This week, it became crystal clear that the Kennedy Family has coalesced with a common goal: stop Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from being confirmed as President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary. But even if they’re unsuccessful, Cheryl Hines has promised us all a super sick consolation.
In a letter first reported by the Washington Post, Caroline Kennedy, who previously served as a U.S. ambassador to Australia and Japan, broke her silence to urge the Senate to reject the nomination of her casual anti-Semite, storied anti-vaccine activist, and serial philanderer cousin, calling him a “predator” who is “addicted to power.” On Tuesday night, Jack Schlossberg also posted a TikTok of his mom reading her letter aloud, with the caption, “Please watch this video — my moms statement on RFKjr senate confirmation hearing.”
“He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience,” Kennedy said. “His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed.” Such views, if you’ve forgotten, boil down to RFK Jr.’s conspiratorial belief that vaccines are both dangerous and ineffective, an espousal in contradiction to the overwhelming weight of medical and scientific evidence. Because he’s unburdened by the anchors of truth and the knowledge of his own public record accessible via a quick Google search, he’s since denied he holds such views (as recently as today, at his first confirmation hearing).
“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,” Kennedy continued. Then, she turned to his “personal qualities” which are of particular concern. Apart from a history of drug addiction, Kennedy claimed RFK Jr. has previously exhibited “violent” habits that—I’ll say it—have historically been practiced by homicidal maniacs.
“His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” Kennedy wrote. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.” While the claim is shocking, it bears remembering that this is the same man who once boasted about depositing a dead bear carcass in Central Park and was accused of eating a dog.
“Even before he fills this job, his constant denigration of our health care system and the conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines—including in connection with Samoa’s deadly 2019 outbreak of measles—have cost lives,” Kennedy continued in the letter. Further on in the letter, she accuses that RFK Jr. is “willing to profit and enrich himself,” appearing to allude to the New York Times report which found that even as he gets closer to becoming health secretary, RFK Jr. would maintain his financial stake in litigation against Merck, a manufacturer of a vaccine that guards against HPV.
Also on Tuesday, RFK Jr.’s niece shared a series of private (and pretty damn alarming) exchanges with STAT News that show her uncle agreeing with online articles written by fellow vaccine skeptics, linking autism to childhood immunizations, and questioning the flu shot. Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, who is a primary care physician at NYC Health + Hospitals in New York City, said the emails span more than two years and began during the height of the covid pandemic.
“Bobby, I’ve been working in the ICU for the past two weeks and have taken care of too many people who have died, or will likely die soon, from covid. None of them are vaccinated,” she wrote in an email on February 12, 2022. “I watched a daughter collapse on the floor while we pronounced her mother’s time of death. I held the hand of a man who was about to get intubated. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, asking me to please save him. He will likely die in the coming days.”
He replied: “Kerry. I don’t dismiss your experience but it differs with data we are seeing from Israel, UK and other nations with much more reliable data systems. You might want to ask your hospital to publish this data so that people can take it seriously. That problem is that CDC has been using corrupt metrics to assess who is vaccinated. CDC counts all people as ‘unvaccinated’ until two weeks after their second shot. We have seen dramatically increased cases and mortalities in the two weeks following the first shot and CDC counts these as unvaccinated.”
All that aside, I fear I must also recall RFK Jr.’s. second marriage, which culminated in his ex-wife’s suicide. Prior to his affair with former New York Magazine reporter, Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr. was a serial philanderer, according to investigative reporter Maureen Callahan’s Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed. The end of his second marriage to Mary Richardson was due to RFK Jr.’s “lust demons” (as he once wrote in his diaries). According to the sources, Richardson grew increasingly despondent and turned to alcohol.
For the book, Callahan interviewed Richardson’s therapist, Sheenah Hankin, who revealed that Kennedy asked for his wife to be diagnosed as mentally ill. She replied: “Your wife isn’t mentally ill. She is angry and depressed, but she is not ill.” Kennedy then went so far as to “forcibly hospitalize” his wife, reportedly telling her that she would be “better off dead.” Previous biographies included similar details. Ultimately, Richardson chose to end her life after RFK Jr. left her, cut her off from her credit card and any access to cash, and began dating his now-wife, Cheryl Hines.
Through everything, Hines has continued to stand by her husband—even sitting behind him at Wednesday’s hearings. But the actor and QVC-adjacent beauty entrepreneur said last week that if her husband gets confirmed by the Senate, she would stop selling her products, including the Make America Healthy Again candles.
I suppose that would be the one and only hypothetical plus???
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
