Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday his family’s response to his departure from the Democratic Party has been “very painful for him.”
“It was very painful for me,” Kennedy said in an interview on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “I mean, I … you know I was raised in the Democratic Party. My father and my uncle were the … leaders of the party. You know, our relationship with the Democratic Party goes back generations.”
Kennedy announced Monday he was switching from a Democrat to an independent amid his 2024 White House bid. The move puts him in a position to challenge both President Biden and former President Trump, who has maintained a strong lead in the Republican presidential primary in recent weeks.
Four of Kennedy’s siblings — former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D), former Rep. Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), Rory Kennedy and Kerry Kennedy — later released a statement that called their brother’s choice to run against Biden as a third-party candidate “dangerous to our country.”
Kennedy, who comes from a well-known liberal family, said the choice to leave the Democratic Party was “very difficult for him.”
“So leaving the party of my … family is very, very difficult for me,” Kennedy said. “But it was a choice that I didn’t feel that I had a — I didn’t feel I had a choice about.”
“And I feel … I think it’s the right thing right now because we’re seeing that, ‘Oh, it’s the same corporate donors that control both of the parties,'” he said. “They have … and the parties are in paralysis. They cannot … within that party system, they’re locked in this … war with each other.”
Noting “every family has disputes,” Kennedy pushed back against his siblings’ claims that he does not share the “same values, vision of judgement” as his father, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
“In all of the issues that my father believed in and my uncle believed in, if you went down and checked the box, that I would check every box,” Kennedy said. “So, I believe that I’m very much aligned with those things.”
“I’m aligned with the Democratic Party that stood for the working class, that was skeptical of the military and industrial complex, that was skeptical about corporate control of the government, that was against censorship of … violently against — fiercely, let’s say — against censorship,” he added.
Calling for a “strategy for unity,” Kennedy claimed his experiences have shown him Democrats and Republicans have more in common than the issues that drive the two parties apart.
“And I think we need somebody who’s going to find those areas of agreement, the values we agree on, rather than focus on these little issues that have us at each other’s throats,” he said.
Asked if he is worried about taking a percentage of Biden’s votes, the presidential candidate said he hopes to take votes from both Biden and Trump.
“I don’t know anybody in the Democratic Party who’s saying, ‘I’m voting for President Biden because I think he can govern the country well,” Kennedy said. “They all say, I’m voting for President Biden because I don’t want Trump to be president because he’s dangerous. And that is, again, it’s the impulse to govern by fear rather than, you know, inspiring.”
Recent polling on a hypothetical three-way race between Biden, Trump and Kennedy showed that Kennedy gained 14 percent support, Biden received 31 percent of the vote and Trump had 33 percent.
Kennedy’s campaign has distanced himself from his family’s liberal brand, while also frequently criticizing the Democratic National Committee.
The presidential hopeful, who is a lawyer, has advocated against the wealth disparity in the nation, pushing for livable wages while also tuning into conspiracy theories, specifically around vaccines.