Robert F. Kennedy is no longer running for US election himself. But several hair-raising animal stories continue to make headlines. Now the focus is on a whale.
The short-lived independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is once again in the headlines with a story about a dead animal. At a campaign appearance for the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Kennedy said that he was being investigated because he had illegally removed parts of a dead whale from a beach 20 years ago and taken them home. The nephew of the legendary former president John F. Kennedy had caused a stir just a few weeks ago with a bizarre story about a bear corpse that had been dumped in New York’s Central Park.
Like the bear story, the whale incident also happened a few years ago. In 2012, the magazine “Town & Country” published a report about Kennedy’s daughter Kick. When she was a child, it was announced that a dead whale had washed up on the coast of New England in the northeast of the USA, the article says. Her father then drove to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then tied it to the roof of the family car with a rope. The reason for this was that Robert F. Kennedy liked to study animal skulls and skeletons. “Every time we accelerated on the highway, the whale juice poured into the windows of the car and it was the most disgusting thing in the world,” daughter Kick is quoted as saying.
Robert F. Kennedy also transported a dead bear
It is not the first hair-raising story about Kennedy: a few months ago he admitted to having found a bear corpse on the street about ten years ago and loading it into his car. He said he had actually wanted to skin the bear and keep the meat in his refrigerator. But then he had to go to the airport and left the dead bear in Central Park instead. In the wake of this bear episode, the old “Town & Country” article received new attention.
Kennedy said at a campaign event at the weekend that he had received a letter saying that an investigation was being carried out against him. It was unclear whether an official investigation had actually been launched against the 70-year-old and, if so, what the exact background was. Kennedy spoke of a federal government marine authority in relation to the investigation – but did not name it correctly. An environmental organization had written to the authority calling on it to investigate Kennedy over the whale incident.
The Trump supporter criticized the process as being motivated by party politics and referred to the statute of limitations. In the USA, it is prohibited under certain circumstances to collect parts of protected marine animals.
Kennedy withdrew from the race for the White House in August and threw his support behind Republican Trump. The politician was himself a Democrat for decades, but in recent years he increasingly distanced himself from the party and broke away from the Democrats altogether in October 2023 when he announced his presidential bid as an independent. The avowed anti-vaccination campaigner has been frequently criticized by Democrats and other members of his family for spreading conspiracy myths and having contact with extreme right-wing politicians.
