The daughter of former President John F. Kennedy is speaking out against Health and Human Services Secretary designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., lambasting her cousin as a “predator” with “dangerous” views on vaccination who is “unqualified to fill” the role.
Former US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy strongly urged senators in a video message posted on X to reject President Trump’s nominee, the day before the first of two high-stakes Senate hearings.
“He lacks any relevant government, financial, management or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed,” Kennedy said, reading her missive to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who will quiz RFK Jr. on Thursday. “These facts alone should be disqualifying, but he has personal qualities related to this job, which for me pose even greater concern.”
“It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets, because Bobby himself is a predator,” added the former first daughter. “He’s always been charismatic, able to attract others through the strength of his personality, his willingness to take risks and break the rules.”
That included, Caroline Kennedy claimed, other siblings and cousins following RFK Jr., a recovered heroin user, down the dark path of addiction to “illness and death.”
Kennedy also claimed that her cousin was looking to “enrich himself” by keeping a financial stake if a suit he is party to triumphs against the drugmaker Merck over potential risks from its HPV vaccine.
Additionally, she blamed her relative for causing vaccine hesitancy that led to a “deadly 2019 outbreak of measles” in American Samoa.
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The Kennedy scion went on to say that she had “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges” but her cousin’s possible position overseeing the federal health bureaucracy would put him in charge of “protecting the most vulnerable among us.”
“They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us. I urge the Senate to reject his nomination,” she pressed.
If confirmed, RFK Jr. would oversee a roughly $1.7 trillion mandatory and $130.7 billion discretionary budget as the head of HHS, with more than half of the spending going toward major entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The 71-year-old environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic was tapped for the role months after dropping out of the 2024 presidential contest and endorsing Trump.
At the time, pollsters told The Post that Kennedy Jr.’s exit from the race would swing the electorate away from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and in favor of the Republican ticket.
In her Tuesday letter to senators, Caroline Kennedy griped that her cousin had “expropriated my father’s image and distorted President Kennedy’s legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign and then grovel to Donald Trump for a job.”
“It’s incomprehensible to me that someone who is willing to exploit their own painful family tragedies and publicity would be put in charge of America’s life-and-death situations,” she also said.
Caroline Kennedy served as an ambassador under former President Joe Biden from July 2022 to November 2024.
Jack Schlossberg, Caroline’s youngest child, praised his “courageous mother” for releasing the letter to the public, saying that it was in keeping with her “life of dignity, integrity and service.”