Democrats in recent weeks have sought to make the 2024 election a referendum on normalcy, casting Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, as “weird” over their comments about “childless cat ladies” and their anti-abortion agenda.
But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose independent bid for president could spoil Democrats’ Electoral College outcomes, now may be spoiling their messaging strategy, as well, by sharing an anecdote so bizarre that it left prominent TV journalists almost at a loss for words.
“A strange story in a very strange campaign,” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl quipped Monday.
“Head scratcher,” “Good Morning America” anchor Michael Strahan replied.
“Very, very, weird,” agreed George Stephanopoulos.
In a video he posted online on Sunday, Kennedy admitted that he dumped a dead black bear cub in New York’s Central Park a decade ago in order to make it look like it got hit by a bicycle.
He was 60 years old at the time.
Kennedy explained that a woman driving in front of him in upstate New York hit the cub and killed it. Instead of leaving the carcass on the side of the road or alerting authorities, Kennedy pulled over and put it into his van. After dining with friends at a restaurant, he decided to leave the carcass in the park along with an old bicycle to appear as though a bicyclist hit it.
“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something,” Kennedy says to Trump-supporting actor and comedian Roseanne Barr, who also appears in the video for some reason.
Kennedy revealed his role in the bizarre episode, which was not previously known, because the New Yorker was about to publish a story and he wanted to get ahead of it. He said it was going to be a bad story.
“The press is often called the ‘fourth estate,’ to emphasize its independence and high purpose. But these days it is in eerie, almost comical lockstep, amplifying trivial stories to damage disfavored political figures,” Kennedy wrote Monday on social media. “Meanwhile, parents in our country can’t afford groceries. Brothers won’t speak to each other because of partisan loyalties. Small towns sink under addiction and depression. And the world careens toward WW3.”
The bear cub corpse anecdote is only Kennedy’s most recent oddity. Last week, he posted a video to social media in which he appeared with a flock of ravens on his balcony and marveled at their way of communicating with each other. He previously said he is “taming” the ravens.
“More unity. More ravens,” Kennedy wrote.
Last month, Kennedy denied eating a dog years ago in Patagonia in response to a photo published by Vanity Fair. He said the cooked animal in that photo was a goat and called the outlet’s reporting “garbage.” Days later he said he wouldn’t “take sides” on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In May, the New York Times reported that during a 2012 deposition connected to divorce proceedings at the time, Kennedy said he suffered cognitive issues that he said a doctor attributed to “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
It almost goes without saying that Kennedy’s life and antics are weirder than JD Vance’s caustic comments from 2021 about Democrats being “childless cat ladies,” Trump’s grandpa-like riffs about Hannibal Lecter, or the way Kamala Harris laughs. Democrats have been calling the Republican ticket “weird” as Harris rises in the polls, while Republicans have countered that, actually, Democrats are weirder. Amid all this name-calling, Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, has soldiered on.
On Monday, the New Yorker published its story about Kennedy. The bear anecdote was just part of the piece, which includes a photo of Kennedy posing with the dead animal, his hand in its mouth.
“Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” he’s quoted as saying.
The Democratic National Committee called Kennedy “a deeply troubled, reckless, and dangerous man” in response to the New Yorker story.
“He doesn’t think the rules apply to him and he refuses to consider the consequences of his actions,” DNC spokesperson Matt Corridoni said in an email. “That is why he is willing to play the role of spoiler for Donald Trump in this election and why he has floated endorsing Trump in exchange for a job in a Trump administration. RFK Jr. has always put RFK Jr. first and he has no regard for the disastrous impact his actions would have on the American people.”
