leave the – On “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a joke from host Jesse Watters after resurfaced reports that Kennedy cut off a dead raccoon’s penis and claimed he kept the genitals to study later.
Monday night, the presidential agenda met something far stranger.
As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss the revival of the Presidential Fitness Test and President Donald Trump’s executive order to scale regenerative farming. Watters pivoted to a story that has been circulating again after drawing attention earlier this spring.
“Very good, and you’re going to leave the raccoons alone?” Watters asked.
Kennedy, appearing to embrace the joke, answered, “Yeah, for the moment.”
The raccoon exchange traces back to reports tied to a book by New York Post writer Isabel Vincent. titled “RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise.” In it. Kennedy personally recounts an interaction with a dead. road-killed raccoon. He is quoted as saying. “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon. thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be. ” while his “kids waited patiently in the car.”.
In the same account, Kennedy also claimed he collected the genitals “to ‘study them later.’” After the raccoon story gained traction in April, a TMZ reporter asked Kennedy, “What did you do with the raccoon’s dead penis? Where is it now?” Kennedy’s response was a chuckle.
Watters first approached the topic after Kennedy praised Trump’s regenerative farming initiative and emphasized that it is backed by farmers. The host’s compliment came with a wink at Kennedy’s willingness to bring vivid animal stories into public view.
Kennedy’s relationship with wild animals has been a recurring theme in coverage beyond the raccoon episode. The HHS secretary has posted a video himself attempting to wrangle two black racer snakes while his wife. Cheryl Hines. begs him to stop. His sister has also accused him of releasing a snake into a swimming pool filled with children.
Another episode tied to his alleged behavior has drawn attention as well: Kennedy allegedly intended to skin and eat a roadkill bear he’d found in Upstate New York. but ran out of time because he stopped for a meal at Peter Lugar Steak House in Brooklyn. In that account. Kennedy left the dead cub in Central Park. staging the scene to look as though it had been killed by a cyclist.
For viewers watching Kennedy discuss health policy and fitness tests, the raccoon question landed like an abrupt turn—one that Watters made a joke out of, but that Kennedy acknowledged without pushing back.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Jesse Watters HHS Presidential Fitness Test regenerative farming Trump executive order raccoon story road-killed raccoon Isabel Vincent book