Caroline Kennedy recounted demanding and abnormal claims about her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., together with an account that he used to kill child chickens and mice in a blender.Steve Helber/AP
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In a scathing letter to the Senate forward of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s affirmation hearings to transform Secretary of Well being and Human Services and products, Biden management ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has described her cousin as a hypocritical “predator” who’s unqualified for the activity and “addicted to attention and power.”
In a video her son, Jack Schlossberg, posted on X of her studying the letter that she despatched to Senate lawmakers—which was once first reported via the Washington Put up—Caroline Kennedy says that she didn’t carry her considerations over her cousin’s health for federal administrative center previous as a result of she was once serving in a central authority position and “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges.” However forward of RFK Jr.’s hearings prior to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, and the Senate Well being, Schooling, Hard work and Pensions Committee on Thursday, she mentioned she felt forced to talk out. (In November, after Trump gained and introduced RFK Jr. can be his HHS nominee, Caroline Kennedy referred to as her cousin’s perspectives on vaccines “dangerous.”)
Within the video posted Tuesday, she mentioned, “Overseeing the FDA, the [National Institutes of Health], the CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—agencies that are charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us—is an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill. He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience.”
Certainly, RFK Jr. is absolute best recognized for peddling conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims about vaccines, HIV and AIDS, fluoride, and 5G era, amongst others, as my colleague Anna Merlan has reported. As Anna wrote of his background:
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer via coaching with out a background or credentials in clinical or public well being, is the founding father of the anti-vaccine group Kids’s Well being Protection. He was probably the most loudest voices within the anti-vaccine motion when he started falsely claiming just about twenty years in the past that the photographs are tied to autism.
Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a marvel. After Kennedy deserted his personal impartial presidential marketing campaign, he promptly recommended Trump’s. As they campaigned in combination, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a brand new management, as he phrased it, as a part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” schedule—proposals that quantity to dismantling and defunding the federal government well being companies Kennedy has lengthy railed towards.
The ones are a few of the causes that public well being professionals, physicians and caregivers have warned of RFK’s doable to spoil American public well being, given the facility of the location Trump has appointed him to: HHS employs greater than 80,000 other folks and oversees 13 federal companies. (As I’ve reported, he may additionally additional decimate abortion rights in that position.)
Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s commentary to america Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary
It is a studying of a letter she simply despatched to Senate Committee on Well being, Schooling, Hard work and Pensions
I’m so pleased with my brave mom, who’s lived a lifetime of dignity,… %.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp
— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025
Caroline Kennedy referred to as her cousin’s perspectives on vaccines “dangerous and willfully misinformed,” claiming that he has vaccinated his personal six kids “while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.” She mentioned the “conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines,” together with the ones targeted at the measles outbreak in Samoa, “have cost lives.” And he or she pointed to a up to date New York Instances document claiming that RFK would deal with his monetary stake in litigation towards Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine to stop cervical most cancers, as proof that he’s “willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access” to a important vaccine.
Kennedy alleged that along with his anti-science ideals and loss of qualification for the position, her cousin has a litany of “personal qualities” that “pose even greater concern”: she claimed that he led “his younger brothers and cousins …down the path of drug addiction,” including that some “suffered addiction, illness and death.” (His brother David died in 1984, at 28 years outdated, of “multiple ingestion” of 3 medication present in his machine.) She additionally recounted a abnormal—and demanding—anecdote, alleging that he used to kill child chickens and mice in a blender to feed his puppy hawks, which she described as “a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
She claimed that her father, former President John F. Kennedy, and her uncles Robert F. Kennedy, former senator and lawyer normal (and RFK Jr.’s father), and previous senator Ted Kennedy, can be “disgusted” together with her cousin.
“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know,” Caroline Kennedy mentioned.
“They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us,” she concluded. “I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”
RFK Jr. ignores questions in regards to the letter launched via his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, wherein she calls him a “predator” + his upcoming affirmation hearings. %.twitter.com/zXzqAVXuE4
— Brennan Leach (@brennanleach) January 28, 2025
Spokespeople for White Space and the Senate Well being, Schooling, Hard work and Pensions Committee, which is chaired via Sen. Invoice Cassidy (R-Los angeles.), a doctor, additionally didn’t right away reply to requests for remark.
