Caroline Kennedy wrote a scathing letter to key senators on Tuesday, calling her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “predator” hooked on consideration from airing harmful views on vaccinations and somebody who’s unfit to be the nation’s well being secretary.
She urged lawmakers, who will likely be questioning Mr. Kennedy at his affirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday, to reject his nomination. She cited his lack of expertise, misinformed views on vaccines and private attributes. Within the letter, she described how he led different members of the family “down the trail of drug dependancy.”
“His basement, his storage, and his dorm room have been the facilities of the motion the place medicine have been obtainable, and he loved displaying off how he put child chickens and mice within the blender to feed his hawks,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “It was usually a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
Her letter was first reported in The Washington Put up.
Ms. Kennedy expressed explicit outrage over the brand new disclosures in his ethics settlement filed with the Senate, which she described as outlining how his “campaign towards vaccination has benefited him in different methods.”
She cited Mr. Kennedy’s choice to maintain a monetary stake in litigation towards Merck, which makes a key vaccine towards the human papillomavirus (HPV) that’s administered to guard towards cervical most cancers.
“In different phrases, he’s prepared to complement himself by denying entry to a vaccine that may forestall virtually all types of cervical most cancers and which has been safely administered to thousands and thousands of girls and boys,” Ms. Kennedy wrote.
As President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ambassador to Australia, Ms. Kennedy was actively concerned in selling the HPV vaccine, which has put Australia on a path to eradicate cervical most cancers. She was instrumental in persuading Mr. Biden to increase his “most cancers moonshot” initiative to the Indo-Pacific area.
In her position as ambassador, Ms. Kennedy mentioned, she was reluctant to make public feedback towards Mr. Kennedy, who launched his presidential marketing campaign in 2023 as a major challenger to Mr. Biden earlier than operating as an unbiased candidate. When Mr. Kennedy dropped his presidential bid, he endorsed Mr. Trump, who, after profitable the election, named Mr. Kennedy as his selection for well being secretary.
After that, she broke together with her cousin, saying his views about vaccination have been harmful.
Her letter painted Mr. Kennedy as a charismatic determine, “prepared to take dangers and break the principles,” and in a position to appeal to others by the energy of his magnetic character. Then she traced a tragic historical past of Mr. Kennedy’s affect over different members of the family.
“However siblings and cousins who Bobby inspired down the trail of substance abuse suffered dependancy, sickness and demise,” she wrote, “whereas Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his method by life.”
Mr. Kennedy’s youthful brother David died in Palm Seashore County in Might of 1984 of “a number of ingestion” of three medicine present in his physique fluids, authorities mentioned on the time.
Different family members have additionally spoken out towards Mr. Kennedy, together with his brother Joseph Kennedy II and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who described his feedback on race and vaccines as “deplorable and untruthful.”
On Tuesday, Jack Schlossberg, Ms. Kennedy’s son, who has additionally been vital of Mr. Kennedy, posted a video on social media of his mom studying the letter she had written.
“I’m so happy with my brave mom, who’s lived a lifetime of dignity, integrity and repair,” Mr. Schlossberg wrote.
Ms. Kennedy, within the letter despatched Tuesday, gave her cousin credit score for overcoming his drug dependancy, which Mr. Kennedy has mentioned extensively. By his personal account, Mr. Kennedy turned hooked on heroin when he was 14, in 1968, as he struggled to deal with the assassination of his father. In 1984, he pleaded responsible to a felony cost of possessing heroin, and entered therapy.
However Ms. Kennedy was harsh in criticism of her cousin’s advocacy towards vaccines, describing it as a part of an dependancy to consideration and energy.
“Bobby preys on the desperation of oldsters of sick youngsters — vaccinating his personal youngsters whereas constructing a following by hypocritically discouraging different dad and mom from vaccinating theirs,” she wrote.
Ms. Kennedy additionally highlighted “the conspiratorial half-truths he has advised about vaccines,” in reference to the 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa, which she mentioned “value lives.”
The letter was addressed to senators who lead the committees that will likely be reviewing his nomination this week, together with Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho; Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon; Invoice Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and Bernie Sanders, an Impartial of Vermont.
She famous that the household is shut and that talking out was troublesome. Nonetheless, she faulted her cousin for utilizing the household’s legacy of tragedy for political acquire. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated throughout a marketing campaign for president in 1968. Her father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in Dallas in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his personal failed presidential marketing campaign — after which groveled to Donald Trump for a job,” the letter mentioned. “Bobby continues to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his personal father.”
She steered that her father John F. Kennedy, her uncle Robert F. Kennedy and one other uncle, the long-serving lawmaker Ted Kennedy, “could be disgusted.”
She closed the letter with a plea for the senators to reject her cousin’s nomination on behalf of the docs, nurses, scientists and caregivers who gasoline the American well being care system.
“They deserve a secretary dedicated to advancing cutting-edge drugs to avoid wasting lives, not rejecting the advances we now have already made,” Ms. Kennedy wrote. “They deserve a secure, ethical and moral individual on the helm of this significant company. They deserve higher than Bobby Kennedy — and so do the remainder of us.”