When members of the Kennedy clan gathered to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, they did so with a very special guest of honor: the president of the United States.
That one of the best-known family dynasties in the country might choose to hang out with its most powerful man isn’t necessarily surprising. But it did mark a sharp rebuke to the one relative noticeably absent from a warm family photo the group snapped together on Sunday: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently mounting his own quixotic independent campaign for the White House.
“It’s not enough to wish the world were better, you must make the world better,” Kerry Kennedy, the younger sister of RFK Jr., wrote in a X post sharing the photo. “@POTUS President Biden, you make the world better.”
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“Small family gathering this afternoon!” Joe Kennedy III, the political candidate’s nephew, added in a retweet.
The campaign for RFK Jr. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday night.
Kennedy’s bid for the White House poses a credible threat to both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, both their parties’ presumptive nominees. (At least one poll from last year had him running with 22 percent support in a hypothetical three-way race, with Biden at 39 percent and Trump at 36 percent.) Many of his family members have jumped to publicly disavow his campaign, denouncing him and his airing of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories as “dangerous.”
Last July, both Kerry and Rory Kennedy condemned their brother after a report was published quoting him as saying COVID-19 had been “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” and that Jewish and Chinese people were the “most immune” from the virus.
Three months later, when Kennedy announced he was ending his Democratic primary challenge to Biden in favor of going into the general election as an independent, four of his siblings signed a joint statement dragging him over the coals.
“The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third-party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country,” Kerry, Rory, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and Joseph Kennedy II wrote.
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” they continued. “Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
A day later, Kennedy admitted in an appearance on Fox News that it “was very painful” and “leaving the party of my family is very, very difficult.”
He added, “It was a choice that I didn’t feel that I had a choice about.”
An estimated $7 million ad for his candidacy that aired during the Super Bowl last month, repurposing the style and music of an ad from his uncle’s 1960 campaign, further fueled some of the family’s ire. Bobby Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s nephew, tweeted, “My cousin’s Super Bowl ad used our uncle’s faces—and my Mother’s. She would be appalled by his deadly health care views. Respect for science, vaccines, & health care equity were in her DNA.”
Kennedy quickly distanced himself from the ad, saying it had been created and aired by a super PAC without his campaign’s involvement or approval. “I’m so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain,” he said.
