RFK Jr.’s Cousin Trashes Him on Eve of Hearing
On the eve (1/28) of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), opposition to his potential leadership continued to grow louder and included a scathing letter to U.S. senators from cousin Caroline Kennedy (president John F. Kennedy’s daughter), who called RFK Jr. a “predator” and “unqualified.”
Overseeing HHS, including health agencies like FDA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is an “enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill,” Caroline Kennedy said in video reciting the letter on X. “He lacks any relevant government financial management or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed. These facts alone should be disqualifying, but he has personal qualities related to this job, which for me pose even greater concern.”
“I’ve known Bobby my whole life,” she continued. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because Bobby himself is a predator. He’s always been charismatic, able to attract others through the strength of his personality, and his willingness to take risks and break the rules. I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction. His basement, his garage, his dorm room, were always the center of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
Offering some admiration for beating his earlier drug addiction, Caroline said that “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children, vaccinating his own kids while building a following and hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs,” she said. “Even before he fills this job, his constant denigration of our health care system and the conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines, including in connection with Samoa's deadly 2019 outbreak of measles, have cost lives.”
America’s healthcare professionals “deserve a secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not to rejecting the advances we have already made,” she concluded. “They deserve a stable, moral and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us. I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”
Meanwhile, a 1/28 Washington Post editorial board opinion says RFK Jr. is also not qualified to be HHS secretary due to his “years-long unscientific campaign against essential vaccines” and his recent refusal to “rectify a blatant conflict of interest.” The Post says Kennedy’s recently released ethics agreement revealed that he intends to retain a financial stake in a lawsuit against Merck over its Gardasil vaccine and its use against human papillomavirus. Kennedy reportedly has served as a consultant for the law firm representing clients who claim to have been harmed by the vaccine. Kennedy recently resigned from his consulting role, but he would still be entitled to 10% of any fees the suit wins, according to the Post.
The editorial board contends that this is a major conflict to remain a party to a lawsuit against a major drug manufacturer that he would be regulating, if confirmed by the Senate. “The nominee appears not to see any problem with this,” the board writes. “As he noted in his ethics agreement, his contingency fees would remain only for cases in which ‘the ethics office of the Department of Health and Human Services has determined do not involve the United States as a party and in which the United States does not have a direct and substantial interest.’”