April 18 (UPI) — The Kennedy family is set to endorse President Joe Biden in his 2024 presidential campaign in Philadelphia on Thursday.
Fifteen members of the Kennedy family are expected to stand with Biden in the final leg of his trip across Pennsylvania on Thursday in their strongest rebuke yet of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign.
The Kennedy family’s support of Biden is being led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy, who will give comments at Biden’s event explaining the family’s public support for the president.
In advanced remarks released by the Biden campaign, Kerry Kennedy is expected to invoke the name of her father, the slain Robert F. Kennedy, while denouncing former President Donald Trump.
“President Biden has been a champion for all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncles stood for,” Kerry Kennedy is expected to say, according to The Hill. “I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behavior would have horrified my father, Robert F. Kennedy, who proudly served as attorney general of the United States and honored his pledge to uphold the law and protest the country.
“Daddy stood for equal justice, human rights, and freedom from want and fear. Just as President Biden does today.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, initially launched his presidential campaign as a Democratic challenger to Biden but announced in October he would leave the Democratic Party and continue his presidential run as an independent.
Last month, he named Nicole Shanahan, an Oakland-born entrepreneur and former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as his running mate.
Joseph Kennedy III, who is Biden’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, said he is concerned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign could siphon off enough votes from Biden to allow Trump to regain the presidency.
“We want to be able to make that case not just for the risk that Bobby’s candidacy shows, but because of who Joe Biden is, what Joe Biden has done and what Joe Biden will do with four more years in office,” Joseph Kennedy III said, according to NBC News.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that he understands why his family members “don’t like” his campaign for president while asserting that he still loves them.
“I don’t know anybody in America who’s got a family who agrees with them on everything,” he told CNN earlier this month.
In a similar move, the family of the late iconic farm union organizer Cesar Chavez came out to support Biden last month after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. emphasized the close relationship between his father and Chavez in a campaign event.
Chavez’s granddaughter, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, ironically, is Biden’s campaign manager.
