It’s hard to say what is most disturbing about Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary pick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His passion for anti-vaxx conspiracy theories and total disregard for scientific evidence come to mind, but his habit of doing gross things with animals is high on the list. Ahead of his confirmation hearings on Wednesday, his cousin Caroline Kennedy wrote a letter urging the Senate not to put him in charge of the nation’s health and added another haunting anecdote to the ever-growing tally: Apparently, this guy used to blend up small animals to feed to his hawks.
Caroline recalled her cousin hanging out in “his basement, his garage, his dorm room” as a young man and “showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks.” (RFK Jr. has always loved talking about his falconry and hawk-training hobbies, which he has apparently pursued since he was 11.) “It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets,” Caroline wrote, “because he himself is a predator.”
For those keeping track, that’s at least four profoundly upsetting stories we have heard about RFK Jr. and dead animals: In 2012, his daughter Kick Kennedy told Town & Country he once sawed off the head of a whale corpse and drove it home strapped to the family minivan. Last year, RFK Jr. admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park ten years prior. Vanity Fair unearthed a photo and text in which he suggested he had barbecued and eaten a dog, though he claims that one was actually a goat. In any case, if anyone will be lurking in a basement putting small animals in a blender to feed to his hawks, it’s going to be RFK Jr.
As his confirmation hearings get underway, who knows which family member might next come forward with a stomach-churning story about his treatment of dead animals. Something tells me it will fall on deaf ears?