An Unqualified “Predator”: Caroline Kennedy Urges Senate Not to Confirm Her Cousin RFK Jr.

In a scathing letter to the Senate ahead of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Biden administration ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has described her cousin as a hypocritical “predator” who is unqualified for the job and “addicted to attention and power.”

In a video her son, Jack Schlossberg, posted on X of her reading the letter that she sent to Senate lawmakers—which was first reported by the Washington Post—Caroline Kennedy says that she did not raise her concerns over her cousin’s fitness for federal office earlier because she was serving in a government role and “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges.” But ahead of RFK Jr.’s hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, she said she felt compelled to speak out. (In November, after Trump won and announced RFK Jr. would be his HHS nominee, Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous.”)

In the video posted Tuesday, she said, “Overseeing the FDA, the [National Institutes of Health], the CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—agencies that are charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us—is an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill. He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience.”

Indeed, RFK Jr. is best known for peddling conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims about vaccines, HIV and AIDS, fluoride, and 5G technology, among others, as my colleague Anna Merlan has reported. As Anna wrote of his background:

Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.


Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.

Those are among the reasons that public health experts, physicians and caregivers have warned of RFK’s potential to destroy American public health, given the power of the position Trump has appointed him to: HHS employs more than 80,000 people and oversees 13 federal agencies. (As I’ve reported, he could also further decimate abortion rights in that role.)

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous and willfully misinformed,” claiming that he has vaccinated his own six children “while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.” She said the “conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines,” including those focused on the measles outbreak in Samoa, “have cost lives.” And she pointed to a recent New York Times report claiming that RFK would maintain his financial stake in litigation against Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, as evidence that he’s “willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access” to a critical vaccine.

Kennedy alleged that in addition to his anti-science beliefs and lack of qualification for the role, her cousin has a litany of “personal qualities” that “pose even greater concern”: she claimed that he led “his younger brothers and cousins …down the path of drug addiction,” adding that some “suffered addiction, illness and death.” (His brother David died in 1984, at 28 years old, of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his system.) She also recounted a bizarre—and disturbing—anecdote, alleging that he used to kill baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed his pet hawks, which she described as “a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

She claimed that her father, former President John F. Kennedy, and her uncles Robert F. Kennedy, former senator and attorney general (and RFK Jr.’s father), and former senator Ted Kennedy, would be “disgusted” with her cousin.

“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know,” Caroline Kennedy said.

“They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us,” she concluded. “I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”

RFK did not respond to an email sent Tuesday afternoon seeking comment and ignored questions about the letter from an NBC News reporter.

RFK Jr. ignores questions about the letter released by his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, in which she calls him a “predator” + his upcoming confirmation hearings. pic.twitter.com/zXzqAVXuE4— Brennan Leach (@brennanleach) January 28, 2025

Spokespeople for White House and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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