Kennedy Family Feud: RFK Jr.'s Siblings Endorse Biden Over Their Brother
April 27 2024, Published 4:30 p.m. ET
Tensions in the Kennedy family have been growing since six of controversial presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s siblings endorsed President Joe Biden in the 2024 election instead of their brother, RadarOnline.com has learned.
At a Biden rally in Philadelphia earlier this month, former U.S. Representative Joe Kennedy II told reporters that he would encourage his brother to drop out of the race. "We cannot do anything that in any way, strips even one vote from President Biden," he said. "You put the name Kennedy on the ballot and Democrats are going to feel torn. We are trying to make them understand that this is an issue that they do not have to feel torn about."
In a statement last fall, Joe Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy wrote, "The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country. Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country."
RFK Jr. has downplayed reports of a feud within the family. "I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today. I am pleased they are politically active — it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other," he wrote on social media last week.
"I hold this as a possibility for America too," he continued. "Can we disagree without hating our opponents? Can we restore civility and respect to public discourse? I think we can."
"My campaign, which many of my family members are working on and supportive of, is about healing America — healing our economy, our chronic disease crisis, our middle class, our environment, and our standing in the world as a peaceful nation."
Other insiders, however, aren't so diplomatic. “With a family like this, who needs enemies?” a source who has known RFK Jr., aka Bobby, and his family for more than 35 years told the New York Post. “This is not a dinner party discussion at home among siblings. These people are slandering him."
"RFK Jr. is a corruption fighter just like his father and uncle,” Tony Lyons, the publisher of Skydance and a close friend and campaign aide to Kennedy, added. “The family members who have stood against him when instructed to do so show their lack of integrity, backbone and honor. They have abandoned their core Kennedy values. They are part of the corruption that RFK Jr. has been fighting with all his heart for the past 40 years."
Kyle Kemper, the half-brother of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has worked with RFK Jr.’s campaign, said, "They’re trying to dissuade and smear rather than engaging in healthy debate. This is the tragedy within the American political system today and the Kennedy family is a microcosm of it. Bobby says his father taught his kids to debate at the dinner table — not name-call or smear.”
"These are serious accusations the family is making and it certainly has changed the dynamics between them," said Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963 and other books about the family. "This is the first time they have gone against each other, and I assume the siblings are speaking out against Bobby from a moral compulsion. They were always about being united no matter what, so this must be devastating for all of them."
The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity writer Dan Moldea concurred: “The fact that the family has endorsed Biden is a public service — and public service is what the family has done for years. Distancing themselves from their brother is part of that public service.”
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Jerry Oppenheimer, author of RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream, was less charitable toward the rest of the family. “It’s b------- when they say it’s all still love and roses between them and Bobby," he argued. “How do they expect the American public to believe that? The Kennedys are experts at covering up the truth since Chappaquiddick and before. It’s clear they’re feuding and there’s lots of animosity.”
“Biden is the worst president this country has ever had and how a family once thought of as America’s royalty could back him is mind-boggling. Their family brand was unity and now it’s all over the place. They wield no power and for them to sit in a family photo with Biden at center of this Kennedy scrum is incredible.”
A woman who dated one of the Kennedys for years claimed, "Bobby’s the one with the charisma. All eyes would be on him when he’d walk in the room. You’d want to die, he was so physically exquisite. If anything I think some of his siblings are jealous of him. Imagine if this happened in the Corleone family. The Kennedy siblings are all Fredos. They’ve gone against their brother."