In a move that could change the landscape of the 2024 presidential election, attorney and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. Monday that he has dropped out of the Democratic primary and will run for president as a third-party candidate.

During a 48-minute speech in Philadelphia, Kennedy painted a bleak picture of a country torn apart by corrupt elites. He said he had “declared independence” from the Democratic Party because voters deserve better than “two candidates anointed by shadowy institutions.”

“The country is sitting on top of a powder keg,” Kennedy said. “Americans are angry because they are being left out, left behind, cheated, cheated and belittled by a smug elite who have rigged the system in their favor.”

Kennedy’s announcement ends months of friction with the Democratic National Committee, which has scheduled no primary debates where Kennedy or self-help author Marianne Williamson, another presidential hopeful, could reach a broader audience.

Polls released after Kennedy launched his campaign in April showed support from as many as one in five Democratic voters, although those numbers later fell. Some Democrats still fear that Kennedy’s candidacy and the appeal of his family name could cloud Biden’s path to reelection.

Recent polls show Kennedy’s popularity among Republicans remaining higher than Democrats, raising concerns among some Republican operatives that he could also be a “spoiler” for President Trump.

“The truth is, they’re both right,” Kennedy said Monday. “My intention is to ruin it for both of them.”

Kennedy, known as Bobby or RFK Jr., is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of Robert K. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s.

He worked for years as an environmental attorney, fought to clean up polluted waterways and then founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense.

Kennedy lives part-time in Los Angeles with his wife, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines, who proposed to him Monday morning.

Kennedy, 69, has tried to portray himself as a unifying force while relying heavily on divisive and conspiratorial language, telling voters that government agencies, the media, big corporations and other institutions are lying to them. He described himself on Monday as “just the bowsprit of a ship that will break through the armada of corruption, secrecy and lies.”

During Kennedy’s speech, four of his siblings released a statement denouncing his candidacy as a third partywhich they said is ‘dangerous for our country’.

“Bobby may share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” said Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

The Republican National Committee on Monday called Kennedy “just another far-left Democrat” who supported Hillary Clinton, donated to Democrats for decades and wants to end hydraulic fracturing, the controversial oil extraction method commonly known as fracking.

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The committee also highlighted recent media appearances in which Kennedy has expressed conspiratorial views, including his claim

an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that WiFi radiation “opens your blood-brain barrier” and can cause cancer.

An outspoken critic of the mainstream media, Kennedy has relied heavily on alternative media to publicize his campaign, including podcasts hosted by Dr. Mark Hyman and actor Russell Brand.

Kennedy has focused on issues as broad as cryptocurrency, big pharmaceutical companies, agriculture and corrupt corporations, all in an effort to reach people already frustrated with American institutions, said “Conspirituality” co-host Derek Beres. podcast, which follows the marriage between conspiracy theories and spiritualism.

“He selects all the marginal communities and speaks directly to them,” Beres said in a recent interview. “He’s an opportunist, and when he sees he can elect another part of the electorate, he goes for it.”

Beres, a Democrat, said his biggest concern was that Kennedy would siphon enough votes from Biden to help Trump get re-elected in 2024 and that his rhetoric could make some Americans “so dissatisfied with the process that they end up not voting.” .

That mix of voters was on display at a Kennedy campaign event in August at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, where older women in turquoise jewelry and tie-dye T-shirts mingled with middle-aged men in tailored blazers and twenty-somethings in Bitcoin . T-shirts. They had come to hear Kennedy debut a short documentary about his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Ariz.

Although border security was the topic of the day, most of the crowd was there for other reasons.

Los Angeles resident Carlene Brown, an 82-year-old practitioner of holistic medicine, said she had admired Kennedy for years for his work at Children’s Health Defense and his outspoken advocacy for holistic physicians and other health care professionals who fought against the established be in order. censored and silenced.”

Brown said she was raised as an evangelical Christian but left the church as an adult because she felt religion was becoming too pervasive in the American public school system. She still doesn’t agree with evangelical churches in many respects, but she has reconnected with them during the COVID-19 pandemic because “they were the ones who opposed the vaccine mandates.”

That’s just one example, Brown said, of how Kennedy “brings people together.”