Caroline Kennedy takes RFK Jr’s skeletons out of the closet for all to see

January 29, 2025 journo

Washington: When then-US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy fronted the National Press Club in Canberra for a farewell appearance in November, she was asked about her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and his anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride views.

Still a diplomat then, she responded diplomatically. “I’m not supposed to comment on politics, and now you’re asking me to also comment on family. So that’s really a lot,” she said. But she acknowledged her cousin’s views on vaccines were “dangerous”.

Former US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer/Bloomberg

Kennedy is famously discreet about family matters. But two months later and free from the constraints of that office, she has dropped a bombshell statement to the US Senate, which will soon decide whether RFK Jr takes a position in Donald Trump’s cabinet as health secretary.

The letter, obtained and first reported by The Washington Post, calls RFK a “predator” who led family members down a path of drug addiction in their youth. Kennedy accused her cousin of gross hypocrisy by vaccinating his own children while building a following as a sceptic and denigrator of vaccines.

She also paints a picture of a disturbed character who “put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks” while drugs flowed from his basement, garage and college dorm room. These days, as a sycophant to Trump, RFK Jr has replaced the addictions of his youth with addictions to power and attention, she says.

Kennedy argues that RFK Jr grandstands off the assassination of her father, John F. Kennedy, and his own father, Robert F. Kennedy. “It is incomprehensible that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies for publicity would be in charge of American life-or-death situations,” she writes.

Kennedy recorded a video reading the letter out loud and posted it on YouTube. The extraordinary and highly personal intervention demands to be parsed at RFK Jr’s confirmation hearing, which takes place on Thursday (AEDT). Several Democratic strategists noted Kennedy’s departure from her usual discretion underlined the vehemence of her feelings about her cousin.

As a member of arguably America’s most famous family, RFK Jr’s traumas, philandering and heroin addiction were well known. He was 14 when his father was assassinated and he started using drugs shortly after. But the now 71-year-old says he has been sober since he was 29.

Caroline Kennedy, however, accuses him of encouraging siblings and cousins into abusing substances that in some cases killed them, adding to a litany of accidents and tragedies that have collectively been called the “Kennedy curse”.

While not named in the letter, RFK Jr’s brother and “best friend”, David Kennedy, died of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach hotel room in 1984, at the age of 28. A cousin, Christopher Lawford, who also struggled with drugs and alcohol but later got sober, wrote that David died “crammed between the wall and his bed, alone with the pain of knowing that he had disappointed the family that meant everything to him”.

Donald Trump (right) shakes hands with Robert F. Kennedy Jr at a campaign rally in Arizona.Credit: AP

Another cousin, former congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, began using drugs as a teenager in the 1980s, and in 2006 went to rehab after crashing his car into a barricade outside the US Capitol in the middle of the night.

RFK Jr was regarded as one of Trump’s more vulnerable cabinet picks even before Caroline Kennedy’s missive. Mitch McConnell, the veteran Republican senator from Kentucky who was until recently the majority leader, survived polio as a child and has warned all of Trump’s appointees against undermining vaccines. He voted against the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.

Some conservatives, including former vice president Mike Pence, are also campaigning against RFK Jr on the basis that he is too supportive of access to abortion. Trump himself called RFK Jr a “radical left lunatic” when they were rivals for president.

And Rupert Murdoch’s US newspapers editorialised against RFK Jr’s confirmation this week. Broadsheet The Wall Street Journal labelled him a danger to public health, mostly due to his “long record of anti-vaccine advocacy”, while the tabloid, New York Post, called him a conspiracy theorist and an “unserious, dangerous official who will be at odds with Trump on many key issues”.

What impact the Kennedy letter has on the confirmation process remains to be seen. RFK Jr remained silent after the Post’s story broke, but a number of supporters came to his aid on Tuesday. “I will be voting for @RobertKennedyJr and I hope my colleagues will too,” posted Republican senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky.

RFK Jr can afford to lose the support of no more than three Republican senators, assuming all Democrats and independents oppose his confirmation.

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