The last survivor of the Camelot era, Joan Kennedy, was laid to rest in Boston on 14 October. She was the widow of Ted Kennedy, the “lion” of the Senate, and sister-in-law of John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, who were assassinated in the 1960s in their prime.
Today, another Kennedy wields real power in Washington – Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s health secretary and leader of the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement. RFK Jr served as his aunt Joan’s pallbearer, carrying her coffin in a show of unity with his famous clan.
But the dynasty is in disarray. The Kennedys are furious that RFK Jr is tarnishing the family legacy by associating with Trump. They regard themselves as hereditary Democrats and are the closest the left-of-centre party has to a royal family.
Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s usually reserved daughter and a former ambassador to Japan and Australia, was one of the few in the family to miss Joan’s funeral. No fan of her cousin, she had savaged RFK Jr with a blistering social media post when Trump nominated him for the job.
Undiplomatically, she said: “I’ve known Bobby [RFK] my whole life. We grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because Bobby himself is a predator.”
This bombshell may have been a reference to RFK Jr’s torrid sex life. The 71-year-old used to keep a diary with a score card of his sexual conquests and was caught in a sexting scandal last year with Olivia Nuzzi, a glamorous political journalist half his age, who is writing her memoir.
John F Kennedy and wife Jacqueline at their summer home with daughter Caroline (Photo: Bettmann Archive)“Bobby” revealed during the 2024 election that he had a parasitic worm in his brain in 2010, which had caused temporary memory loss. He cooks and eats roadkill and admitted dumping a bear carcass as a prank in Central Park.
Caroline added witheringly, “He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience. His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed.”
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Her rather volatile son, Jack Schlossberg, accused his uncle of “trading in on Camelot”.
Kerry Kennedy, Bobby’s sister, was even more scathing. “I am disgusted by my brother’s obscene embrace of Donald Trump. And I completely disavow and disassociate myself from Robert Kennedy Jr and his flagrant efforts to desecrate my father’s memory.”
For Trump, who is building his own dynasty, bagging a Kennedy during the 2024 election campaign and installing him in his cabinet was a political coup which united the fringe left and the populist right.
At the health department, RFK Jr, a longtime anti-vaxxer, has been sacking scientists, deriding experts and blaming Tylenol (paracetamol) for causing autism – a stance enthusiastically embraced by Trump.
Two more first cousins, Anthony and Tim Shriver – whose mother Eunice Kennedy founded the Special Olympics – condemned unspecified “slurs and statements that demean” autistic people, shortly after RFK Jr appeared to suggest they could not live full lives.
Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy with his wife, Joan, at a John F Kennedy Library dedication (Photo: Bettmann Archive)But RFK Jr is more of a chip off the old block than his family cares to think. The legend of the Kennedys is very different from the reality of most of their lives. For a start, the clan has spread exponentially over the generations and is no longer as rich and powerful.
In a statement to New York magazine on the family rifts, Caroline said: “There are now more than 100 adults in our family so it’s pretty different than in the past.”
Yet some things haven’t changed. Sally Bedell Smith, the author of Grace and Power, on the private world of JFK and Jackie, says none of the Kennedys associated with Camelot would survive the “#MeToo” era.
The “original sin” started with RFK Jr’s wealthy grandfather, Joseph Kennedy, according to Bedell Smith. “He set such an egregiously bad example to the whole family.” Grandpa Joe, US ambassador to Britain during the late 1930s, harboured antisemitic views and was thought to be sympathetic to Hitler, so RFK Jr is hardly the first to flirt with the populist right.
The Kennedy family in Hyannis, Massachussetts in the 1930s. Seated, from left: Patricia, Robert, Rose, John F Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy Sr, with Edward on his lap; standing, from left: Joseph P Kennedy Jr, Kathleen, Rosemary, Eunice, (rear, in polka dots), and Jean (Photo: Bachrach/Getty)Joe also flaunted his affairs and brought his mistress Gloria Swanson to the family compound in Cape Cod, to the dismay of his long-suffering wife Rose.
John F Kennedy’s sex addiction and Robert F Kennedy’s affairs have been well-documented. Brother Ted was another womaniser whose presidential ambitions were derailed after the drowning of a young woman in his car at Chappaquiddick in 1969.
Joan, Ted Kennedy’s wife, was driven to alcoholism. Their son Patrick paid tribute to her at her funeral, saying: “With every relapse making the papers, frankly, what never got covered were her many years of quiet sobriety.”
The younger generation has also suffered. RFK Jr’s handsome cousin, John F Kennedy Jr, seemed destined to carry the family torch but died with his beautiful wife, Carolyn Bessette, when he insisted on piloting a light aircraft to Martha’s Vineyard in a storm.
Bedell-Smith says, “That plane was almost a death wish.” Behind closed doors, John and Carolyn’s perfect marriage was under immense strain, as everybody will soon know when An American Love Story, a television series on the doomed couple by the makers of The People v OJ Simpson, is broadcast next year.
The Kennedy clan will never forgive RFK Jr for soiling their carefully curated image, but it is time the Camelot myth was buried for good. In the words of the 1960s musical, it was only destined to last “one brief, shining moment” – and that’s gone.
Sarah Baxter is director of the Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting
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