Former US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has delivered a scathing assessment of her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr, calling him a “predator” who is addicted to power and urging he not get the job of 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 RFK jr.
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.
Ms 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 early lives that she said posed an even greater concern. 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,” Ms Kennedy wrote.
She also read the letter in a video recording, sharing it on social media.
“I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity, integrity and service,” wrote her son Jack Schlossberg in sharing the video.
Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary
This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp
— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025
Ms Kennedy’s comments went much further than her response when asked about her cousin after a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra last year, while she was still a sitting ambassador.
“Yes, I think Bobby Kennedy’s (RFK jr’s) views on vaccines are dangerous. But I don’t think that most Americans share them, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” she said.
“I grew up with him, so I’ve known all this for a long time, and others are just getting to know him.”
Ms Kennedy said the wider family was united in its support for public health “and has the greatest admiration for the medical profession in our country”.
“Bobby Kennedy has got a different set of views,” she said.
RFK jr is a noted anti-vaxxer – although he says only that he wants more rigorous testing of vaccines. However, he chaired the Children’s Health Defence, a nonprofit organisation that focuses on anti-vaccine messaging.
His anti-vaccination views and influence has also been blamed by some for worsening a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa that killed dozens of children in 2019.
In apparent reference to those views, Ms Kennedy said he now “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children”. She noted RFK jr had vaccinated his own children while discouraging others from doing the same.
Attempts to reach RFK jr for comment were not immediately successful.
Ms Kennedy 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.
He has also openly talked about his heroin use and pleaded guilty for bringing it on a plane in 1984.
Ms Kennedy’s father was assassinated in 1963 when she was a child. 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,” Ms Kennedy wrote.
RFK jr will appear before the US Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday (local time) in his bid to become Trump’s health secretary.
Another hearing for his nomination will follow in front of the Health, Education, Labor and Pension, the committee his uncle, Ted Kennedy, once chaired.
-with AAP
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