trump, the Kennedy campaign has continued to push forward with efforts to secure ballot access. In Arizona, the campaign filed 110,000 signatures to make the ballot. Internal emails from the Kennedy campaign, obtained by The Post, show that the campaign planned to use signatures previously gathered for ballot access by American Values 2024, an independent super PAC supporting Kennedy. The New York Times was the first to report the use of super PAC signatures by the campaign in Arizona.
Robyn Ross, a commercial counsel for the Kennedy campaign, wrote in one email that the campaign only had 6,000 signatures in the state that had been collected by campaign volunteers. She advised that the campaign would have to “buy” other signatures, presumably from the PAC, at a cost of $7.50 per signature.
“Amaryllis and I are discussing buying the signatures with the PAC,” responded Nick Brana, a ballot access adviser on the campaign, in an Aug. 6 email, referring to Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the campaign manager.
Super PACs cannot coordinate on many types of strategy and spending with the campaigns they support, but they can in some cases act as vendors for the campaigns, if the goods and services exchanged are paid for at fair market value.
Stefanie Spear, a spokesperson for the Kennedy campaign, said the Arizona signatures had been gathered by “Team Kennedy supporters,” but did not specify who they were or whether the campaign would pay for them.
Tony Lyons, who heads American Values 2024, said the PAC did not sell signatures to the campaign. Lyons said Kennedy found himself in a strong position at this point in the campaign.
“Bobby is still front and center as a potential spoiler, a potential kingmaker, as the candidate who might force a contingent election or a wild card candidate who might just emerge as a centrist, common sense alternative candidate who comes out of nowhere and wins the whole thing,” Lyons said in a statement. “All around the world there are coalition governments, people make concessions, they learn to give a little in order to get.”
Kennedy himself has also been traveling the country to appear at court hearings defending the legality of his ballot petitions in other states. Because of flight cancellations due to weather, he missed a planned court hearing in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, but said he would continue to fight against Democratic efforts to keep him off the ballot.
“I am a little disillusioned with the Democratic Party today,” said Kennedy, one of the most well-known living members of the famous Democratic political dynasty.
