A Cabinet Maker Gone Wild?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – a roller coaster ride!

Well! Having spent most of my summer immersed in Project 2025, believing it might soon be water under the bridge, and, in particular, having spent a few weeks with the conservative mandate’s plans for Health and Human Services (HHS), I was astonished at Donald Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary. Stunned!  

HHS has been important in my life. For seven years I worked for the federally-funded Primary Care Association serving the Northwest, and HHS was our foundation. Leadership of that important federal bureau has personal meaning for me. Robert F. Kennedy?! I was aghast, not because I think he has nothing to recommend him – but for that job? Perhaps the Environmental Protection Agency, but not Health and Human Services! And, in fact, does he have the mettle to lead any agency at that level?

It took me about two days to catch my breath and commit to proactivity rather than reactivity. After all, Trump got elected, and he gets to nominate his cabinet. As for me, my only defense is to broaden my understanding – and help others do the same. So let’s learn all we can about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., shall we?

As usual, I’ll start by confessing my own biases. I was a Catholic grade school student when John F. Kennedy campaigned for president; for my family and the families of my classmates, he was a shoo-in. His election was magical to my young heart. In my innocence, I saw nothing unusual about choosing his brother to be Attorney General. I was all in for the Kennedys.  

I remember exactly where I was when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot: in freshman English at Xavier High School. I was in Algebra when we heard the announcement that he had died. I’m quite sure it was the first time in my young life that I abandoned all sense of decorum and simply broke down weeping at my desk. I watched every moment of television coverage of the assassination, the funeral, the aftermath...

And I remember exactly where I was when I heard on the radio that Robert F. Kennedy, then candidate for president, had been shot: Standing in my room in the home where I worked as a nanny during my second semester of college. I remember the overwhelming feeling of loss, the absolute disbelief that the world could be so cruel. And ever since, the Kennedys have continued to hold a very special place in my heart.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., looks just like his dad. And I suspect he’s every bit as smart. Like his father, he has a law degree and has worked in that field. It’s true that his strange voice makes me uncomfortable, but I’ve learned that he has adductor spasmodic dysphonia, an affliction of the larynx. I’ve heard one of his sisters talk in the same way, and so I suspect it might be familial. Now, that thing about a worm that ate part of his brain and then died? I’m not as ready to dismiss that as a reasonable medical diagnosis. More about that later.

As I launched my endeavor to learn everything I could about RFK, Jr., including the good, the bad and the questionable, I thought I’d start with his books. I know he has a few books for sale right now, and maybe I’d read one. Imagine my surprise to learn that RFK has authored or co-authored 18 books! Some we’ve all heard of in recent years, like The Real Anthony Fauci in 2021 and The Wuhan Cover-Up in 2023. But he’s been publishing quite regularly since a biography in 1978. His 1997 book with John Cronin, The Riverkeepers, reflects his devotion to a healthy natural environment. In that vein he’s also written Crimes Against Nature (a New York Times best seller) and Climate in Crisis: Who’s causing it, who’s fighting it, and how we can reverse it before it’s too late. (Here I can’t help but note that a man who is deeply devoted to saving our planet from a climate crisis is now lumped in with all those Project 2025 authors who repeated, over and over, ad nauseum, that there is no climate crisis, that it’s just a Biden conspiracy. Ah, well...so much for logic.)

We must also consider, of course, Kennedy’s books on “health,” such as Vaccine Villains: what the American public should know about the industry in 2017 and Profiles of the Vaccine Injured in 2022 and Vax-Unvax: let the science speak just one year later. After the surprise of all those books under his belt, I was ready to learn, with as open a mind as possible, what has been written about RFK, Jr., his life and work and values. So I turned first to his U.S. Senate biography – why not? Here’s a summary of what I found at congress.gov:

Kennedy founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, “the world’s largest clean water advocacy group – and served as its longtime chairman and attorney.” Then he founded the Children’s Defense Fund and served as chairman and chief litigation counsel “in its campaign to address childhood chronic disease and toxic exposures.” He was once named “Hero for the Planet” by Time magazine, which “helped spawn 300 more Waterkeeper organizations across the globe.” He negotiated the New York City watershed agreement, “an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development.” He helped defeat Monsanto and DuPont in court cases, and he’s represented indigenous peoples in court cases in Canada and Latin America. He has a master’s degree in environmental law in addition to a law degree. He served on the Pace University School of Law faculty from 1986 to 2018. He’s married to actress Cheryl Hines, with whom he has one child, but he has six children from two previous marriages.

