Kerry Kennedy recalls RFK Jr. snake scare near kids

Kerry Kennedy, criticizing her brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his role as HHS secretary and anti-vaccine stance, recounted a childhood incident she says involved releasing a snake into a swimming pool full of children, following a separate episode with a p

Kerry Kennedy’s account landed like a warning in the middle of a political argument.

On Monday evening, during an appearance with Erin Burnett, Kennedy—one of the most outspoken members of the Kennedy family opposing her brother’s work as Secretary of Health and Human Services and, before that, his long-shot independent presidential bid—turned from policy to personal history.

Burnett pressed her on the way Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is described as relating to animals. including a video he recently posted wrangling two black racer snakes while his wife. Cheryl Hines. pleaded with him to stop. Burnett also pointed to claims that he cut off the penis of a road-killed raccoon. and reports he left a dead bear in New York’s Central Park.

She asked whether his “fascination with animals, with being a vet, with animal carcasses” since childhood “jive” with her own memories of their youth.

Kennedy agreed it was complicated.

“I’m so grateful to Bobby. as my older brother. when I was a kid. his fascination of nature. he shared with all of us. and he took me to catch snakes and learn about frogs and salamanders and and go on nature hunting trips. And, he gave me a crow when I was a kid and gave me a hawk. And I learned so much. … But it was another side. There was always another side,” she said.

Then she described what she said happened at a birthday party for her nearly 30-year-old daughter.

Kennedy said her daughter was outside and saw a snake in the garden. She called Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who “just lived a mile down the road,” and, Kennedy said, he arrived quickly carrying an infant son, Aidan, “in one hand” and “a … pillow case in the other.”

According to Kennedy, he grabbed the snake and stuffed it into the pillowcase while holding the baby, and she called it “a little scary.”

She said he then walked back toward the birthday party and reached into the bag. The snake, still biting, was “just chomping on his hand,” and she said he pulled it out to show the children.

Kennedy said the situation escalated again when he also picked up a vole and put it into the bag with the snake. She said this made the kids scream because they were afraid “the snake would eat the vole.”

In her telling, Kennedy said he shoved his hand back into the pillowcase again to grab the snake, and it “chomped on him a few more times.”

But she said the incident did not stop there.

Kennedy said she watched another moment unfold after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined her brother at his house, with children present there too.

“There were tons of kids in the swimming pool, and he released this snake that had chomped on his hand into the swimming pool,” she said.

The story was delivered in a segment where Kennedy’s opposition to her brother’s health policies—alongside what she called his anti-vaccine stance—was already at the center of the conversation. Yet the account of the pillow case and the swimming pool pushed the focus toward something more personal: the sharp line between fascination and danger when children are nearby.

Kerry Kennedy Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. HHS Secretary anti-vaccine stance Erin Burnett Cheryl Hines Aidan snake in swimming pool pillow case