Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The man at the head of US health who cut off genitals and sawed apart whale heads

There are sentences that stay with you because you cannot shake them. One of them comes from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself. He describes how he stands by the roadside on Interstate 684 next to his parked car and cuts the penis off a dead raccoon. His children sit in the car and wait. He says he took the organ with him to study it later.

This passage comes from private notes from the years 1999 to 2001, recorded in New York and now published in the book “RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise” by Isabel Vincent. In it, Kennedy describes not only that moment, but also what was going through his mind. He says he thought about how strangely parts of his family had developed. He mentions his brother Douglas Kennedy and his cousin Bobby Shriver. It is an inner monologue that at the same time captures a scene that is difficult to categorize.

Kennedy later confirmed this story himself. In an interview with People magazine, he said he had collected the animal’s genitals to examine them later. It is not the only episode of this kind. Over the years, reports appear that all point in the same direction. They involve animal bodies, the collection of parts, a fascination he has never hidden.

His daughter Kick Kennedy described a scene from her childhood as early as 2012. A dead whale had washed ashore on the coast of Hyannis Port. Kennedy drove there, took a chainsaw, and cut off the head of the animal. He then secured the massive head to the roof of the family van with a strap. The drive back became an ordeal for everyone in the car. With every acceleration, liquid from the whale ran into the interior of the vehicle. The children sat on the seats with plastic bags over their heads, with holes cut out to breathe. Other drivers reacted with gestures. For the family, she said, this was normal.

Later incidents also fit into this picture. In an interview with The New Yorker, Kennedy said that years earlier he had placed a dead bear cub in Central Park. He had tried to skin the animal, failed, and then brought the body there with friends. They had been drinking alcohol and had the idea of making it look as if the animal had been hit by a bicycle. Kennedy said he had previously found the cub during a falconry outing in Goshen in the state of New York.

The list does not end there. His cousin Caroline Kennedy wrote in a letter to lawmakers that during his college years he had put chicks and mice into a blender to feed his hawks. She described his room as a place marked by violence. This account was picked up, among others, by the British newspaper Telegraph.

All of these episodes stand side by side. They come from different years, from interviews, from private notes, from statements by family members. Together they form a picture that does not disappear once you have seen it.

And then there is a second level. Donald Trump appointed Kennedy as Secretary of Health. It is a position that requires trust, an office that influences decisions affecting millions of people. The stories that are now resurfacing are not new. But they carry a different weight when they coincide with this role.

What became of the supposed studies that Kennedy intended to conduct with these animal parts is not known. There are no published results, no scientific papers, no classification. It remains with the scenes, with the accounts, with his own words.

And that is exactly where the problem lies. Not in a single story, but in the sum of what he himself reveals about himself. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gutted a dead raccoon, cut out its genitals, and left the carcass by the roadside. He placed the severed head of a whale on the roof of his car. Today he is responsible for the health of 340 million people. Donald Trump spreads images that show him in a halo aesthetic, shares depictions in which Jesus embraces him, stages himself in a Christ-like way - and later relativizes it without taking it back. Pete Hegseth prays for overwhelming violence without mercy, justifies war with Bible verses, openly frames military action in religious terms. Trump and he decide over the most powerful army in the world.

All of this is documented. Publicly. Said or shared by them themselves. No interpretation, no exaggeration - just what is there. Sometimes the most disturbing sentence is the simplest: this is what is there.