The Health and Human Services secretary gave an update on his dismal relationship with the rest of the Kennedy family.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a pariah within the Kennedy dynasty since he established close ties with President Donald Trump. In an interview with People on Saturday night, the HHS secretary addressed whether he remains in contact with his cousin Caroline Kennedy, whose daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, died from cancer at age 35 on Dec. 30.
At a gala in Palm Desert, California, RFK Jr., 72, said that he had “not recently” been in contact with Caroline, adding, “everybody’s praying for them.” Caroline, 68, is President John F. Kennedy’s daughter.
RFK Jr. did not attend Tatiana’s funeral at Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola in New York City in early January. It was attended by her husband George Moran; her two young children, George and Josephine; her parents, and her two siblings, Jack and Rose.
That day, the Department of Health and Human Services announced highly criticized updates to the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. Many health experts say the new guidelines are dangerous.
John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter announced her terminal acute myeloid leukemia diagnosis in November via a New Yorker article.
Tatiana, an environmental journalist, condemned RFK JR. for defunding cancer research in the article about her fight with the same malignant disease. Tatiana was scathing in her estimation of the health secretary, calling her cousin an “embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family.”
She held an opinion shared by many of the Kennedys. Caroline Kennedy has been incredibly critical of RFK’s anti-vaccination rhetoric as Secretary under the second Trump administration and has called him a “predator” and “unqualified” for his position.
Four out of 10 of RFK’s siblings issued a joint statement calling his earlier presidential campaign “dangerous.”
In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe published the same month as Tatiana’s New Yorker article, RFK Jr.’s brother, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, wrote on their father Robert F. Kennedy’s 100th birthday that the Trump administration was in direct opposition to everything the late attorney general stood for.
“All those complicit in that betrayal have lowered themselves—not least my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who knows my father’s legacy as well as anyone,” Maxwell wrote.
On Jan. 28, Tatiana’s brother Jack, 33, John F. Kennedy’s only grandson, ripped into his cousin for his handling of a growing measles outbreak in the country.
“MAHA MEASLES…BOBBY GONE WILD,” Jack, who is running for Congress in New York, wrote in an X post. “2026 cases breaking records — USA poised to lose elimination status. Well…At least there’s a new food pyramid.”
Robert doesn’t often address the storied family rift, telling the media in 2023 that his family is “entitled to their beliefs … and I love them back.”
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