Born from the union of Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968) and Ethel Skakel Kennedy (1928-2024), from early on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (1954) did nothing but exhibit and reinforce the credentials of a “ship without a rudder” — “hooligan,” as they would say in Spain —, earned in good faith. This is, without a doubt, one of the bases of his status as the black sheep of the clan to which he belongs by right.
From the beginning he began to show society his card of problem child. After his father was killed on June 6, 1968, Kennedy fell into the drug hole as a teenager, which caused him several legal problems, one of them in Massachusetts for possession of marijuana. He was considered the leader of a gang of “rich, spoiled kids” dedicated to vandalism, theft and drug use. He was expelled from a couple of educational centers.
At Harvard University, where he would obtain a Bachelor of Arts in American History and Literature (1976), he continued to use heroin and marijuana with his brother David and other fellows. Problems in that area would continue to mark him, even after graduation. In September 1983 he was accused of possession of heroin in Rapid City, South Dakota.
A year later he pleaded guilty to possession of that substance, was sentenced to two years of probation and community service. He then entered a rehabilitation center and worked as a volunteer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He later stated that the incident had led to the end of his relationship with drugs, which he had begun at the age of 15.
The incident opened a new chapter in his life story. In the mid-1980s, he joined two organizations focused on environmental protection — Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) — and became part of the culture of the left. He also became an adjunct professor of environmental law at the Pace University Faculty of Law (1986). In 1987, he founded the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic and in 1999, the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance.
He did all of this without abandoning his status as a “compulsive womanizer,” a culture that comes from his father and uncle murdered in Dallas. In 1982, he married Emily Ruth Black. In 1994, he divorced her to marry the architect and designer Mary Kathleen Richardson, a close friend of one of his sisters. Rumor has it that during his marriage to Richardson, who committed suicide in 2010, Kennedy sent friends nude photos of women he had had sex with. He kept a journal recording his sexual encounters with more than 30 of them. One day his wife found it and told her sisters that the document should be released to the press if anything happened to her. One analyst said that:
Like a kid in high school, Kennedy used the numbers to represent “how far” they had gone toward sexual intercourse: the entry logged three women in a day. A source who has seen the diaries said: “What was interesting was that he portrays himself as a victim in all the encounters with women. He was ogling after women in the environmental movement.” He blamed the women, calling the sex acts “muggings.” In one entry, he recorded that he “narrowly escaped being mugged” by a team of two women. “It was tempting, but I prayed and God gave me the strength to say no,” he wrote.
But those credentials are far from unique. Since 2005, he has been promoting conspiracy theories about public health, including the existence of a link between vaccines and autism.
In 2010, he said he was experiencing memory loss and confusion, to the point of sparking concerns among his family about a possible brain tumor. He is said to have consulted several neurologists who had treated his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who died a year earlier of brain cancer.
In May 2024, he told the press that a dead worm in his brain had been the reason for his absent-mindedness. “It was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a part of it and then died,” he said. According to several sources, the neurologists who treated Edward Kennedy told him that a dark spot appeared on his brain scans and concluded that, like his uncle, he had a tumor. But, he said, a doctor at New York Presbyterian Hospital proposed another explanation: that of a parasite in his brain.
The doctors finally agreed that the spot on his brain was the result of a parasite. And Kennedy added that he might have contracted it on one of his forays into South Asia. According to The New York Times, they thought it was “probably a pork tapeworm larva.” “Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems,” they said. “Others can wreak havoc, often when they begin to die, causing inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches, and dizziness.”
But a parasitology expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said severe memory loss, as Kennedy described it, was more often associated with mercury poisoning.
In any case, the event unleashed an endless number of memes, jokes, and cartoons that were far from favorable for him.
Finally, there is politics. In 2024, he presented his candidacy for president, first as a Democrat and then as an independent. But members of the clan could not help but criticize him when he announced, in August of that year, that he would withdraw from the presidential race and back Trump. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today,” they said then, “is a betrayal of the values our father and family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
He said, for his part: “These are the principled causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump. The causes were: Free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.”
Finally, last November he was nominated by Trump for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services; one of the most controversial nominations, among many others of its kind in an administration that wants loyalty at all costs in its crusade against the so-called Deep State. Kennedy was about to be confirmed this Thursday by the full Senate. Upon hearing this, his first cousin Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador to Australia and Japan, said in a statement that his views on vaccines disqualified him from being a top U.S. health policymaker.
“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children, vaccinating his own kids while building a following, hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”
But she was even more categorical: “He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed”
To add to the pile of negativity, she claimed that RFK Jr. “encouraged” siblings and cousins “down the path of substance abuse.” And she closed with a terrible judgment: she claimed that both Robert Sr., as well as former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Edward would be “disgusted” by the actions of her first cousin.
