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‘Despair and Violence’: RFK Jr. Is a ‘Predator’ Says Caroline Kennedy in ‘Damning’ Video
Calling him a “predator” with “dangerous” views, former U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy sent what is being called a “damning” letter and video message urging U.S. Senators not to confirm her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan under President Barack Obama, and Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden, has almost never spoken publicly about her family, which she notes in her message to the Senate.
“It is noteworthy and significant that Caroline Kennedy, who is famously private about family matters, felt moved to issue this searing indictment of RFK Jr.’s nomination as HHS Secy,” wrote former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod.
“WOW,” declared Jackie Calmes, a veteran journalist who has covered the White House, Congress and national politics. “I wasn’t expecting her statement to be so powerful, so damning.”
Kennedy made clear her thoughts on RFK Jr.’s qualifications and expressed that his “personal qualities” pose great concern for her. The Washington Post was the first to report on her letter.
She also suggested an element of hypocrisy on his part, saying, “Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children, vaccinating his own kids, while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”
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“Overseeing the FDA, the NIH, 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. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed. These facts alone should be disqualifying.”
“We are a close generation of 28 cousins who have been through a lot together,” Kennedy explained, noting that she has “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges.”
She expressed that the “doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists and caregivers” in the American healthcare system “deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us.”
What she described as a lack of qualifications and disqualifying views on vaccines, however, was not the only impetus for her speaking out.
“I’ve known Bobby my whole life, we grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets, because Bobby himself is a predator. He’s always been charismatic, able to attract others through the strength of his personality, his willingness to take risks and break the rules. I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction,” she lamented.
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“His basement, his garage, his dorm room were always the center of the action, where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
“That was a long time ago and people can change,” she generously offered. “Through his own strength and the many second chances he was given by people who felt sorry for the boy who lost his father, Bobby was able to pull himself out of illness and disease. I admire the discipline that took, and the continuing commitment it requires. But siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse, suffered addiction, illness, and death, while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent lie and cheat his way through life.”
“Even before he fills this job, his constant denigration of our health care system and the conspiratorial half truths he’s told about vaccines, including in connection with Samoa’s deadly 2019 outbreak of measles, have caused lives,” she noted.
“And now we know that Bobby’s crusade against vaccination has benefited him in other ways, too,” she added. “His ethics report makes clear that he will keep his financial stake in a lawsuit against an HPV vaccine. In other words, Bobby is willing to profit, can enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer, and has already been safely administered to millions of boys and girls. During my time in Australia, I worked on the quad cancer initiative, and I learned that cervical cancer is among the top three forms of cancer among women in a majority of countries. Tragically, every year, more than 200,000 children lose their mothers. They are orphaned due to a lack of vaccines and screening.”
“Those are the real world consequences of Bobby’s irresponsible beliefs. We are a close family and none of that is easy to say.”
Watch Kennedy’s video, posted by her son, John Bouvier “Jack” Kennedy Schlossberg, below or at this link.
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
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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