A new biography of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought another incident with a dead animal to public light just as he was testifying on Capitol Hill this week.
RFK Jr. had previously disclosed his attraction to playing with dead creatures via anecdotes about a dead bear cub, a freezer full of roadkill, and a deceased whale that he or family members shared.
Trump's public healthcare head is not a biologist or taxidermist, nor is he medically or scientifically trained.
Yet while on a road trip, as his children waited in the family minivan, RFK Jr. decided to remove the penis from a roadkill raccoon to take it with him to "study later."
The incident was described in the new book RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise by Isabel Vincent, a Canadian investigative journalist for the New York Post. The unauthorized biography is based in part on Kennedy’s own journals
Written by RFK Jr. in 2001, the once secret diaries detail extramarital affairs, internal struggles with "lust demons," odd behavior, and his personal insecurities. Kept hidden in a decoy ledger labeled "Cash Accounts," the journals were taken by his second wife Mary Richardson Kennedy as "insurance" during their divorce proceedings.
Two years after her separation from RFK Jr., Richardson Kennedy reportedly died by suicide in 2012.
In a November 2001 journal entry, RFK Jr. wrote:
"I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members [brother Douglas Kennedy and cousin Bobby Shriver] have turned out to be. My kids waited patiently in the car."
On Thursday, TMZ tried to speak to HHS Secretary Kennedy about the alleged incident, asking:
"Secretary, what did you do with the raccoon’s dead penis? Where is it now?"
Kennedy laughed before being whisked away by his security detail.
Speaking on the The Daily Beast Podcast, Vincent shared:
"In his diary, [RFK JR.] talks about stopping with his kids. He’s got his kids in a minivan. He stops. He sees a dead raccoon. He stops, leaves the kids in the van, and cuts off the penis of the raccoon in order to study it later."
Host Joanna Coles asked:
"What do you think he did with the raccoon penis?"
Vincent replied:
"I think he froze it, like he froze a lot of the roadkill that he would find and then study it."
@Coste1Costello/X
Kennedy’s daughter Kick said in a 2012 interview with Town & Country magazine that in 1994 her dad grabbed a chainsaw and scurried to a Massachusetts beach when he found a dead whale washed ashore. In violation of a 1972 federal law, RFK Jr. cut off the whale's head, tied it to the roof of their minivan, then drove with his family the five hours back to their home in New York.
Kick Kennedy shared:
"Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us."
RFK Jr. himself admitted that back in 2014, he saw a bear cub carcass on the road, stopped and put it in his vehicle, then dumped it in Central Park "as a prank" which later backfired when it made the news.
While recounting the story in 2024, RFK Jr. said:
"I was like, 'Oh my God, what did I do?' Luckily, the story died down after a while and it stayed dead for a decade."
In a January 2025 letter to Senators asking them not to confirm her cousin as HHS Secretary, former First Daughter Caroline Kennedy said RFK Jr. had a "troubling history with animals" and "perverse" behavior involving wildlife.
She said he would delight in showing off to others by putting live baby chicks and mice in a blender to feed his pet hawks, calling it a "perverse scene of despair and violence" that he engaged in, to her knowledge, from adolescence and well into adulthood.
There are terms—and diagnoses and treatment—for humans with an unhealthy fascination for dead things, poor impulse control, and a compulsion to mutilate animals, but self-taught scientist isn't one of them. Neither is Health and Human Services Secretary either—usually.
People were once again appalled yet unsurprised by RFK Jr.'s unhinged proclivities.
reply to @nypost/Instagram
@krusti_nome/X
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
reply to @nypost/Instagram
RFK Jr. testified before the House Ways and Means Committee this week, defending his tenure at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy also appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on Thursday afternoon.
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
@devynnehaddoxx/TikTok
Cover Images