Okay. That covers his “professional” life. Then I turned to Wikipedia, and I will admit that almost everything that follows comes from that source. Now, when I had stumbled on those 18 book titles mentioned above, I did get an image in my mind of a roller coaster: highs and lows, ascending as an expert and descending as a... what? A clown? A nut? When I jumped into the huge Wikipedia report on this man, my roller coaster image was confirmed. Let me share with you some of the highs and lows of a life marked by brilliance and near madness, leadership and debacle, strength and instability. A roller coaster, indeed!

Already in his youth...

I had no idea that Kennedy struggled with drug abuse in his youth which ultimately led to his arrest and his expulsion from not one but two boarding schools. Apparently some in his family “regarded him as ‘a ringleader’ of a pack of spoiled rich kids who called themselves the ‘Hyannis Port Terrors,’ engaging in vandalism, theft and drug use.” His experimentation with heroine and cocaine continued at Harvard, earning him a reputation with some as a “drug dealer.” But that was his youth, and we should remember that he was nine years old when his uncle was assassinated and 14 when his father was gunned down.

Turning then to Kennedy’s adult life: In 1982, Kennedy was sworn in as an assistant district attorney for Manhattan. After failing the New York bar exam, he resigned in July 1983. On September 16 of that year he was charged with heroin possession in Rapid City, South Dakota. In February 1984 he pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of possession of heroin and was sentenced to two years of probation and community service. After his arrest, he entered a drug treatment center.

Dedicated to the environment

In 1984, Kennedy began volunteering with The Riverkeeper, protectors of the Hudson River. The next year he became the organization’s senior attorney, and he worked to force local communities along the Hudson and Long Island Sound to stop discharging harmful substances into the water, setting “long-time environmental legal standards.” Then, in 2000, Kennedy, also a board member, insisted on rehiring William Wegner, an Australian wildlife lecturer and falcon trainer. Wegner had been fired six months earlier when the board president had learned of Wegner’s past: He had been convicted and served time for tax fraud, perjury, and conspiracy to violate wildlife protection laws. In fact, “he had, for eight years, led a team of ten who smuggled cockatoo eggs (an endangered species) from Australia to the US.” Kennedy convinced the board to vote to rehire Wegner, after which the board president and one-third of the Riverkeeper board resigned. (I learned that Kennedy is, himself, a master falconer and has trained hawks since he was 11. He was president of the New York State Falconry Association.) 

For 34 years Kennedy worked to force closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, arguing that the power it generated could be replaced by renewable sources. Closure of the plant began in 2019 and, by 2022, carbon emissions from electricity generation in New York state had increased by 37%.

In 1987 Kennedy founded the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University and ran it for three decades as a Clinical Professor of Law. He got special permission for the students he supervised to try cases against Hudson River and Long Island Sound polluters, winning hundreds of settlements. The team pressured municipalities to comply with the Clean Water Act; they even won a memorable case against ExxonMobil. The Pace Clinic and Kennedy were recognized and acknowledged, and the Clinic became the model for environmental law clinics in the country.

In 1999 Kennedy helped establish Waterkeepers Alliance, the umbrella organization for 344 licensed Waterkeeper programs in 44 countries. Kennedy served as president until 2020. In 2001 they launched the “Clean Coal is a Deadly Lie” campaign, which has resulted in massive cleanup and restriction of coal export from some American ports. Through Waterkeeper, RFK has also waged war against factory farms, including a 2003 article in which he pointed out that factory farms harm independent farms by poisoning the air and water, and they also produce lower quality, less healthful foods.

Kennedy began representing environmentalists against New York City in 1991, ultimately winning them a $1.2 billion settlement in a case called “an international model in stakeholder consensus negotiations and sustainable development. 

He joined Kevin Madonna in 2000 to form an environmental law firm that has been hugely successful in prosecuting pollution, harmful chemical runoff, and dumping of toxic waste. In 2007 he was nominated for “Trial Lawyer of the Year” for his success against DuPont for contamination in two high-profile cases. He and his firm were part of the successful Roundup case against Monsanto.  

