3 things to know about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to suspend his campaign

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday that he is suspending his campaign and that he wants to help former President Donald Trump win the election. Lisa Desjardins joins Geoff Bennett to discuss the announcement and what’s next.

Read the Full Transcript

Geoff Bennett: And Lisa joins us now.

So let’s start with this decision by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to exit the race. What more do we know about his reasoning?

Lisa Desjardins: Kennedy spoke for about 50 minutes today. He spent a lot of that time talking about Americans’ health and railing against the agriculture industry, pharmaceutical industry in this country, but three main points politically I want to make.

He said he’s suspending his campaign. He feels like he was censored by the media, though we did interview on this program. Second, he said that he’s taking his name off the ballot, not everywhere, but only in 10 battleground states.

And he said he’s doing this to help Donald Trump, who he said told him he will try to find a job in his administration. Now, Kennedy also said that he and Trump spoke right after the assassination attempt last month for hours.

That’s when Kennedy said he had a change of heart about Trump. They met. He said he found they had more in common than he believed after several sessions. Kennedy said he reached out to the Harris campaign and was not — was refused the ability to meet with her.

I asked the Harris campaign about that and they have not commented.

Geoff Bennett: So what does this mean for the race? How does it fundamentally change the contours of this election, if at all?

Lisa Desjardins: This is where we have to bring out some polling. And we always remind people polling is great at trends. This is not — we’re not saying these are absolute numbers, but this does tell us something about what’s happening with Kennedy and what his change of heart here may mean.

So let’s look, first of all, about Kennedy’s own support. When we first polled in early spring, when he first was announcing, there he was at about 11 percent, double digits somewhere. Let’s follow along in the spring what was going on. He stayed pretty steady at those levels, started to see a drop, though, once we got past June.

A big drop happened in July, once President Biden left the race, and then where is he now? Even lower, according to our poll, about 5 percentage points. Now, that may not sound like much. The question is of course, in a close race, what does that 5 percent do? Where do they go?

So let’s take a look at where the race is right now, according to our latest polling. It’s tight. It’s within the margin of error. It’s a virtual tie, with Harris technically out in front a little bit. You look at that 5 percent. Jill Stein also has 1 percent. These are all — the only candidates polling at 1 percent and above.

I want to talk about that Kennedy 5 percent. And specifically the question is then, why do campaigns think that that helps Donald Trump? Because we know there’s voters of both kinds that support Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Let’s look at one other number we had. These is how Kennedy supporters voted in 2020. Look at this, guys, twice as many Kennedy supporters — this was this month — said that they voted for Trump in 2020 than Biden. And that goes to what Amy was talking to you guys about, these disaffected Trump voters.

Trump thinks that they can get them back from Robert F. Kennedy.

Geoff Bennett: So we now have two conventions under our belt. What’s next for the Trump and Harris campaign?

Lisa Desjardins: By the way, congratulations. Good to see you back. You look better than you should.

(Laughter)

Lisa Desjardins: They will be back on the road this week. Both of them, Trump and Vance, will be on the road in Michigan. Harris and Walz have a bus tour in Michigan.

Trump also has some sort of group efforts he’s doing, speaking to the National Guard Association and then also to a conservative group Moms for Liberty. But both campaigns are starting to think about the next big event, the debate September 10.

Geoff Bennett: Lisa Desjardins, thanks so much.

Lisa Desjardins: You’re welcome.