The Kennedy Dynasty Meltdown
Why Bobby Riles Many Family Members
By David Talbot, The Kennedy Beacon
All happy families are alike. Then we have real families — divided by personal feuds, and, yes, sometimes by political passions.
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 either, 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 truly “perilous” is their brother’s bold bid for the White House, because RFK Jr. has antagonized all the key 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.”
Despite the fact that RFK Jr. has a big target on his back — like his father — and his high poll numbers, President Biden still 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 as well.
The attacks on Bobby by Kennedy family members win 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 good will even towards those who don’t. “I love my family,” he said on the Fox & Friends show this week. “Every family has disputes.”
Because RFK Jr. has understandably chosen to be magnanimous, I’ll take the gloves off. Newsflash: Like everyone’s relatives, not all of the Kennedys are brave and wise.
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 a lot of 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 the hell should we care what Jack Schlossberg thinks? Other than to graduate from a tony Upper West Manhattan private school and Ivy League colleges, trade on his mother’s ambassadorship to get a staff assistant gig at a Japanese liquor company, and dabble 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 was teaching environmental law at Pace University in New York and 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 own 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.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian and aide to President Kennedy, once observed that Robert F. Kennedy knew more about the dark side of U.S. power than anyone else in public life.
It’s been a long journey, but Kennedy’s son has at long last joined him on that perilous path.
I wish more of his family members had the same courage.
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Fantastic Mr. Talbot , it’s about time someone said something.
I’ve known Bobby for a time now and he is not at all what everyone in the media is portraying him as.
He is a most authentic man, with great courage and integrity, he is kind, compassionate, genuine , loving and just who has bravely picked up the torch ,that contains the fire, that his ancestors began.
I stand by him in his charge !
Bobby’s family members ... some of them ... seem not to notice that the Biden administration has collapsed rule of law and Constitutional governance and exterminated 1M Americans while THEY sat by and did NOTHING. Their criticisms are puerile at best. Bobby organized not only River Keepers but CHD. He has his finger on the very heart of the matter. Some of his siblings are just plain thick. Sorry to be blunt. THEY are the ones trading on the name alone. Bobby is trading on principles and ideas ... and our precious Constitution especially. I’m in!