ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) — Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday acknowledged the support of more than a dozen of his relatives who back Democratic President Joe Biden, noting that he feels no ill will over family political division.
“Some of them don’t like the fact that I’m running,” Kennedy said of those close to him, after a comedy performance in suburban Detroit to benefit his campaign.
Kennedy — who launched an independent presidential bid last year after initially challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination — was reacting to endorsements from his sister and other relatives last week, a move by the Biden campaign that shows how seriously the presidential team takes it. -candidate shot using the lingering Democratic magic of his last name to siphon support from the incumbent president.
In Philadelphia, Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, niece of former President John F. Kennedy and sister of the current presidential candidate, called Biden “my hero,” saying – without mentioning his brother – that the family wanted to “make clear” their support for Biden’s re-election.
Biden, who keeps a bust of Robert F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, said the endorsements were “an incredible honor.”
Going on to describe the family debates his father orchestrated among his children, Kennedy said Sunday night that the exercise showed him a respectful way to take opposing positions with the people he cared about without taking it personally.
“I debated it with information and passion and without hating each other because we disagreed with each other,” he said. “I love my family, anyway.”
Kennedy — who mentioned RFK’s collapse in Biden’s Oval Office, as well as those close to him currently working in both Biden’s administration and his own presidential campaign — made his remarks in Michigan, where the week Last year, the campaign gained access to the general election ballot. Before the performances, outside the theater in suburban Detroit, several dozen protesters opposed Kennedy’s appearance, with signs aimed at aligning him with former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy has publicly expressed his disagreement with his family on many issues in the past, but he maintains that this can be done in a “friendly” manner. After a super political action committee supporting his campaign produced a television ad during the Super Bowl that relied heavily on footage from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy Jr. apologized to of his loved ones on social media platform X, saying he was sorry if the place “caused pain to any member of my family.”
“I love my family. I feel like they love me,” he said Sunday. “And I would like to see the same thing happen for our country as a whole, where we disagree with each other without hating each other.”
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
