Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy doesn’t think her brother is right for the job of Health and Human Services secretary.
Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett earlier this week, she expressed her love for her brother, but made her thoughts clear on his position in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I love Bobby and I find him incredibly charismatic. But I have said — and my other family members have been super clear about this — that we disagree again and again and again on the things that he’s said,” she said.
"I think he is not an appropriate HHS secretary."
Kerry Kennedy calls out her brother, Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, jr. Hear what she tells @ErinBurnett about calls to impeach him. pic.twitter.com/jYNT9ee8mc
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) April 29, 2025
Her comments came a day after late-night host John Oliver dedicated a 35-minute segment on Last Week Tonight to making a case against Kennedy leading health priorities in the U.S.
“RFK needs to go, and by impeachment if necessary,” Oliver said on Sunday’s episode. “Too much damage has already been done. This is a man who is clearly in way over his worm-riddled head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know who he’s fired … and if that’s wasn’t bad enough, he’s currently spreading dangerous nonsense and gutting life-saving research.”
Kennedy has done a blitz of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign at daycares, schools and health centres around the U.S. where he has promised to work with Trump’s other agency leaders to prohibit soda from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, limit dyes in the food supply and call for fluoride to be removed from drinking water.
He’s also slashed at least 10,000 jobs in his department, including at the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and cut off billions of dollars in research funding sent to universities and scientists.
Kennedy’s resistance to launching a vaccination campaign as a growing measles outbreak has worsened, so far infecting hundreds and leaving two young children dead, has elicited concerns from doctors, public health experts and lawmakers.
RFK Jr. slashing 10,000 jobs from U.S. health agencies
He also subjected himself to a wave of backlash in recent weeks after making offensive comments about people with autism.
“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said last week after promising to find the cause of autism spectrum disorder by the end of the summer.
All this has led top brass at the FDA and NIH to quit, citing an inability to effectively do their jobs amid censorship, research interference and “misinformation and lies.”
During Monday’s interview with CNN, his sister laid out some of the conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation she’s watched her brother promote: downplaying the importance of vaccinations, that people are transgender because of pollutants in the water and that HIV does not cause AIDS.
“This is insanity. Just look at the science,” she said. “This goes on and on and on. I love my brother. I think he’s dead wrong,” she said.
“I think he is not an appropriate HHS secretary.”
This isn’t the first time she has voiced family pushback against her brother.
Last year, when members of the Kennedy family joined then-president Joe Biden to endorse his re-election, she also said the family was denouncing the presidential candidacy of Kennedy Jr.
“Nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden,” she said as her siblings, and Biden, flanked her onstage, according to the New York Times.
“That’s right: The Kennedy family endorses Joe Biden for president.”
Kennedy Jr. has spoken publicly in the past about disagreeing with his family on many issues, but he insists it can be done in “friendly” ways.
After a super political action committee supporting his campaign produced a TV ad during the Super Bowl that relied heavily on imagery from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential run, Kennedy Jr. apologized to his relatives on the X social media platform, saying he was sorry if the spot “caused anyone in my family pain.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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