US Presidential election 2024: Biden to win endorsement of Kennedy family in hit to Robert F. Kennedy Jnr’s White House bid
“I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behaviour would have horrified my father, Robert F. Kennedy,” Robert F. Kennedy Jnr’s younger sister Kerry Kennedy will say at the Biden campaign event, according to prepared remarks.
“Daddy stood for equal justice, human rights, and freedom from want and fear. Just as President Biden does today.”
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Kerry Kennedy and other members of the family are then expected to join local volunteers in door-knocking and phone-banking on Biden’s behalf, campaign aides said.
Biden, only the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, has long spoken of how he was inspired by the family’s political legacy.
In his 2007 book Promises to Keep, Biden describes himself as a young man moved to get into public service by the Kennedy brothers and the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jnr, “swept up in their eloquence, their conviction, the sheer size of their improbable dreams.” A bust of President Kennedy sits in the Oval Office.
When Biden was later elected to Congress, fellow Senator Ted Kennedy would become one of his closest friends. Ted, John and Robert Snr were brothers.
The family ties have continued in the years since. Dozens of members of the Irish American family joined Biden at the White House for St. Patrick’s Day last month.
Robert F Kennedy Jnr to run for president as an independent
“I have a big family,” Robert F. Kennedy Jnr told Reuters last month.
“Many of them are working in my campaign. Not everybody agrees with me.”