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GLENDALE, Ariz. (CN) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on stage with Donald Trump for the first time Friday in Arizona to officially endorse the former president in his third bid for the Oval Office.
Kennedy, who announced his campaign for president in April 2023 as a Democrat, withdrew his name from the ballot in battleground states Friday afternoon to avoid taking votes from the 78-year-old presidential candidate. In a speech in Phoenix, he said he first considered throwing his support behind Trump after Trump was shot at a July rally in Pennsylvania.
“He told me he wanted to end the censorship,” Kennedy said on stage in the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. He walked out to Here Comes My Hero by the Foo Fighters, greeted by raucous applause. “We know that a government that can silence its opponents has license for any kind of atrocity. He’s gonna protect us against totalitarianism.”
In Kennedy’s honor, Trump announced that, upon his election in November, he will create an independent commission on presidential assassination attempts.
“The remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy will be released,” Trump said, also promising to conduct a “rigorous review” of the attempt on Trump’s own life in July.
“We are both in this to do what’s right for the country,” Trump said.
With Kennedy’s support and surrounded by other popular MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, Trump addressed a crowd of nearly 20,000 in the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, hitting all his typical talking points.
“We’re going to defeat comrade Kamala Harris. We’re going to win the White House,” he said to the roaring crowd. “Our movement is not about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about patriotism and common sense. We want fair elections, we want strong borders, we want a great military.”
Trump’s speech lasted nearly 90 minutes, and the crowd thinned to half its size by about an hour in.
The former president had also visited the border in Cochise County Thursday to pose for photos and give a similar speech.
The Republican candidate focused Friday on immigration, calling Biden’s border policy a failure and blaming Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, whom he calls a “radical leftist fascist,” for its enforcement.
“She was the border czar. She presided over the worst border in history. Not American history. World history," Trump said.
Friday afternoon, Trump decried “millions and millions” of “illegal aliens raping, pillaging and killing our towns.”
But in 2023, only 29 of the more than 24,000 homicides committed across the country were done by undocumented immigrants. Immigration officials arrested about 103,700 noncitizens with criminal convictions, whether in the U.S. or abroad, from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal data shows. That accounts for people stopped at and between ports of entry.
He claimed that President Joe Biden has let in 20 million undocumented immigrants during his presidency, though Homeland Security says the number is below 10 million.
He said Harris has presided over a “43% increase in violent crime,” though the FBI data shows the overall violent crime rate — which includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault per 100,000 population — fell by 1.6 percent from 2021 to 2022, the most recent year with full-year FBI data.
Arizona’s Democratic Senator Mark Kelly anticipated the political strategy, and held a press conference of his own Wednesday
In it, he blamed Trump for killing a bipartisan national security bill that would have put billions toward border wall construction and patrol patrol operations, as well as end catch-and-release and establish an emergency authority to shut the border down for up to 45 days at a time if the number of crossings gets too high.
It also would have added fentanyl detection machines at the border and increased pay for border patrol agents.
“Border patrol agents are now making lower wages because of Donald Trump,” Kelly said.
“The former president Donald Trump blew the whole thing up,” Kelly said about the bill’s failure. “He told Senate Republicans that they were not allowed to vote for this. He did not really wanna solve this problem. He said he wanted this for a campaign issue.”
He vowed to introduce the legislation if Harris is elected in November.
“I’m confident that Vice President Harris is gonna be the problem solver that we need," Kelly said.
The bill also included $60 billion in military aid to Ukraine and $14 in military aid to Israel.
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