Caroline Kennedy warns senators against confirming ‘predator’ cousin RF Kennedy

Caroline Kennedy has written a damning letter warning US senators against confirming her ‘lying, cheating’ cousin as health secretary, calling his views ‘dangerous and misinformed’ | WATCH

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Health and Human Services Secretary. Picture: AFP.

Caroline Kennedy has warned US senators against confirming her cousin Robert F. Kennedy as health secretary, describing Donald Trump’s pick for the position as a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.”

The former US ambassador to Australia wrote to senators ahead of Mr Kennedy’s confirmation hearings to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming her cousin’s views on vaccination were “dangerous and misinformed.”

She accused him of discouraging parents from vaccinating their children while vaccinating his own children. She alleged that his “crusade against vaccination” has also served to enrich him.

“I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together,” she wrote. “It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator.”

Mr Kennedy will appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday (local time) in his bid to become health secretary.

However his views on vaccines have caused concern, after he supported disproven claims, including that childhood vaccines cause autism.

Ms Kennedy has previously made clear her negative views about her cousin, telling the National Press Club in a farewell address to Australia last year that Mr Kennedy’s views on vaccines were “dangerous”.

“I don’t think most Americans share them,” she said at the time.

Caroline Kennedy criticised Robert F Kennedy in her farewell address to the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

In the damning letter, Ms Kennedy, the daughter of former US president John Kennedy, also blamed “Bobby” for encouraging other family members “down the path of drug addiction.”

“His basement, his garage, his dorm room were the centres of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” she wrote. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

Mr Kennedy has spoken about his heroin use, and pleaded guilty for bringing the drug on an airplane in 1984.

In the letter, obtained by The Washington Post, Ms Kennedy commended Kennedy for turning his back on substance abuse “through his own strength”, but said while siblings and cousins suffered and died from addiction, he had “gone on to misrepresent, lie, and cheat his way through life.”

Ms Kennedy also read the letter in a video posted by her son Jack Schlossberg on X.

In her letter, she also pointed out that Mr Kennedy plans to still profit off a lawsuit against pharmaceutical company Merck over Gardasil, its human papillomavirus vaccine that prevents cervical cancer. Last year, he made over $850,000 (AUD$1.36m) from the arrangement.

“He is willing to enrich himself by denying access to a vaccine that can prevent almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” she wrote

Ms Kennedy’s father was assassinated in 1963 when she was a young girl. Mr Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 during his presidential campaign event.

“Unlike Bobby, I try not to speak for my father – but I am certain that he and my uncle Bobby, who gave their lives in public services, and my uncle Teddy, who devoted his Senate career to improving health care, would be disgusted,” Ms. Kennedy wrote.

With AP