The independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr called Donald Trump “a terrible human being”, the “worse [sic] president ever” and “barely human”.
“He is probably a sociopath,” Kennedy said in texts to an unnamed person, the New Yorker reported on Monday.
Kennedy has been linked to a job in a second Trump administration, not least after Kennedy’s son posted footage of such a move appearing to be discussed. Kennedy attended the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July.
On Monday, a spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Kennedy’s reported remarks.
They were included in an in-depth New Yorker profile otherwise remarkable for containing the story of how Kennedy came to dump a dead bear in Central Park 10 years ago.
Kennedy sought to pre-empt coverage of the bear story, posting video of him recounting it to the actor and Trump supporter Roseanne Barr and saying: “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, New Yorker.”
The published description of the dumping of the bear carcass largely followed Kennedy’s own. The magazine did include a picture of Kennedy posing with his fingers in the bear’s bloodied mouth and the verdict of “a retired Bronx homicide commander” who spoke to the New York Times about the episode, which was reported in 2014: “People are crazy.”
The profile author, Clare Malone, wrote: “When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, ‘Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.’”
That was a reference to a report in which the Times surfaced a deposition from one of Kennedy’s divorces in which he said a parasitic worm ate part of his brain.
Then, Kennedy said: “I offer to eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.”
Joe Biden has since dropped out of November’s race, in favour of his vice-president, Kamala Harris. Kennedy’s polling numbers have slipped, but both major campaigns still fear his impact in battleground states.
A son of Robert F Kennedy, a former US attorney general and New York senator, and nephew of John F Kennedy, the 35th president, Kennedy is an environmental attorney turned vaccine conspiracy theorist and political gadfly. He was nine and 14, respectively, when his uncle and father were each assassinated.
The New Yorker profile contained extensive descriptions of his gilded upbringing, his drug use, his sexual behaviour, his environmental work and his slide into anti-vaccine campaigning, efforts supercharged by the Covid pandemic.
According to the New Yorker, in the texts in which he abused Trump – thereby joining JD Vance, Trump’s running mate whose previous disdain has been widely reported – Kennedy also said Biden was “more dangerous to the Republic and the planet”.
Speculation Kennedy would drop out and accept a job from Trump surged around the posted call between the two men and the Republican convention. Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, Kennedy’s daughter-in-law and campaign director, told the New Yorker Trump had indeed offered Kennedy a job.
“They said, ‘You know, we know that you take more from us than you take from Biden … Is there something that you would want to do?’” Fox Kennedy reportedly remarked.
She said Kennedy would be interested in secretary of health and human services, but he would also listen to offers from Harris.
Kennedy has achieved ballot access in about a dozen states. Nonetheless, Fox Kennedy said the campaign thought it could win the White House via a contingent election: in which no candidate wins enough electoral college votes, throwing the choice to the House of Representatives.
As the New Yorker noted, at the end of a profile bizarre and picaresque even by the outlandish standards of the 2024 election, this was “also a plot device on the HBO comedy series Veep”.