Today Kennedy serves on the board of Vionx, a utility-scale firm that has built one of the largest energy-storage systems in Massachusetts. He was also a founding board member of New York’s League of Conservation Voters, and he is currently involved with several cutting-edge conservationist efforts. He also founded EcoWatch, an environmental news site.

Commitment to indigenous peoples

Kennedy has also been successful in various lawsuits on behalf of minority communities. In addition, he’s won cases on behalf of indigenous groups in several countries who felt their wellbeing threatened by proposed dams and drilling projects, sometimes facing American giants like Texaco and Conoco. He’s helped natives stop the logging on Vancouver Island, Canada, and, in 1996, he convinced Fidel Castro not to build a proposed nuclear plant. He halted Mitsubishi’s development in Mexico to save gray whales and faced off against Bechtel to save threatened coral reefs in the Bahamas. He has also blocked the building of hydroelectric dams in several countries.

“Kennedy has been a critic of environmental damage by the US military.” Apparently he sued the US Navy for environmental damage in Puerto Rico; he joined a protest there and was arrested for trespassing. He and many natives were imprisoned for three hours, after which the Bush administration halted naval bombing in that area. He has called the US government “America’s biggest polluter” and the Department of Defense the worst offender.

The ups and downs...

Many political positions RFK  has taken over the years might have been mired in conspiracy theories. He has accused President Biden of using federal agencies to censor free speech, and he has extolled the virtues of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and the January 6 rioters, who were “wrongly stripped of their Constitutional liberties.” He asserted that the American government had been weaponized against Trump in his first campaign. He refers to the “political economy of the United States,” and he’s vowed to repeal Biden’s carbon capture and storage initiatives. 

“Kennedy opposes nuclear power as a clean energy source,” and he promotes the significant reduction of the US military in foreign nations, closing US bases in different locations worldwide. He claims China and the US are locked in competition to develop “ethnic bioweapons designed to harm people of a certain race.” He has called the Palestinian people “arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world.” A month later he claimed to have “a long history of support for Palestinians.” He said in 2023 that he is “arguably the leading environmentalist in the country.”

As for the war in Ukraine, Kennedy claims that Zelensky “provoked Russia,” and that the Biden administration, in large part, caused the 2022 invasion by Russia. He has called Putin “a monster” and “a thug” and “a gangster.”

Health and Safety: up or down?

Regarding gun control and school shootings, he calls himself a “constitutional absolutist” and says the Supreme Court has ruled on the protection of gun rights. He does support a ban on assault rifles though. He blames school shootings on antidepressants and other “psychiatric drugs,” although he acknowledges there is no data to support this claim. He has noted that such shootings didn’t occur before the introduction of Prozac 

According to Wikipedia, “Kennedy has long supported the legalization of gay marriage,” and he has stated that transgender people deserve respect, and he supports people’s “gender choices.” He continues to allege that AIDS is caused by “gay life style” and “poppers” and not by HIV.

He is a known anti-vaxxer, claiming vaccines cause autism, and he chairs Children’s Health Defense which promotes “conspiracy theories and quackery,” says Wikipedia. He compared the mask ordinance during Covid with the Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps. During the pandemic he claimed that Bill Gates would cut off access to money of people who do not get vaccinated, causing them to starve.

Kennedy has asserted that the Environmental Protection Agency is run by “the oil industry, the coal industry, and the pesticide industry,” and that the FDA is beholden to Big Pharma. He has stated that the richest Americans should be paying higher taxes, and he supported Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax plan.

According to The Atlantic, as head of Health and Human Services, he will work to reduce obesity and pharmaceutical commercials. However, he wants to remove fluoride from tap water and curtail childhood immunizations

Some definite low points

During his second marriage, RFK was known among his friend for sending explicit nude photos of women that they assumed he had taken. He reportedly engaged in multiple affairs and was termed “a lifelong philanderer” by his friends. Two years after Kennedy filed for divorce from the second wife, she hanged herself to death, but only after she had discovered his journal which detailed sexual encounters with 37 different women. 

It was in 2010, when he began experiencing short- and long-term memory issues, that he reported “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” He also claims he has suffered from mercury poisoning due to eating large quantities of tuna.

