President Joe Biden received the endorsement of at least 15 members of the Kennedy family during a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Thursday, a strikingly personal blow against Independent presidential challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A lineup of Kennedys—including RFK’s sisters Kerry and Rory Kennedy, his nephew former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III—appeared on-stage with Biden at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center in North Philadelphia.
Kerry Kennedy delivered the endorsements to the president, invoking the storied political legacies of her father, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and her uncles, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy, highlighting how Biden embodies the values of her famous family members.
“We want to make crystal clear our feelings that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” she said. Neither Kerry nor any other members of the family mentioned RFK directly, but she insisted that “there are only two candidates with any chance of winning the presidency,” leaving no room for her brother in the matchup between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
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“I can only imagine how Donald Trump’s outrageous lies and behavior would have horrified my father, Robert F. Kennedy, who proudly served as attorney general of the United States, and honored his pledge to uphold the law and protect the country,” said her prepared remarks before the event. “Daddy stood for equal justice, human rights, and freedom from want and fear. Just as President Biden does today.”
“A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to save our democracy and our decency,” she continued. “It is a vote for what my father called, in his own presidential announcement in 1968 … ‘our right to the moral leadership of this planet.’”
Biden was introduced by Joe Kennedy, who currently serves as the administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland. After the event, several members of the Kennedy clan will spend the rest of the day knocking on door and making phone calls to bolster Biden’s effort to win the battleground state.
“Donald Trump’s vision is one of anger, hate, revenge and retribution,” Biden said during his speech, adding that he has “a very different view of America, one of hope and optimism.”
In response to the news that his “big family” would be backing his campaign trail rival, RKF stated that “I am pleased they are politically active – it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other. I hold this as a possibility for America too. Can we disagree without hating our opponents? Can we restore civility and respect to public discourse? I think we can.”
“I have a big family, about 105 cousins on the last time we counted,” he continued. “I have a big family. I don’t know anybody in America who’s got a family who agrees with him on everything.”
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Kennedy has been notably distant from his extended family since declaring his Independent campaign last year. RFK’s Super Bowl ad from earlier this year, which relied heavily on imagery from the JFK era of American politics, proved to be a particularly divisive issue, as did his skepticism of vaccines and his frequent rebukes of the modern Democratic Party.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Biden hosted more than 30 members of the extended Kennedy family in the White House Rose Garden, pointedly excluding RFK from the gathering. Nevertheless, the decision to so publicly tout the endorsement from his rival’s family indicates that Biden’s campaign is taking RFK’s third-party threat seriously ahead of the upcoming election.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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