RFK jr ‘a ‘predator’, cousin Caroline Kennedy warns
Calling Robert F Kennedy Jr a “predator” who is addicted to power, Caroline Kennedy – the former US ambassador to Australia – has urged he not be confirmed as US health secretary.
In a letter on Tuesday (local time) to US senators, Ms Kennedy – also a previous ambassador to Japan and the daughter of former US president John F Kennedy – etched a damning sketch of her cousin.
It is just the latest condemnation he has received from members of his own, prominent Democratic family. Several Kennedys denounced his bid for the US presidency in 2024.
Kennedy’s letter, obtained by The Associated Press, was first reported by The Washington Post.
In it, she wrote that her cousin’s views on vaccines disqualified him from becoming the Trump administration’s health secretary. She offered personal details from their lives growing up together that she said posed an even greater concern.
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She described her cousin’s basement, garage and dorm as being an epicentre for drug use, where he would also put baby chickens and mice in blenders to feed to his hawks.
“It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence,” she wrote.
Kennedy also read the letter in a video recording, sharing it on social media.
Attempts to reach RFK jr for comment were not immediately successful.
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He has openly talked about his heroin use and he pleaded guilty for bringing it on a plane in 1984.
RFK jr now “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children”, his cousin said. He noted he had vaccinated his own children while discouraging others from vaccinating theirs.
She also pointed out that RFK jr planned to still profit off a lawsuit against pharmaceutical company Merck over Gardasil, its human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. In 2024, he made over $US850,000 ($A1.4 million) from the arrangement.
“In other words, he is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” she wrote.
Kennedy had previously not spoken about her cousin’s presidential candidacy or his nomination by Donald Trump for health secretary.
Her father was assassinated in 1963 when she was a young girl. RFK jr’s father was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential campaign event.
“Unlike Bobby, I try not to speak for my father – but I am certain that he and my uncle Bobby, who gave their lives in public services, and my uncle Teddy, who devoted his Senate career to improving health care, would be disgusted,” Kennedy wrote.
RFK jr will appear before the US Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in his bid to become Trump’s health secretary.
Another hearing for his nomination will follow on Wednesday in front of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension, the committee his uncle, Ted Kennedy, once chaired.
