Robert F Kennedy Jr once released a snake into a swimming pool packed with children during a family birthday party, his sister Kerry Kennedy has claimed, using the anecdote to argue that the Health and Human Services Secretary lacks the judgment required for his role.
Kerry Kennedy, 66, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the incident occurred at her daughter’s birthday party, when she discovered a snake in the garden and called her brother to deal with it. Kennedy, 72, arrived carrying a pillowcase and his then-infant son Aidan, grabbed the snake and stuffed it into the bag while still holding the baby. “That was a little scary,” Kerry said.
What followed was considerably more alarming. “He walked up to where the rest of the birthday party was, and he reached into the bag. And the snake was just chomping on his hand, and he pulled out the snake to show the kids,” Kerry recalled. Kennedy then allegedly fed a vole to the snake before throwing both the snake and the situation into chaos. “He grabbed that with his hand, and he put it into the bag with the snake, which made all the kids scream because now they were afraid the snake would eat the vole,” Kerry told CNN. “So then he shoved his hand back into the pillowcase and grabbed the snake, which chomped on him a few more times. There were tons of kids in the swimming pool, and he released this snake that had chomped on his hand into the swimming pool.”
Kerry, who has been publicly critical of her brother’s role running HHS, said the story speaks to a broader pattern of poor judgment. “This is somebody who, on the one hand, has a fascination with nature, but on the other hand has a lack of judgment when it comes to the safety and care of children,” she said. “Is this the person who you want running HHS who’s got this lack of judgment when it comes to health and safety?” The Daily Mail contacted Kennedy’s office for comment.
The claims add to a growing catalogue of wild animal encounters associated with Kennedy. In May, he shared a video of himself catching two black snakes bare-handed on Dr Oz’s patio while wearing suit trousers and a tie, as his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, pleaded with him to stop. Kennedy told viewers the snakes were cottonmouths — a venomous species — though black racers, which the snakes appeared to be, are not venomous. “You are nuts!” Hines could be heard shouting as the snakes bit him repeatedly. Kennedy appeared unbothered, laughing throughout.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Kennedy acknowledged leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park a decade earlier. His daughter Kick has claimed he once used a chainsaw to remove the head from a whale carcass during a family holiday in Cape Cod, strapping it to the roof of their car. A recently published biography also cited a diary entry in which Kennedy described cutting the genitals from a roadkill raccoon so he could “study them.”
