What happened
Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador and the only living child of President John F. Kennedy, urged senators Tuesday not to confirm her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s health secretary. In a letter she later read aloud on social media, she called her cousin a “predator” who holds hypocritical and “dangerous” medical views.
His niece Dr. Kerry Kennedy Meltzer also made a bid at “derailing his nomination” Tuesday, Stat News said, sharing a “trove of private emails” showing her uncle “making false claims about Covid-19 vaccines,” flu shots and autism “in unguarded, personal moments.”
Who said what
“I have known Bobby my whole life,” and “it’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator,” Caroline Kennedy said. “His basement, his garage, 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. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
The siblings and cousins that Robert Kennedy “encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death” while he rebounded to “misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life,” she said. And he is now “addicted to attention and power,” profiting off his damaging “crusade against vaccination” even as he vaccinated his own children.
Kennedy is among Trump’s “most vulnerable Cabinet nominees,” The Washington Post said. Caroline Kennedy’s “testimonial may not sway Republicans,” but “it could shore up Democrats’ opposition.”
What next?
Caroline Kennedy’s “searing public denunciation of her cousin” was all the more “devastating” because she has “kept quiet” and avoided the spotlight for decades, The New York Times said. Her astute “timing all but ensures her concerns will be aired” in Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday.