A lot of people have been wondering what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can possibly be thinking, and I can say with confidence that no one is better positioned to offer an answer than I am.
Yes, I am the worm.
Until now I’ve kept a low profile. But the false and vicious rumors about my supposed demise and Kennedy’s ungracious threat to invite more brain worms into what is clearly occupied territory have forced me to speak out. It is true, as Kennedy has indicated, that I ate a portion of his brain, but that is perfectly normal parasitic behavior. And despite what his doctor might have told him, I am alive and thriving and ready to let my feelings be known.
I know what you’re thinking. Since I ate part of the brain and live within it, I must be just a shill for Kennedy, somehow complicit in his political ambitions. Implicit in all the gossip about me was that I somehow contributed to Kennedy’s erratic behavior and outlandish beliefs.
Sure, blame the worm.
I can’t say I was surprised by the vitriol directed at me on social media, the scapegoating and targeting. It’s always the most vulnerable who are subjected to the most outrageous and self-righteous attacks.
These allegations couldn’t be further from the truth. The portions of Kennedy’s brain that I ate were entirely related to his early environmental activism. I ate the entire Riverkeeper archives and took particular care to include that hullabaloo over his hiring of a rare bird egg smuggler and tax evader to help the group monitor New York City’s compliance with certain environmental standards.
“I am just appalled,” Robert Boyle, Riverkeeper’s former president and founder, told The Times. “It was imprudent, reckless and irresponsible of Bobby to hire him. And he didn’t have the right. I do the hiring and firing.”
You probably don’t remember any of this, and Bobby can’t, because I swallowed the entire episode whole. I’ve consumed many of Kennedy’s formative inconsistencies, including his harebrained scheme (yes, that’s a worm’s version of ironic wordplay) to sell a new line of bottled water, which tasted to me like a strange project for an environmental activist. Even with a fancy label created by a designer from Tiffany’s, Keeper Springs Mountain Spring Water wasn’t going to gain traction against Evian. Anyway, he doesn’t have to think about that whole thing anymore.
Frankly, I stayed away from all that vaccine nonsense. I found that hard to swallow. Even a worm has standards. And implying that Covid was designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese? That’s just distasteful.
But all this is old news. What’s eating at people’s heads now is Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president. The truth is, like a lot of New Yorkers, Kennedy and Trump go way back. Although Kennedy has no recollection of the part I ate about their mutual friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, as they cavorted among the city’s power elites.
Here’s what a worm remembers: Back in 1997, the two were on the same side in a strange bedfellows bid to defeat legalized casino gambling in New York. Kennedy, because development would harm ecological havens in the Adirondacks and the Catskills; Trump, because it would divert money that might otherwise be spent at his Atlantic City casinos. They won, and we know Trump likes to remember his rare successes.
Then, in early 2017, the two vaccine skeptics met in New York as part of Trump’s transition planning. According to a still intact part of Bobby’s brain, Trump asked him to lead what was described as a commission dedicated to “vaccine safety and scientific integrity.” Well, my guy never heard back from Trump to follow up on this plan, and that did not make him happy at all. He couldn’t get over it. How could a guy like Trump offer a Kennedy a job and then never follow up?
Yeah, so that may have bred the resentment I can sense deep in his amygdala. When Kennedy had to declare his candidacy, he raged against Trump’s pandemic lockdowns, a betrayal of what he took to be core shared values. Trump shot back, calling Kennedy “one of the most Liberal Lunatics ever to run for office” on Truth Social, adding, “A Phony Radical Left fool whose poll numbers are TERRIBLE, and getting worse.”
That one really stuck in his craw. “But I’m nonpartisan,” he’d mutter in his sleep. “And that’s rare for a Kennedy.”
So how did these two wind up all copacetic? If there’s one thing Kennedy and Trump share beyond an indifference to science and a taste for conspiracy theory, it’s an almost puckish refusal of consistency. Through my own lived experience, I know that Kennedy remembers only what he chooses to remember. Let bygones be bygones! Trump declared Kennedy was “beloved.” Kennedy said he was “choosing to believe” that this time, Trump really would give him that cushy health care job.
I haven’t a clue what’s banging around in Trump’s head, but I can say this: From what I’ve seen in this here brain, you can believe what you want to believe.
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