In 2023 Kennedy asserted that gender dysphoria in children might be caused by atrazine in the water supply. He cited a study that showed acute atrazine exposure causes chemical castration and feminization in frogs. Very recently he introduced a new “threat,” declaring that “we are going to stop this crime of chemtrails.” According to Wikipedia, chemtrails do not exist. The conspiracy theory is that the contrails left behind high-flying jets are sometimes infused with harmful chemicals to poison an unsuspecting public.

Zeroing in on vaccines: way down!

Kennedy says he is not against vaccines, but they should be more thoroughly tested and vetted. “I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health.” Apparently he has also said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” Kennedy’s vaccine misinformation and disinformation is said to be persuasive because he presents it with charts and figures that appear to be scientific data. Infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm says Kennedy has “perfected the art of illusion of fact.”

Kennedy chairs the Children’s Defense Fund, which was originally the World Mercury Project, a group that alleges that exposure to chemicals and radiation causes autism, ADHD, food allergies and cancer in children. The group also campaigns against fluoridated drinking water, acetaminophen, aluminum, wireless communication, and more. 

In 2020, Kennedy’s Instagram followers quadrupled in number to nearly a half-million.

In 2021, however, the account was deleted for constantly sharing “debunked claims” about Covid-19 vaccines. That same year, the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of 12 people responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter. The Instagram account was reinstated in 2023. In September 2021, his YouTube account had been removed for breaking company policy on vaccine misinformation.

Over the years, the chief target of Kennedy’s vaccine attacks has been thimerosal, made from mercury. He seems convinced it causes childhood neurodevelopmental disorders – and specifically autism. Although it hasn’t been used in vaccines against MMR, chickenpox, pneumonia or polio since 2001, the incidence of autism continues to rise. JAMA reports that, from 2011 to 2022, the incidence of autism increased from 2.3 per 1000 to 6.3 per 1000. Scientific American attributes at least part of the rise over the past two decades to growing awareness of the problem and changes in diagnostic criteria.

In 2005 RFK alleged a governmental conspiracy to conceal the link between autism and thimerosal. Salon, one of the two publications that published Kennedy’s 2005 article, had to issue five corrections of factual errors. The editor called publishing that article “the worst mistake of my career.” Six years later, Salon retracted the article in its entirety, charging “fraud underlying the vaccine-autism claim.”  Kennedy published a book on the topic in 2014: Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak. Still, the CDC insists “there is no evidence of harm caused by low doses of thimerosal in vaccines.”

And then Covid and AIDS...

In 2021 he published his book called The Real Anthony Fauci, accusing the doctor of a “coup d’etat against western democracy” due to the way the Covid response was handled. He alleged that Fauci was benefitting financially from the use of the vaccine, and he subsequently depicted Fauci with a Hitler-style mustache. 

At a 2023 private dinner, Kennedy was recorded saying that Covid is meant to target Caucasians and Black people, while the most immune people are Jews and Asians. He later clarified that he did not mean to suggest it had been genetically engineered, but he went on to say it does serve as “proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons.” (Experts subsequently pointed out that Jews and Asians contract Covid at the same rate as others.) One virologist suggested that, while such “protease consensus sequences are not a thing in biochemistry, they are in racism and antisemitism.” 

Apparently Kennedy also believes the government targets ethnic minorities with vaccines, including the Covid vaccine, which he has called a medical experiment on Black people. As for HIV and AIDS, he joins other denialists, asserting that HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS, and he has stated that the early AIDS drug AZT is “absolutely fatal” and horrendously toxic. He has gone so far as to suggest that germs do not, in fact, cause disease, claiming that Louis Pasteur recanted on that germ theory on his deathbed. On another trajectory, Kennedy, a founding board member of the Food Allergy Initiative, insists that food allergies in children are linked to certain vaccines approved in 1989 and since.

And on the story goes, including an accusation of sexual assault from a young babysitter and strange stories of inexplicably weird treatment of dead animals. I could relate more ups and downs, but too much time on a roller coaster can feel a bit nauseating. So, knowing all that, what should I think about Donald Trump’s nomination of this man to head up Health and Human Services? I will say again: Had RFK, Jr., been tapped for the Environmental Protection Agency, it might make some sense to me. In that sphere, his insight and accomplishments could mean something. But healthcare? What intelligent, science-based argument about health has he ever offered the world? What could the president-elect be thinking?

I’ll let you ponder that. I’ll ponder it too – for all the good it will do. But I definitely need to get off this roller coaster.