Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s fixation with wild animals continues.
In a post on X on Tuesday morning, Kennedy shared a video of himself catching two snakes with his bare hands to the distress of his wife, actor Cheryl Hines.
“Why?” Hines says out of frame. “Bobby, why?”
The snakes were on the patio of Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor and administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Kennedy wrote in his post. Oz is heard making a comment off-camera about the snakes having sex.
As the snakes struggle in Kennedy’s grip, Hines pleads with her husband to drop them.
“Honey, let it go,” she says.
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“I can’t watch. Bobby, please,” she continues as he chuckles. “Bobby! Please!”
It’s not the first time that Kennedy — who is prone to displays of masculinity — has documented his wildlife-catching antics. But his snake-wrangling video is tame compared with his history with wild animals, especially dead ones.
He has admitted to picking up a bear carcass on the road and then dumping it in New York City’s Central Park. Kennedy’s daughter told Town & Country that he once cut off the head of a beached whale with a chain saw and transported it home on the roof of his car.
In 2024, he denied that he ate a dead dog in Patagonia. He also told The New York Times that a worm ate a part of his brain but that this did not have long-term effects on his cognitive state.
His cousin Caroline Kennedy alleged last year that he put mice and chicks in a blender to feed his hawks when he was a young man, though he has not publicly weighed in on the claim. And a recently published biography of the health secretary claims that he once journaled about “cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon” as his children waited in the car. When asked about the incident by TMZ last month, Kennedy snickered and walked away.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.