For one brief shining moment, Ethel Kennedy got what she wanted for her 96th birthday earlier this month: a celebration at home in Hyannis Port, Mass., surrounded by her nine surviving children, including controversial presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as her grandchildren.
But any distant memories of Camelot faded away on April 18 when six of RFK Jr.’s siblings — former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy, former US Rep. Joe Kennedy II, human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, lawyer Max Kennedy and businessman Christopher Kennedy — appeared in Philadelphia alongside Joe Biden in a very showy endorsement of the incumbent president’s bid for re-election.
“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 Post. “This is not a dinner party discussion at home among siblings. These people are slandering him.”
The en masse endorsement had been expected since the Kennedy family visited the White House last month for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration — sans Bobby, 70, who is running for president as an independent.
Asked by reporters after the rally if he would encourage his brother to drop out of the race, Joe Kennedy II, 71, replied: “Of course.
“We cannot do anything that in any way, strips even one vote from President Biden. 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.”
Last fall, Kerry, 64; Rory, 55; Joe and Kathleen, 72, called Bobby’s decision to oppose Biden “dangerous to our country.”
In a statement at the time, they wrote, “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment” and “We denounce his candidacy.”
The public war between the candidate and his siblings dates at least back to RFK Jr.’s 2018 announcement that he didn’t believe that convicted killer Sirhan Sirhan had acted alone in assassinating their father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., in 1968.
Bobby later said he supported parole for Sirhan, going against his own mother’s wishes.
All of Bobby’s surviving siblings, except Fox News Channel reporter Douglas, 57, argued vehemently against parole in 2021 and Ethel Kennedy issued a rare public statement saying Sirhan “should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”
The family has also come out against Bobby’s anti-vax stance, with his sister Kathleen brother Joe and late niece Maeve Kennedy McKean (Kathleen’s daughter) authoring a 2019 Politico piece headlined “RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines.”
Longtime Kennedy family insiders and observers of the family are split on their own theories about what’s behind the feud.
Bobby himself has played down the fight, posting on social media after the Philadelphia rally that he was “pleased” his family is being politically active and calling it a family tradition.
He said that they are “divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other,” suggesting that all Americans work to “restore civility and respect to public discourse.”
He also pointed out that other members of his family — such as his daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former spy for the CIA who is his campaign manager — and his six kids support his candidacy.
But other members of his campaign, who have echoed the candidate’s diplomatic comments about his family in the past, now appear to be changing their tune.
“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, told The Post. “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,” Lyons added. “They are part of the corruption that RFK Jr. has been fighting with all his heart for the past 40 years.”
Some Kennedy insiders reject the notion that the siblings’ vocal disapproval of Bobby is anything like a routine family dinner table debate.
Kyle Kemper, the half-brother of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has worked closely with RFK Jr.’s campaign, told The Post that he believes the Kennedy siblings are “dishonest” in how they are allying themselves with Biden and dissing Bobby.
“He’s interfering with their racket,” Kemper said. “They’re all working in different ways with the [Biden] administration and Democratic Party NGOs. You don’t just pop up out of nowhere and hold a press conference harping on Bobby. 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.”
But a number of other Kennedy insiders told The Post they believe the siblings truly believe that Bobby is a menace to the country — mainly because they fear his candidacy could throw votes to Republican Donald Trump.
They also pointed out that the dynasty has faded in influence and power.
“Bobby’s the end of the line for a family that has been in decline for quite some time,” Laurence Leamer, author of “The Kennedy Men: 1901-1963” and several other books on the family, told The Post.
“He’s the last major public figure in the family. These are serious accusations the family is making and it certainly has changed the dynamics between them. 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,” Leamer added. “They were always about being united no matter what, so this must be devastating for all of them.”
Dan Moldea, the author of 1995’s “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity,” also said he felt the siblings are acting from a moral imperative.
“The fact that the family has endorsed Biden is a public service — and public service is what the family has done for years,” Moldea told The Post. “Distancing themselves from their brother is part of that public service.”
The author said he believes that Bobby’s Jr.’s crusade for Sirhan’s parole, which was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 and denied again in 2023, was the straw that broke the family’s back.
Moldea himself initially believed the conspiracy theory that Sirhan did not act alone and that security guard Eugene Cesar, who had been hired the day before, fatally shot Robert Kennedy Sr. from behind. But after interviewing both Cesar and Sirhan several times and doing exhaustive research, Moldea concluded that Cesar was not involved and Sirhan was guilty.
He said he got a call from Bobby in 2017, as the 50th anniversary of RFK Sr.’s death approached, “wanting to talk about his father’s murder.”
“It was a pleasant conversation but Bobby didn’t know what he was talking about,” Moldea told The Post.
He felt Bobby had been influenced by the late Paul Schrade, a prominent union official and RFK Sr. friend who was also wounded in the fusillade. Schrade believed Sirhan shot him but that Cesar had shot RFK.
In the meantime, Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman wrote a lengthy story about RFK Jr’s belief that Sirhan didn’t kill his father “which just supercharged the whole thing and lent it legitimacy,” Moldea said.
“I think Bobby Jr. has attempted to explain to his family why he believes what he believes about his father but he does it in such a way that he’s overwhelming them with minutiae about ballistics, powder burns and witness testimony — but none of them know the case well,” Moldea said.
“Bobby is poking the bear and it’s fairly inexplicable unless he saw it as a means of making a splash and to enhance his public persona.”
Jerry Oppenheimer, author of “RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream,” flatly dismissed the notion that the family feud stems from some pious sense of moral duty to the public — and blames matriarch Ethel Kennedy.
“It’s bulls–t when they say it’s all still love and roses between them and Bobby,” Oppenheimer said. “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.”
Oppenheimer said that Ethel Kennedy has long “mistreated” Bobby — something RFK Jr. alluded to himself in his 2018 memoir, “American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family.”
“Ethel, despite the fact she is 96, still wields the power and what she says goes. She’s the one behind the decision to force the family to go against Bobby,” Oppenheimer said.
But a woman who dated one of the Kennedys for years said Bobby was never a pariah — and, in fact, has always been one of the family leaders.
“When I saw his interaction with the family, whether it was in Bedford, Aspen or the Cape, he was a centerpiece, a beacon,” she told The Post. “He organized the flag football. The Kennedys, the Lawfords, the Shrivers all looked up to him. He was the star of the family. The older brother [Joe] is not a star. 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.
