RFK Jr. denies eating dog but not assaulting nanny

Robert Kennedy Jr. at the Nixon Presidential Library — "I am not a church boy," Kennedy said

(Image credit: Leonard Ortiz / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images)

What happened

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a podcast Tuesday that a Vanity Fair profile raising troubling questions about his past was "a lot of garbage." But he declined to deny sexually assaulting a 23-year-old live-in babysitter in 1998, when he was 45 and married to his second wife.

Who said what

"I am not a church boy," Kennedy said on the Breaking Points podcast when asked about allegations by ex-nanny Eliza Cooney that he asked her for a massage after appearing shirtless in her room and groped her in the pantry. "I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet." He said he's "not going to comment" on whether he assaulted Cooney.

But RFK Jr. did insist a photo of him preparing to eat a roasted animal carcass did not show "me eating a dog," as Vanity Fair suggested, but rather "me eating a goat in Patagonia." The magazine said he texted the image to a friend last year, telling him he would enjoy a Korean restaurant that served dog.

What next?

Kennedy, 70, is only "polling at 9.1% of the national vote," The Guardian said, but "both the Biden and Trump campaigns fear he could pull votes away from them in key states."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.