Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of President Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet that I would not be disappointed to see rejected. His nomination is transparently the fulfillment of a political quid pro quo between him and Trump. There is nothing shocking about that: it is a standard tactic in a strange arena that often embraces Bizarro World ethics. Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines in general has exploded the number of anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and undoubtedly caused unnecessary deaths. Democrats won’t mention his extreme climate change positions, including RFKJ’s advocacy of criminal penalties for “climate change deniers,” but that is also, in my view, a disqualifying feature of his career in the public eye. I would not be surprised if Trump himself is hoping Kennedy’s nomination is rejected. I would not be surprised if he has taken steps behind the scenes to ensure that it is. I hope he has.
Nonetheless, Caroline Kennedy’s public letter to four ranking Democratic Senators condemning her cousin and attacking his character as well as his positions is a particularly odious betrayal and Machiavellian political shiv in the kidney. The letter is also spectacularly hypocritical, and an excellent, if nauseating, example of abuse of celebrity and influence as well as a stunning lack of self-awareness.
Caroline’s attack on Kennedy for his use of recreational drugs as a young man is particularly damning, but to her, not him. Kennedy has admitted that he had to overcome a drug problem, and Caroline writes, “Bobby was able to pull himself out of illness and disease. I admire the discipline that took and the continuing commitment it requires.” Why spend so much space in the letter discussing his drug related activity when Bobby Jr. was young? “I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction,” she writes. “His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available.” What Caroline does not mention is that drug abuse had been a habit of her family, and her sainted father in particular, for generations. She provides no evidence of how RFKJ led her other relatives “down the path of drug addiction,” and her phrasing is deliberately vague and thus deceitful. Is she saying that Kennedy actually addicted them to drugs, or that they followed the same path that other members of the Kennedy clan frequently followed? That entire section of the letter is irrelevant to Kennedy’s confirmation but follows a chapter in the “How to Slime” playbook that has recently been a favorite of Democrats: attack a target by finding someone who will accuse him without evidence of misconduct when he was a minor or long before his public career.
The real reason for Caroline’s strategically-timed letter is throbbingly obvious. The Kennedys are famously loyal to each other. None of Caroline’s kin found the fact that her uncle, Ted Kennedy, left a woman in a sunken car to die and avoided any accountability. RFKJ’s offense is greater because he allied himself with a hated Republican. Bobby Jr. has been publicly pushing anti-vaxx proganda for decades with nary a peep from the Kennedy family. Is anyone sufficiently dim to believe that Caroline would have issued such a letter if her cousin had been nominated for a Cabinet position by Kamala Harris?
The hypocrisy in the letter is also blinding. Caroline mentions that she had not attacked Kennedy earlier in part “because I was serving in a government position as United States Ambassador to Australia,” then says “Bobby””continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father.” Caroline Kennedy has never done anything to warrant her celebrity and various political positions or a status that would justify anyone caring what she thinks about anything, but for the fact that she is the daughter of a martyred President and a mother, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who became an icon. Her attack on RFKJ for exploiting the Kennedy name belongs in the “Pot Calling the Kettle Black” Hall of Infamy.
Some have suggested that the letter was drafted for Caroline by a Democratic operative. I doubt that, because the letter is incompetent and illogical, and Jack and Jackie’s little girl has never seemed too bright. She writes that her cousin “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.” Ewww! So Caroline is settling scores over a childhood gross-out. She also implies that Bobby Jr. pureed live animals, like a nascent psychopath. That is very, very unlikely.
I am trying to recall if digging up family members to attack their relatives is primarily a strategy embraced by progressives and Democrats. It seems like it, but I may be misled by confirmation bias and the fact that this kind of attack has come from the Left so frequently in recent years. Pete Hegseth’s former sister-in-law accused him of abusing an ex-wife; George Conway’s anti-Trump proclamations were only newsworthy to the media because he was the husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, and of course Trump’s niece Mary Trump has made a business out of excoriating her uncle. The idea is that since family members are usually loyal to their kin, a public figure whose own close relatives turn against him or her must be terrible human beings. That theory cuts both ways though.
The ultimate conclusion in this episode based on the evidence of her letter is that nobody ought to care what Caroline Kennedy thinks, about Robert Kennedy, Jr. or anything else.
Ethics Alarms 
I guess she should write a book or make a movie entitled “Camelot has fallen!”
That book should have been written, what, thirty years ago?
We’re also getting echoes of the Kavanaugh nomination process. If Caroline thought her cousin was so icky, why didn’t she come out with all of this stuff when he was running for President? It rather reminds me of Blasey-Ford’s claim that she overlooked all the years Brett Kavanaugh moved his way up from bench to bench while only pondering the doomsday scenario that he might get appointed to the SCOTUS. Somehow, a so-called serial rapist was okay for lesser judicial seats but not the Supreme Court? At least, we can somehow see some smidgeon of logic in Blasey-Ford’s thinking about Kavanaugh’s upward mobility. I don’t understand why Caroline somehow thinks that none of this stuff was relevant when her cousin was running for President rather than possibly becoming Secretary of Health of Human Services. Is that Cabinet post really more dire for the country than President?
Her so-called reluctance to speak out over a perceived sense of family loyalty rings hollow to me.
Because it is hollow.
Blasey-Ford’s actions were more comprehensible. Form what I could gather about the whole ridiculous affair, she didn’t remember those events at all. They were ‘recalled’ under hypnosis by her therapist. The therapist told her that these things happened to her later. Ford herself had no such memories of them except those implanted by the therapist. She didn’t object earlier because the memories hadn’t been recovered yet.
Kennedy has just stated that he supports vaccines and the vaccine schedule for children.
Jack, could you clarify “Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines “?
Surely you jest. Junior has made his entire public persona on the anti-vaccine front.
Old Bill’s response is quite accurate.
Actually I was referring to his live statements made during his confirmation hearing.
At the risk of having Old Bill accuse me again of being a paid Kennedy shill, I have to say I personally don’t see it.
I know we went through this back when RFK Jr. was running for president, and I admit to not reviewing any positions or opinions he held prior to his candidacy, but what Kennedy advocates now is that vaccines be put through the same safety study requirements as any other medications, which apparently isn’t the case now. To me that seems not just reasonable, but shocking that it’s not current practice.
RFK Jr. Says ‘I’ve Never Been Anti-Vaccine’—Here Are the Facts – Newsweek
“I do believe autism comes from vaccines.”
To me, that’s the epitome of being an anti-vaxxer.
I worked a lot on this issue when I was working with the American Trial Lawyer Association. There is and was no clear evidence that vaccines cause autism. It is true that drug companies tend to settle out the cases where a vaccinated child shows signs of that or other maladies post vaccine.
https://www.youtube.com/live/NeeC7nGm6cI?t=8214&si=nwWLh9uFm_wCLO_8
To put this to rest, he was an anti-vaxxer, and now he’s saying he’s not. Fair enough. He’s changed his mind. He should say so. But don’t tell me he was never an anti-vaxxer. That shouldn’t be hard, should it? He used to look like a lunatic, but now he’s trying to look reasonable. Fine. Can’t we find someone for the job who didn’t look like a lunatic on an issue he’ll be overseeing if he’s confirmed?
It’s a valid point.
It might be a valid point. My question is if it’s accurate.
The Kennedy quote Old Bill posted above comes from a longer quote during an interview on Jesse Watters Primetime on July 10, 2023. It took some digging to find. Old Bill linked to it in a Newsweek article, but they only quoted the “I do believe autism comes from vaccines” line. Kennedy goes on to say, in part, “But… all I’ve said about vaccines is we should have good science. We should have the same type of testing, placebo controlled trials, that we have for any other type of medication. …”
While the “autism comes from vaccines” part of the quote is “the epitome of being an anti-vaxxer” to Old Bill, to me the rest of it is the epitome of someone who has a hypothesis but wants evidence one way or the other.
For what it’s worth, here’s a quote from Politico by Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, (which RFK chaired until 2023): “’I’ve worked with Bobby for a long time. He has always said, ‘I am not anti-vaccine, I want there to be real science, I want there to be transparency and I want there to be choice,’’ Holland said.” Maybe she too is just whitewashing his position now to make him more palatable. Or maybe he has always held a nuanced position, and the “anti-vaxxer” moniker was just a smear by the mainstream media and big pharma that worked better before.
Like I said several months ago when Kennedy was a candidate, pre-covid I would have been right there with you. “He’s an anti-vax heretic. Burn him!” Now, I question anything I hear in the mainstream media, anything any Democrat says, anything out of Big Pharma, and anything out of the government health agencies and organizations, like CDC, FDA, and the WHO. And I’m cheering for anyone willing to take on those groups. I’m surprised that anyone who’s been paying attention the past few years wouldn’t feel the same way.
No vaccine is 100% safe, and that has always been true, RFKJ hs said that if he could go back in time, he would not vaccinate his children. That is per se nuts. He consults with a firm that sues drug companies for injuries related to the human papillomavirus (HPV), which is the chief cause of cervical cancer in women. HPV vaccines are nearly 100 percent effective in preventing the sort of persistent infections that lead to cancer. 135 million doses of HPV vaccines have been administered to about 39 percent of children (15 million or so) ages 9 to 17 in the US. The law firm Kennedy consults for represents 200 cases of injuries from Merck’s HPV vaccine. That out of 80 million doses. Those are similar odds to the vaccine litigation groups I worked with at ATLA. It depends on what the meaning of “safe” is.
Congressman Andy Biggs, representing Greater Phoenix’s east valley, was slimed by his family members as a total lunatic. Family members doing this has become a standard practice inflicted upon anyone the left finds too far to the right.
The Left is co-opting the Fundamentalist Islamic principle of the “honor killing”, carried out by the family of the one that has committed the heretical act. In this instance, it’s not the heresy of converting to Christianity or looking at an image of Muhammed, but rather that of holding “more-moderate-than-totalitarian” positions on certain issues.
…and the funny thing is, RFK, Jr isn’t even a moderate Democrat. He’s a liberal. His statements on climate are, as Jack noted, quite radical…even anti-First Amendment. Fortunately, Trump didn’t nominate him to do anything with climate. But because SOME of positions don’t fall in lockstep with those of the far Left – and of course, because he has an association with President Trump – he must be destroyed by the Left.
The Left looks more totalitarian and fascist every single day.
I like the “honor killing” analogy. Very apt. Probably better than being shot if you “wander off the reservation.”
The Democrats have shown a perfectly flat learning curve since they lost the election. The confirmation hearings are a hysterical screech-fest, with similar bad faith tactics as used during the Kavanaugh hearings. For the Democrats these confirmation hearings are not about the proposed cabinet members; they are about Trump. I am surprised that there are Republicans who still want to go along with this charade, instead of simply push for cloture and vote to confirm Trump’s nominees. There might be some reasonable arguments against some of the candidates, but if the other party is hundred percent unreasonable I would not be willing to play into that party’s game on principle unless I were a stealth member of that party (also called RINO).
From what I am seeing on X, these hearings are driving Democrats away from the party. A confirmation hearing where a senator tells the candidate “I only have 5 minutes, so you are just going to have to sit there and listen!” is behavior that even diehard Democrats think is inappropriate. There are a lot of moderate Democrats who voted for Harris out of habit, because they couldn’t break the addiction, but are sympathetic to RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. The screeching attacks against those two are going to drive a lot of people towards the Republicans.
I would be interested in knowing the proximate causes of various maladies. We spend an overwhelming amount of resources adjusting to or accommodating the effects of the rapid increase in cases of autism and gender dysphoria but we spend nary a dime trying to find out what causes these conditions. There does seem to be a reliance on accepting a study that backs up a giving position and only studies that attempt validate such findings are funded.
A childhood friend was a thalidomide baby whose right hand was severely deformed from that adjuvant that was used in vaccines of the 50’s and early 60’s. Whether Thimerisol has health impacts I don’t know but I would not want to see someone simply say it is settled science that it stops any further research.
I am willing to give RFKJ a chance if he does nothing else but to restore trust in our scientific organizations.
With that said let’s ask Caroline what she thinks of her daddy’s escapades or her uncle Teddy’s integrity when it comes to personal responsibility.