By David Talbot, The Kennedy Beacon
The media loves to highlight every Kennedy family blowup over RFK Jr. Earlier this week, Bobby’s older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and three of his sisters—Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Kerry Kennedy, and Rory Kennedy—scolded him on X (formerly Twitter) after he announced his independent run for president. (They weren’t crazy about his doomed Democratic Party challenge of incumbent Joe Biden, though their father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, courageously did the same to President Lyndon Johnson.
Bobby’s siblings stated they were “saddened” by RFK Jr.’s decision to run as an independent, claiming it was “dangerous to our country,” even though his presidential campaign is more of a threat to Donald Trump than to Biden, according to some polls.“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” the siblings wrote—perhaps their most outrageous and wrongheaded assessment of their father’s brave political career.“We denounce his candidacy,” the siblings concluded, “and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
What is genuinely “perilous” is their brother’s bold bid for the White House because RFK Jr. has antagonized all the critical centers of U.S. power — including the permanent war lobby, Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Oil, the DNC and RNC. Bobby’s independent campaign echoes the ambitious goals of his father as he challenged some of the same power blocs and sought a “newer world.”
Even though RFK Jr. has a big target on his back — like his father — and his high poll numbers, President Biden denies him Secret Service protection. And yet Kennedy is determined to keep running — and to speak out, even though it upsets powerful interests and much of the Kennedy dynasty.The attacks on Bobby by Kennedy’s family members won them plaudits from the press. But RFK Jr. refuses to play the media mayhem game, always taking the high road when asked about his relatives’ harsh criticism. Many members of his big clan support him, he points out, but he expresses goodwill even towards those who don’t. “I love my family,” he said on the Fox & Friends show this week. “Every family has disputes.”
I’ll TAKE THE GLOVES OFF because RFK Jr. has understandably chosen to be magnanimous. Newsflash: Not all Kennedys are brave and wise like everyone’s relatives.Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy told the Guardian — one of the most obsessive RFK Jr. haters in the media galaxy — that her brother was guilty of “conspiracy-mongering,” even though the historical evidence supports his charge that the CIA was involved in the assassinations of his uncle and father. It’s also incontrovertible that the pharmaceutical industry (one of the principal sources of the media’s ad revenue) and its captive Washington “regulators” place profits ahead of people.
Similarly, Jack Schlossberg, the 30-year-old son of RFK Jr’s cousin Caroline, attracted much media attention in August when he blasted Bobby’s presidential campaign as a “vanity project.”“He’s trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame,” Schlossberg erupted on Instagram, taking a break from his Australia vacation. “I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is his candidacy is an embarrassment.”
Not to be cruel, but why should we care what Jack Schlossberg thinks? Other than graduating from a tony Upper West Manhattan private school and Ivy League colleges, trading on his mother’s ambassadorship to get a staff assistant gig at a Japanese liquor company, and dabbling at the lower ends of politics and acting, what’s young Schlossberg all about?
When I met Robert Kennedy Jr. over two decades ago, he taught environmental law at Pace University in New York. He was widely known for his legal clashes with corporate polluters. RFK Jr. had earned wide respect for his legal and political crusades. He had a lot to say.
But at the time, Bobby would not consider a run for public office because he said his kids were still growing up. He was 14 when his father was killed. Nor was he willing to reexamine the assassinations of his uncle and father, even though I had begun my investigation of the crimes, which became my book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, and I had learned that his father never believed the official Warren Report.
“We were taught to look forward, not back,” Bobby told me then.To his credit, RFK Jr. finally decided to look deep. He looked, and he read. Not just about the corporations plundering and destroying our planet but about the rise of the U.S. national security state. About the political murders that forever scarred his family and American democracy.It’s been a long journey, but Kennedy’s son has finally joined him on that dangerous path.
I wish more of his family members had the same courage.
