Caroline Kennedy wrote a frightening letter to the main senators on Tuesday, defining her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a “predator” dependent on the attention of the airing dangerous opinions on vaccinations and which is not suitable to be the Secretary of Health of the nation.
He urged the legislators, who will question Mr. Kennedy during his confirmation hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, to reject his appointment. He mentioned his lack of experience, not bad at points of view on vaccines and personal attributes. In the letter, he described how the other family members “along the drug addiction path” led.
“His basement, his garage and his dormitory were the centers of the action in which drugs were available and he liked to show off as he put chickens as a child and mice in the blender to feed his hawks,” wrote Mrs. Kennedy. “It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
His letter was reported for the first time on the Washington Post.
Mrs. Kennedy expressed particular indignation for the new popularizations in her ethical agreement deposited in the Senate, which she described how to outline how her “Crusade against vaccination benefited him in other ways”.
He mentioned Mr. Kennedy’s decision to maintain a financial participation in dispute against Merck, who creates a key vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) which is administered to protect from cervical cancer.
“In other words, it is willing to enrich itself by denying access to a vaccine capable of preventing almost all forms of cervical cancer and which has been safely administered to millions of boys and girls,” wrote Mrs. Kennedy.
As Ambassador of President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Australia, Mrs. Kennedy was actively involved in promoting the HPV vaccine, who put Australia on a path to eliminate cervical cancer. He was decisive in persuading Mr. Biden to expand his initiative “Cancer Moonshot” in the Indo-Pacific Region.
In her role as ambassador, said Mrs. Kennedy, she was reluctant to make public comments against Mr. Kennedy, who launched his presidential campaign in 2023 as the main challenger for Mr. Biden before running as an independent candidate. When Mr. Kennedy left his presidential offer, he approved Mr. Trump, who, after winning the elections, appointed Kennedy as a choice for the Secretary of Health.
After that, he broke with his cousin, saying that his opinions on vaccination were dangerous.
His letter painted Mr. Kennedy as a charismatic figure, “willing to take risks and break the rules” and able to attract others through the strength of his magnetic personality. Then he tracked down a tragic history of the influence of Mr. Kennedy on other family members.
“But brothers and cousins that Bobby have encouraged the path of the abuse of substances have undergone dependence, illness and death”, he wrote, “while Bobby continued to misrepresent, do and betray life.”
Mr. Kennedy’s younger brother, David, died in the county of Palm Beach in May 1984 of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his body fluids, said the authorities at the time
Other relatives also spoke against Mr. Kennedy, including his brother Joseph Kennedy II and his sister Kerry Kennedy, who described his comments on the race and vaccines as “deplorable and fake”.
Tuesday, Jack Schlossberg, son of Mrs. Kennedy, who was also critical of Mr. Kennedy, published a video on social media of his mother who read the letter he had written.
“I am so proud of my courageous mother, who lived a life of dignity, integrity and service,” wrote Schlossberg.
Mrs. Kennedy, in the letter sent on Tuesday, gave credit to her cousin for passing her drug addiction, of which Kennedy discussed widely. On his behalf, Mr. Kennedy became dependent on the heroine when he was 14 years old, in 1968, while fighting to face the murder of his father. In 1984, he declared himself guilty of a criminal accusation of possessing heroin and entered treatment.
But Mrs. Kennedy was hard in the criticisms of the defense of her cousin against vaccines, describing him as part of an addiction to attention and power.
“Bobby preys the despair of the parents of sick children – vaccination of their children while building a follower of hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating them,” he wrote.
Mrs. Kennedy also highlighted “the half conspiratory truths that spoke about vaccines”, in relation to the 2019 Masbillo epidemic in Samoa, who said “costs life”.
The letter was addressed to the senators who guide the committees who examine his appointment this week, including Mike Crapo, a Republican of the Aidaho; Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon; Bill Cassidy, republican of Louisiana and Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.
He noticed that the family is close and that speaking was difficult. However, he criticized his cousin for using the legacy of the family tragedy for political profit. Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated during a campaign for the president in 1968. His father and uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was hit to death in Dallas in 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Distorted the inheritance of President Kennedy to advance his failed presidential campaign – and then he made a tank to Donald Trump for a job,” said the letter. “Bobby continues to the tribune to the assassination of my father and that of his father.”
He suggested to his father John F. Kennedy, his uncle Robert F. Kennedy and another uncle, the longtime legislator Ted Kennedy, “would be disgusted”.
He closed the letter with an appeal for the senators to refuse the appointment of his cousin on behalf of doctors, nurses, scientists and caregivers who feed the American health system.
“They deserve a secretary committed to making it advance to the avant -garde medicine to save human lives, not rejecting the progress we have already made,” wrote Mrs. Kennedy. “They deserve a stable, moral and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy – and so also the rest of us. “