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On Aug. 23, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose campaign of conspiracy theories earned him PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year, suspended his 2024 presidential campaign. Here’s 6 times PolitiFact put Kennedy on the Truth-O-Meter in 2024.
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.
Read the Fact-checks on PolitiFact.
Madison Czopek is a staff writer for PolitiFact. Previously, she was a reporter at Wareham Week, a weekly newspaper in Massachusetts. She has also written for PolitiFact Missouri and worked as a reporter at the Columbia Missourian, where she covered city, county and state government. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri where she earned degrees in journalism and political science.
