In an “address to the nation” Friday, far-right anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially announced he was suspending his “independent” presidential campaign in 10 “battleground” states and throwing his support behind aspiring dictator, former President Donald Trump.

The son of the former US Attorney General and assassinated New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) and nephew to President John F. Kennedy (JFK) said he was withdrawing from the race because “I no longer believe I have a realistic path to electoral victory.”

Kennedy said, “Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the existential issues of censorship, war and chronic disease.”

Since announcing he was running as an “independent” last Fall, Kennedy Jr. has adopted virtually all of Trump’s right-wing positions. Speaking on Friday, Kennedy Jr. noted all the areas of agreement he had with Trump, including “securing the border” and “getting US intelligence agencies out of the business of ... interfering in our elections.”

Kennedy pointed out in his address that his campaign had spent millions of dollars attempting to get on the ballot on every state, and that the process was extremely taxing. Since the beginning of the year, Democratic Party lawyers and super PACs have sought to block all third party challengers, including Kennedy, from appearing on the ballot.

In his remarks, Kennedy, like Trump, postured as an opponent of US imperialism and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, saying it has “been a disaster for our country.”

“We have pushed Russia into a disastrous alliance with China and Iran,” he said, adding, “We are closer to the brink of nuclear exchange than at any other time since 1962. Our moral authority and our economy are in shambles, and the war gave rise to the emergence of BRICS, which now threatens to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.”

Kennedy said that based on Harris’s speech in Chicago, “we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic advocate for this and other Neocon military adventures.” In contrast, he said, “President Trump says that he will reopen negotiations with Putin and end the war overnight. This alone would justify my support for his campaign.”

As Kennedy outlined, his opposition to the US-NATO war in Ukraine has nothing to do with opposition to US imperialism but is instead rooted in tactical divisions within the ruling class over how, and when, US military aggression should be applied to its competitors.

The multi-millionaire Kennedy initially polled between 10 and 20 percent when he first announced he was running in the Democratic primary last April. However, this was due more to mass disgust with both Biden and Trump and Kennedy’s famous last name than broad support for his right-wing program.

Support for Kennedy began to collapse the more he articulated his right-wing views on podcasts, social media platforms and repeated interviews on Fox News and News Nation. This included his promotion of an antisemitic and anti-Chinese conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus was deliberately engineered in Wuhan to attack “certain races disproportionately,” with “Ashkenazi Jews” and “Chinese” being “most immune.”

Following the October 7 Hamas incursion, Kennedy Jr. revealed himself to be an even more ardent defender of the Zionist state than Biden, in the process alienating many workers and youth who mistakenly thought Kennedy was opposed to all imperialist wars.

After speaking in Phoenix, Kennedy appeared on stage in Glendale, Arizona, alongside Trump to formally endorse him.

Welcoming “Bobby” to the stage, Trump said that under his administration, RFK Jr. would lead an “independent commission” tasked with investigating presidential assassination attempts and releasing all the remaining documents related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Trump also said the commission would conduct a “rigorous” investigation into the attempted assassination of Trump.

In a “salute” to RFK Jr. spending decades propagating anti-scientific conspiracy theories, Trump said he would also task Kennedy Jr. with leading a “panel of top experts” to investigate “chronic health problems,” including infertility, immune disorders and other illnesses, virtually all of which Kennedy Jr. has blamed on vaccines.

Speaking to thousands of enthusiastic Trump supporters, Kennedy Jr. claimed Trump would “end the grip of the neo-cons on foreign policy,” rebuild “the industrial base” and “middle class in this country.”

After Kennedy left the stage, Trump, in a fascistic appeal, said, “Bobby and I will fight together to defeat the corrupt political establishment and return political control to the people. To the people who supported Bobby’s campaign ... join our coalition in defense of liberty, prosperity and peace.”

Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump confirms the analysis presented on the World Socialist Web Site last year. Writing on his campaign, the WSWS warned:

There is nothing progressive or anti-establishment in Kennedy’s program. That he is even able to present himself as some sort of “oppositional” figure is due, on the one hand, to the right-wing character of the Democratic Party establishment and, on the other, to the debased political and intellectual environment promoted by the entire ruling class.

Furthermore Kennedy’s “pretenses to being opposed to war can gain purchase only due to the warmongering of the Democratic Party and the various organizations that surround it.”

The very real threat of global war cannot be stopped by voting for one or another representative of the capitalist ruling class. It is only through the political mobilization of the working class against both political parties, and the capitalist system they defend, can the drive to war be thwarted and the billions wasted on slaughter be redirected to social need.