Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

He launched a third-party presidential bid in 2024 against Joe Biden and Donald Trump. While Kennedy initially had high polling numbers from attracting voters dissatisfied with a Biden-Trump rematch, his support rapidly dwindled over the summer after an assassination attempt on Trump and Biden’s withdrawal from the race and replacement with Kamala Harris consolidated the Republican and Democratic bases. He suspended his campaign in late August because of low polling and poor fundraising, and endorsed Trump.

Stepfather of Catherine Rose Young.

In 1964, when he was 10, RFK Jr. brought back a 16-pound leopard tortoise from a trip to Africa. He named the tortoise Carruthers, and it lived at Hickory Hill for more than two decades, growing to 35 pounds.

For his 13th birthday, Bobby Jr.’s parents installed a reptile house to accommodate his collection of snakes. By then he also had a red-tailed hawk he’d named Morgan, after the enchantress in Arthurian legends. His younger brother David put up a sign at Hickory Hill warning Trespassers will be eaten.

When he was 3, his family moved from Georgetown to McLean, Virginia, to live in an 1870s mansion called Hickory Hill that had once been owned by his uncle John F. Kennedy. It was a couple of miles from the house called Merrywood where Jackie Kennedy had lived as a child.

When Bobby Jr. was in middle school he had a part-time job at the National Zoo, feeding the animals and cleaning cages.

According to Jerry Oppenheimer’s unauthorized biography of RFK Jr., Bobby was seen playing the bagpipes in a NY Columbus Day Parade. He hasn’t demonstrated this in public since, though he does play the harmonica.

In 1968, when Bobby Jr. began attending Millbrook School in upstate NY, Jack Paar gave him a ten-week-old lion cub named Mtoto Mbaya, abbreviated to Toto. The school has its own zoo and was able to accommodate Toto. Sometimes Bobby Jr. would walk the cub around campus on a leash. Eventually Toto got so large, they had to transfer him to Lion Country Safari in Florida.

In 1997, Kennedy was a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! for Power Players Week. He lost to former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers.

In July 2013, RFK Jr. and his younger brother Max were out sailing in Nantucket Sound when they saw a leatherback turtle tangled in a buoy line. They jumped into the water to cut the turtle loose. This landed them in trouble because they didn’t have marine mammal rescue certification — the turtles can weigh over 500 lbs and if they got entangled too, it was strong enough to have pulled them under. Penalties were waived.

Bobby Jr. wrote in his memoirs that by 1963 they had accumulated ten horses, eleven dogs, a donkey, two goats, pigs, his 4-H cow, chickens, pheasants, ducks, geese, forty closely-related rabbits, and a coop of Hungarian homing pigeons, along with the hawks, owls, raccoons, snakes, lizards, salamanders, and fish in his personal menagerie. A pair of bush babies lived under the port-cochere, a nocturnal honey bear slept in the playroom crawlspace, while his coatimundi and giant leopard tortoise roamed free in the house. A female ferret fed her pups under the kitchen stove.

RFK Jr. recalls he had a pinto pony named Geronimo, and that his family would go out horseback riding before breakfast, accompanied by a half-dozen dogs. They rode most days if it wasn’t pouring rain. His mother raised them on horses and had them jumping fences, hedges, and even cars before their teens.

RFK Jr. is certified as a master falconer, a licensed wild bird rehabilitator in New York State, and is licensed to band birds for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bobby Jr. got into falconry at 9 years old after reading books like T.H. White’s The Once and Future King and Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain.

Kennedy is a hockey fan. In the winters, he would play with his kids on the pond behind their house in Westchester County.

He has a tattoo of an Atlantic sturgeon, the symbol of the Waterkeeper Alliance, from when he was the organization’s president. He resigned in 2020, though he is still seen wearing gear with the Waterkeeper logo during videos for his 2024 campaign.

Kennedy speaks some Spanish, which he used during his presidential campaign.

Grandfather of Zoe Victoria Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy.