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The Megyn Kelly Show
Part 2 - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Deep Dive, on The JFK Assassination, Growing up Kennedy, His Marriage
01:42:01
In this part two from her news-making, four-hour, interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from March 2022, Megyn Kelly looks back on the conversation as RFK is set to take over as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services for President-Elect Trump. In this part, they discuss tech censorship, the U.S. record on COVID, the backlash he and his wife Cheryl Hines received after Kennedy's freedom rally comments, his marriage and how Larry David helped him meet his wife, "turnkey totalitarianism," the importance of taking risks, social media addiction and Big Tech-caused polarization, the division of the 60s vs. today, CIA's connection to the JFK and RFK assassinations, stories about growing up Kennedy and playing outside without technology, the state of the Democratic party and whether he still considers himself a Democrat, American foreign policy today, overcoming adversity and loss, the importance of raising brave children, forgiveness (even for the man convicted of killing his dad)...
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- [00:01]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When work gets crazy, I like to stop by the bar after have a few cold ones.
- [00:06]
Megyn Kelly
I don't drink at all until 4:00.
- [00:09]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
- [00:12]
Public Health Representative
Excessive drinking has a way of sneaking up on us. A few drinks, a few nights a week, it can add up and suddenly we're at greater risk for long term problems like heart disease, cancer and depression. Reason enough to rethink the drink. More more@rethinkthedrink.com no HA initiative this lasagna.
- [00:32]
Megyn Kelly
Was so cheesy my plate was filled with saucy slices. Then a flimsy store brand plate.
- [00:39]
No, no no no. Ruined it. Next time get Dixie Ultra plates three times stronger than the leading store brand. 10 inch paper plate Dixie make it right. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live.
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On SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
- [01:01]
I hope you and your family had a great Thanksgiving today. We are bringing you part two of my lengthy conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It took place back in March of 2022 when he was dep platformed from nearly everywhere. In this part of the discussion we get into Covid Tech censorship, his wife Sheryl Hines, the assassination of his father, and his uncle growing up a Kennedy, and so much more. I actually think, personally I enjoy this half even more than the first half. I think you will too. You get to know him in a very different way. Please take a listen, enjoy it and we'll see you again live on Monday. You might have heard about this new brand called XX XY Athletics. This is the only athletic brand that is standing up for women's sports and while we have had some recent wins in this area, we need to keep up the fight. This was founded by former elite gymnast and Levi's executive Jennifer Tsay. She's been on our show many times. You know her, she was the first gymnast to speak out about the abuse in women's gymnastics. Then she had the good sentence to push back on the COVID nonsense to.
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- [03:07]
What do you think about the censorship you've endured?
- [03:10]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, I mean, to me, Megan, that's the most disturbing feature of this, you know, this kind of bewildering response to Covid that we've seen. I, you know, first of all, I wanted to say this, that I'm accused of promoting vaccine misinformation. But nobody, not Instagram, not the White House, not anybody else has actually identified a statement that I've made that is incorrect. There were no statements on Instagram. I didn't even say that, you know, the virus came from Wuhan. I just said it should be investigated because it would be weird if the guy who was financing those experiments and may have created the virus is now running the pandemic response. And so these questions should be asked. I didn't say it would happen because I couldn't at that point. I have not made any inaccurate statements as far as I know. If I did make one and it was identified, I would immediately apologize and withdraw it. Instagram and Facebook acknowledges that it uses the term vaccine misinformation as a euphemism for any statement or assertion that departs from government proclamations, whether they're factually true or not. So my crime was criticizing government policies. It was not passing actual misinformation. And that's a problem for our government. Adams and Madison and Jefferson said we put freedom of speech in the First Amendment because all the other rights are dependent on that right. And if a government can silence criticism, it has a license to commit any atrocity. And that's why it's, you know, when I was young, I supported the ACLU and others who were supporting the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Not because I, you know, I was. I was repulsed by their ideology and by their statements and horrified by them. But, you know, at the same time, we need to be able to be willing to die to protect their right to say those things. And that's what they understood our ancestors in the American Revolution. And that's what generations of writers, of politicians, of respected leaders have warned against any government that tries to limit speech. And now it's very strange. We're living in this world where it's become okay. In my political party. I saw a Gallup poll recently. It was either Gallup or Rasmussen that said that something like 70% of Democrats support government restricting the speech. And it's almost explicable to me that. And we could be in that place right now. I believe my political party was the party that would go to the mat to, you know, to protect people's right to say what they want. And that's so critical for our democracy. And, you know, it also is critical of public health. Listen, I may be wrong about the things that I talk about, but, you know, why can't we debate them? Why can't we hear these discussions about masks? Okay? You know, I've sued agencies for 40 years, are failing to go through a regulatory process to have an environmental impact statement where it explains where. Which has to explain the scientific basis for new regulations or actions, show the studies and then do a cost benefit analysis. None of that happened. It was, you know, we just suspended democracy. We suspended due process. And once they got rid of freedom of speech and went after all the other. They closed a million churches, all the churches in this country for a year with no public hearing, no discussion of the science, no offering of, you know, a single scientific study to justify it. They shut down a million businesses with no just compensate, no due process, no just compensation. A direct violation of our Constitution. They got rid of 7th amendment jury trials against any company that says that they're involved in providing a countermeasure. If there's a vaccine company and you get injured, you have no rights to compensation. No matter how grievous your injury, no matter how reckless their conduct, no matter how negligent their conduct, you. You cannot sue that company. And then they got rid of the prohibitions against Warren with searches and seizures, with all this track and trace surveillance that we now have to give our private information and our private medical records to people to get it to a bar, to get on an airplane or whatever. And there is no pandemic exception in the US Constitution. And by the way, it's not because they didn't know about pandemics, because there was a smallpox epidemic during the revolution that paralyzed Washington's army of New England for a couple of months. And there was another malaria epidemic that happened to the army of Virginia. So they knew very well what epidemics could do and yet they did not say that this document is suspended. These rights are suspended whenever there is an epidemic. And the disturbing part of this response was that it did not seem to be a public health response at all. It was a militarized and monetized response. We did things the opposite of what you would do if you wanted to stop a pandemic. And ask yourself, and I would ask any of my fellow Democrats who are supporting Tony Fauci. His record is the worst record of any record of any country in the world. Arguably, we had 4.2% of the global population here in the United States, and I think we had something like 17 or 18% of the global COVID deaths. The death rate in America was in the top 10 in the world. So we had 2800 people per million population die. The African nations had an average of about 200. Nigeria had 15 people per million population in these countries, which Tony Fauci and Bill Gates at the beginning of the pandemic said, africa is going to get wiped out. You need to get them all vaccines. Nigeria has a vaccination rate of 1.5 for one vaccine. 1.5%.
- [10:36]
Megyn Kelly
Wow.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
They had a COVID death rate that was about 1 1500th of our COVID death rate.
- [10:44]
Megyn Kelly
Wow.
- [10:45]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There's reasons, Megan, there's reasons for that are non medical. One is that African countries have younger populations and Covid was a disease that killed elderly people. But that doesn't explain it anywhere near these huge disproportions. One of the things that could explain it is that Nigeria has the highest malaria burden in the world. 27% of malaria cases come from that country. Everybody in the country is on hydroxychloroquine. It also has the highest burden of river blindness. A large part of the population is on ivermectin. Is that what explains this incredible record against Covid? Well, we don't know, but shouldn't we be asking that question? Isn't that the first thing Tony Fauci should be doing is saying, why is there this huge delta between COVID death rates and all these different countries? And the countries that did worse are the ones that focus on the vaccines.
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Megyn Kelly
And the fact it's not just Fauci? As you, as you well know, Big tech has been completely supportive of this shutdown. You can't even just hearing you talk about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin sends just a little piece of my spine up, like, oh, Lord, this is, you know, YouTube. This is where they're going to jump in and try to censor us. Nothing should be censored here. This is a discussion about whether they work. Should we have discussions about more discussions about that fact? But that's what they've done to us, because they'll take away your platform, as you well know. You can't even talk about it. They've jumped in on the silencing of discussion, and they're the ones who control the public information highway. So it's really damaging. I'm in news, and to this day, I don't know what the truth is on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. And even talking about it makes even me feel like it's. It's insane. It's un American.
- [12:50]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That's right. And, you know, I completely not. I can be wrong about anything. Let's have the debate. Let's have the discussion. You know, that our democracy is based on the free flow of information, with good notions and good ideas and good arguments triumphing in the marketplace of ideas. And none of that stuff is happening. And as you point out, you know, we need to ask ourselves, cui bono? Who is benefiting from this? Clearly, the pharmaceutical companies and also the big tech platforms are. And they, you know, there has been. This has been a war against the poor. If you look at black neighborhoods, Compton, Harlem had two or three times the death rates at Bel Air or Greenwich. And, you know, you had the schools closed in those neighborhoods. According to the Brown University study, children lost 22 IQ points during young children during the pandemic. And, you know, and the mental illness went off the roof. I think 51% of black children had suicidal ideation. You had the police go into those neighborhoods and close down the, you know, the basketball courts. And who benefited from all of this? It was the, you know, the Internet platforms. It was Jeff Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brand, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, et cetera. There was a transfer of wealth, the biggest in history, arguably $3.8 trillion, from the global poor and from working people to this new class of oligarch billionaires. And the same people who were benefiting were the ones who now control our communications, the Facebook and all these platforms. And they were using their control to suppress and to censor any criticism of the government lockdowns that were making them even richer. And there's something really wrong with that. And the government was allied with them and telling them what to censor and whatnot. We have correspondence between Zuckerberg and Tony Fauci telling Him about censoring people like me. Oh, it's not. You know, and I. Again, I. There's nothing I'd like more than to debate Tony Fauci or any of these people.
- [15:27]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, I'd buy a ticket to that.
- [15:30]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What?
- [15:31]
Megyn Kelly
I would buy a ticket to that. Listen, it's not just suppression. That's what's scary. It's also demonization, ostracization. It's smearing. Right? And we've seen in the Fauci papers that have been collected by places like the intercept. That's his M.O. that. That's. They intentionally smeared several scientists and so on who weren't following the Fauci line. They've definitely smeared you and some of the doctors that you just mentioned and tried to create this. You know, they're freaks. They're. They're disinformationists. You know, that's. That's by design. They don't want people listening to you. And I wonder. I was thinking about it because, you know the freedom rally that you went to, that was anti mandate, and I have anti mandate, too. I am pro vaccine, for the record. You probably gathered that. Yeah, but I really am. But I loved the anti mandate rally and those who organized, and I thought it was great. So you got in trouble when you were there. I mean, I got your overall point. People get upset when you compare anything to the Holocaust. But you were basically saying, I don't know. I have it in front of me, just so I don't get it wrong. But it was even in Hitler's Germany. You could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did. Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide. Well, all hell rained down on you. I mean, when the Auschwitz Memorial is responding to you on Twitter, you know, you've stepped in it. They came out and said it was. It's a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay. So those people don't like you, and some of them don't like you for political reasons. But what did you make of your wife, Sheryl Hines, who, by the way, did not realize you were married to the wonderful Sheryl Hines of Curb youb Enthusiasm. She came out. She gave it to you, too. She gave it to you right between the eyes and said, we should not be comparing the Holocaust to anything or anyone. His opinions are not a reflection of my own. And his reference to Anne Frank was reprehensible and insensitive. So I know you Said you were sorry for that comment, but what did you make of it?
- [17:35]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, well, let me get to my wife in a minute and just make a couple of comments on that. Number one, I regret making that analogy. Number two, I was not comparing COVID policies to the Holocaust. I never mentioned the Holocaust. I was making a point. I was comparing a number of totalitarian regimes, left wing and right wing. So in that same, I think year earlier, in that sentence or later, I talked the communist regime of East Germany. And that all of these totalitarian regimes have similar features and similar intentions, which is to control every aspect of human behavior. And my point is that none of them have been able to do that in history. That today, however, because of these new technologies, technologies like 5G which allows mass harvest of data and these very, very Intense Surveillance Satellite 415,000 Satellite Low altitude satellites that are going to be able to look at every square inch of the earth every day. Facial recognition systems. We now have these AI systems that can look through walls and see people where they're hiding in buildings. We have vaccine passports, which is a way of social control. Digital currencies. We saw what they did to the truckers in Canada where they closed their bank accounts and denied the money. There's all these new instrumentalities that make the rising. The emergence of total. It's what I call turnkey totalitarianism, where they're putting in place all of these instrumentalities now or they are getting put in place. Let me use the passive voice. And it's going to give people who have those kind of ambitions a level of control over every aspect of our lives and makes this resistance almost impossible. That's the point I was going to make. I made a big mistake by making any reference to Nazi Germany because of the sensitivities and because I know that what I say is going to be distorted by people who want to silence me and that I need to understand that and I need to be careful in what I say. Because there are people who are of sensitivities about that epic in history that are legitimate, that are, you know, that are horrific. And you know, I apologize because I don't want to hurt anybody. I have no, you know, desire to hurt anybody. I would say this and I do think that we need to find ways to be able to talk about our history. Because if we can't talk about, you know, the. And the history of the rise of the Third Reich did not begin with death camps. Death camps didn't come till 1941. There was a whole system of Totalitarian controls that were put in place and there were alchemies of demagoguery that were used, are common to all totalitarian Systems over that 12 year period in which certain groups of people, and particularly Jews and Poles and Gypsies or Roma people, et cetera, were systematically dehumanized and robbed of their rights. And it was a 12 year process. And we need to assemble at some time. He need to figure out ways to be able to talk about that process without offending people.
- [21:27]
Megyn Kelly
That's what Gina Carano got fired from ABC for, from Disney, for trying to.
- [21:32]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Talk about that very tricky area. And I should have known better to stay the hell away from it because it's just. There's no winning for me. People cannot hear my words. They're going to hear from their feelings and their hearts and they're entitled to those feelings.
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Megyn Kelly
Yes, but, you know, when your spouse is on the side of the other people, you know you've done wrong. Right. Because your spouse is rooting for you.
- [21:56]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I want to say this. I encourage Cheryl to publish that statement. In fact, I asked her to do a statement that was much tougher than that.
- [22:08]
Megyn Kelly
Really?
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Which. Yes, because. And I'm glad she didn't. I'm very glad she didn't. I actually gave her language that was much, much tougher than that because she needed to distance herself from me. My job as her husband is to protect her. And the arrows and the bullets that were being slung at me were hitting her. She was, you know, getting tremendous blow back from her friends, from her industry, from others. And it was a terrible experience for me. And she, you know, by the way, what she said, she believed. So she wasn't saying something. You know, she is. She does not accept all of the things that, you know, I believe about what's happening with the vaccines and the medical. We don't have.
- [23:08]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, you don't speak for her.
- [23:10]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What?
- [23:11]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, I got it. Yeah.
- [23:13]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I don't need to convert her and I don't need her to, you know, to be. I don't want her to. She started reading my book. She read all my other books and she started reading that book and she got on Fauci and she had just made her depressed to read that, you know, she has an idealism and, and just a gentle heart. And to read, you know, about these injuries to children and to read the government officials that are charged with protecting our health or compromised and corrupted, it just. It was making her soul wither. And I said to her, you got you kidding. You don't have to read that book. And you should stop reading it because let me just tell you something about Cheryl. She is literally the best human being that I've ever met. And when I, you know, I met her through Larry David and Larry brought her with my friend and Larry brought her in 2002 to go skiing at a ski event I did up in Banff in British Columbia. She was married then and I was married then. And then she came back in 2011 and both of us were separated and I got a crush on her on that weekend. So I knew I wanted to date her and I went. But I also knew that I went basically to ask Larry's permission because Larry has a lot of rules that are not written down anywhere. But a lot of men understand them. And one of them was, I know that even though it was his TV wife that you said it was, I needed to get square with him before.
- [25:11]
Megyn Kelly
I might have been crossing a boundary.
- [25:13]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I got it exactly. So I went and met him at the Carlisle Hotel around 11 o'clock at night. I went up to his room and sat down with him. It was like asking her parents to date, although he's my age. I said, what do you think of that? And he said, he said, she is the best person, human being I've ever met. He said, she's the only person in this industry that is universally beloved. She doesn't have a single enemy and she has a level of professionalism. She's never late for an appointment, she always knows her line, she does what she's supposed to do. And she really, you know, Cheryl came from total poverty and she was born in North Florida. Her father lived in a trailer in Frostproof, Florida. Cheryl slept in the same bed with her mother until she left high school. She came out, she paid for her own way through college. She put her way through waitressing and working as a joke teller on a telephone line. And then she came out here in a Toyota Turcell with 100,000 miles on it and worked for 15 years as a, as a bartender and as a personal assistant before she finally got a break, which, you know, she was working at the Ground Lanes and doing improv. But she didn't get a break in the industry until she got that job at Kruger Enthusiasm, where they were looking for somebody who was an actress. And, you know, then her career took off. She directs films and she has an incredible career that she put together single handedly. And the idea that my activities jeopardizing this thing that this incredible person put together was just like I felt like my job is to protect her and I was doing the opposite of my job. So my heart was breaking and I was, you know, I would have taken any blow to make sure that she could distance herself from, you know. Yes, my grandpa. You know, my parents were all really good friends with leading figures their time who had been terrible enemies of my grandfather. And my grandfather used to always say, I don't want my enemies to be my children's enemies. They can pick their own fights, but they don't need to fight mine and I don't want them to. And I feel that way about my family too. I chose this life, I chose this crusade. And they need to figure out their own way. My children and other members of my family have other things to do. They're all doing valuable stuff and I'm not insisting that they read my book. This issue is so hard to learn. You know, I've been litigating it. I've written book after book about it.
- [28:22]
Megyn Kelly
Coming up, Robert talks about his uncle and his father's battles with the FBI and the CIA. And I also ask him if he still considers himself a Democrat after all the backlash he's taken from his side.
- [28:38]
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- [29:44]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When work gets crazy, I like to stop by the bar after, have a few cold ones.
- [29:49]
Megyn Kelly
I don't drink at all until 4:00.
- [29:52]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We limit ourselves to one bottle of wine a night.
- [29:55]
Public Health Representative
Excessive drinking has a way of sneaking up on us. A few drinks, a few nights a week, it can add up. And suddenly we're at greater risk for long term problems like heart disease, cancer and depression. Reason enough to rethink the Drink. More@rethinkthedrink.com An OHA initiative.
- [30:14]
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- [30:50]
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- [30:50]
Megyn Kelly
Trust me, I'm a lawyer and a journalist, and it took me a lot just to come up with, you know, like, where am I going to challenge him? What are some sort of points?
- [31:00]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Megan, I want to tell you how impressed I am because you're very brave to have me on because you saw what they did to Joe rogan for having Dr. Malone on. And I'm the only worst person Dr. Malone. So they try to destroy Joe Rogan, who's got 40 million followers.
- [31:23]
Megyn Kelly
I know.
- [31:24]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And Joe Rogan wouldn't put me on. Joe Rogan wanted to put me on. He won't put me on. And he has good reason for it because they will. Well, what you face if you allow me to talk, and you've pushed back at me, appropriately, you and I, you've made good points on this show. You've done. You're tough and you're smart, but you also have a lot of courage to even allow me talk. I've never been allowed to talk like this on a major platform. Except Tucker Carlson.
- [32:02]
Megyn Kelly
Yep, yep. A friend of mine, too. And thank you for saying that. I was really looking forward to it. I have to say, the more they try to suppress someone like you or Dr. Malone, the more I want to do it. You know that I've always been that person. And I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled you're here. And I should tell the audience, of course, nothing was off limits. You're not that guy. But you were like, I'll stay as long as you want. We can go. We can talk about anything. Because you're not afraid of pushback, unlike these censors who only want to air one side of the story. I've said this before. You know, as a lawyer, and I know as a lawyer of 10 years before, I got into journalism. If you only. If you go into a courtroom and you only present one side, you're going to win. It's very easy to win when you only have the one side talking. You can persuade even the least gullible of jurors to come over to your side, but that's what they're doing. They're just shutting down one side and then declaring it a victory. And they haven't won the hearts and minds. That's why there's so many skeptics still out there. And that's why your book is in its 12th printing. Even though no will give it any promo. It's not gonna be reviewed by the Times and celebrated in the magazines and all over the newspapers. But the people have a way.
- [33:11]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Times and the Washington Post did a big profile piece on me, and neither of them even mentioned the name of the book.
- [33:21]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, my gosh.
- [33:22]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That's how radioactive it is.
- [33:26]
Megyn Kelly
So let me ask you this. Did. Did everything die down for Cheryl? Like, everything was fine with her and her industry and show and all that after that?
- [33:35]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I think so. And, you know, I hope so. She was nervous about me doing this show. I can tell you that she's going.
- [33:43]
Megyn Kelly
To like it when after she listens to it, she's going to approve.
- [33:46]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'll just tell you another thing because I've uttered so much heartache on that other thing that I. I want to say this about her that, you know, you mentioned. My. My wife that I've been through a real tragedy with in my former marriage. And we, you know, I have six kids and then a stepchild with the. Cheryl, you know, that was obviously. Anybody who listened to this can imagine how tough that was for them. And Cheryl coming into my life and becoming a friend. My kids adore her, and she has these extraordinary values. She has just a natural gift for understanding what you should do in any situation. She has more wisdom than I know of in any person. The word. The word wisdom means a knowledge of God's will. And she has this acute sense of what's right and wrong in every situation. And she shared that with my children and just been a loving, loving friend to all of them. And, you know, my kids are all incredible, are flourishing now, and they're healthy and they're all doing well in careers and school and athletics, etc. And a lot of that is because the strength and the stability that you do brought to my life. So now that I wanted to explain that, because that, you know, is why I would do anything to spare her that kind of pain.
- [35:32]
Megyn Kelly
Well, I mean, we'll have to rein down hell on anybody who tries to mess with her for her husband's opinions. You're well researched. You're a lawyer. You've devoted your life to this. Of course you have strong opinions. You know, I was thinking about it, though, because you talk about. I'm brave for having you on. You're brave for staying on this after so much public shaming on all the fronts that we've discussed. And to me, in studying up on you and your family before the interview, I guess I thought to myself, I shouldn't be surprised, because one thing I knew even going into it, but then was confirmed by everything I've read you say about your family is you're risk takers. And not by accident. I mean, it's probably in your DNA as well, but it was encouraged right from an early age. You write about how your dad may be too much, so, you know, you'd get threats to the family. And of course, given the way he died, of course we all look at it differently now. But even prior to that, there'd be death threats, There'd be something. And, you know, he was like, we're fine. You know, we don't need security and we're going to take risks and we're Kennedys. And even the day was it. You tell me. I'm trying to remember the story, but it was. There was a death threat and. Or maybe it was when JFK was. Was shot, but he didn't want you to leave school because he wanted you to be a good little soldier and.
- [36:47]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Not panic the other children during that Cuban Missile crisis.
- [36:51]
Megyn Kelly
Oh, Cuban Missile crisis. Okay. Yes.
- [36:53]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Marshals came to our house. My brother Joe and I were, you know, I think there were probably other kids and how. People may know that there's 11 kids in my family, but Joe and I were kind of the older boys, and we were home and the U.S. marshals came by and they wanted to take our whole family down to these. Do this, you know, underground city that they have down in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where they have. Literally, they've hollowed out the Blue Ridge, and they have. They have a whole city there for the government to hide in when, you know, when the bombs were raining down during nuclear winter. And, you know, and so we were very, very excited. You know, we just. We wanted to see the joint and. And to go there. And my father called us and he got us, the two of us, on the phone on different lines, and he said, if you children leave, people are going to recognize that in Washington, and it's going to cause people to panic. And you need to go. You need to go to school. You need to show that, you know, everything is calm and be good soldiers. And so, I mean, I. And he also said that if there is a nuclear war, it will be better to be dead than to be alive. Now, I did not go along with that. I felt like I would thrive in that situation, and I really wanted to see the place. But we did what he asked us to do.
- [38:27]
Megyn Kelly
You know the story. This is from your book American Values, another thing that the audience should buy. But one of my favorite stories from that book is, of course, your father was Attorney General under President Jack Kennedy. And you write about how when you were little, there was a red button on his desk that would go directly to the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who is just a crazed guy. I mean, the stories about him in your book are great, too. And you had some fun when you were a little one with that red button. It was enjoyable for you. Do you remember this story from your book?
- [39:00]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My father had a unique relationship with Hoover. Hoover hated my father. And after my uncle died, he never spoke to him again. And he reported directly to Johnson, even though my father continued as Attorney General. My father was a sensible boss, but he had never reported to an Attorney General in history. He had always had direct access to the President of the United States. And he hated that my father made him go through him. Not only that, my father put a red button. The FBI was in an adjoining building. They were actually linked by a bridge, and they were linked by a tunnel, which we used to go through. We would go to the shooting range, the FBI shooting range. And sometimes we go to Hoover's office. He caught me in his office one day trying to catch the goldfish in his. In his fish tank. He was very angry.
- [39:54]
Megyn Kelly
But you're lucky you still have your hand.
- [39:57]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah. My father had a button on the desk that he could summons over. And one day we were in there, and we were. Me and two of my siblings were mischievously pressing that button. And he came up very angry, which he should have been.
- [40:19]
Megyn Kelly
It's amazing to think of you doing that. The other, maybe not unrelated, story was of the red phone that President Kennedy had installed so he could reach the Soviets immediately. And he had one, of course, in the Oval Office, but he had another one at your house where you were raised in, just outside of D.C. in Virginia, which was sort of like a satellite White House for him. And this is crazy. Apparently it's still there. Like your brother owns the house. We could go see it.
- [40:50]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There was one in the Cape, which is in my brother now, my brother's house, which for one year was the summer White House. And the wires are still going through the door. But what happened was, could you call now?
- [41:02]
Megyn Kelly
Could you pick that up and just have a direct.
- [41:06]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I don't even know if they use landlines in the Kremlin anymore. I have no idea how it works, but nobody's tried it for years.
- [41:12]
Megyn Kelly
Very useful.
- [41:13]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
But my uncle had this very interesting relationship, which people know, don't know about, with Khrushchev, because my uncle didn't trust his CIA. He, in fact, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was early in his presidency, two months into his presidency, he realized the CIA had lied to him, that they wanted to precipitate a nuclear war, and that they had lied to him about the prospects of. They knew that the invasion was going to fail, and they believed that he would be forced into sending, in the essence, towards the aircraft carrier and, you know, and bombing Castro and doing a US Invasion. My uncle was absolutely against doing that. And when he, when he came out of the ex of the meeting the next morning, he said to his aides, I want to take the CIA and shatter them into a million pieces and scatter them to the wind. He had this very hostile relationship with the agency. In my book, American Values is about this. The hostile relationship between the Kennedys and the CIA actually began 10 years before when my aunt, my grandfather, picked a fight with Dulles. He was on a commission that recommended the abolition of the clandestine services because they were causing trouble and blowback all over the world. My book is about the 60 year battle between my family and the CIA. And my uncle had this very awesome relationship with his Joint Chiefs and with the CIA. He had been a soldier himself. He didn't trust the army, for starters, the army brass. And he was mistrustful of them. And he believed they wanted to make him go to war. And he said, the primary job of every, every President of the United States, the number one job is to keep the nation out of war. That's what he said.
- [43:16]
Advertiser
What kind of a peace do I mean? And what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine, genuine peace. The kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living. The kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children. Not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.
- [43:58]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And he wanted on his gravestone, he wanted, when he was asked what would be the epithet, he said he kept the piece that that should be what was printed on his gravestone. So he, he, he began writing Khrushchev directly after the summit in Vienna failed. And they exchanged these 26 handwritten letters back and forth from each other that are incredibly intimate and caring and show this extreme. Both of the leaders were surrounded by war hawks who considered nuclear war not just inevitable, but also advisable, preferable. And both of them were struggling against their own military industrial complexes to keep their nations out of war. And they developed this very close relationship with each other where they talked these intimate details about their families, their children, about of us in these letters. And they were smuggled between them by a KGB spy whose name was Georgie Polshukoi, who developed a very strong relationship with my father, a friendship with my father and mother. And we loved him as a kid. We knew he was a spy. He was this compact little, but very strong Russian who could do the Cossack dancing and he could climb the ropes in our backyard. And the three times that my father got mad at my mom in her life was when she made him do a push up contest against Georgie Polshiko. He smuggled these letters in the New York Times folded in between the two men, and at the same time. And that prompted my uncle to put in a direct line to Grusha so that he could hand run his State Department and run the spies and run the pentagon, and the two men could talk directly. And those phones were in three places in McLean, where I lived, in Hyannis Fort, at the summer White House where we all play, and at the White House. And, you know, it was extraordinary. It would be like Biden having a direct line to Putin and being able to talk with each other rather than talk through these official apparatus, which oftentimes has agendas that are contrary to the best interests of our country.
- [46:35]
Megyn Kelly
I mean, I only wish we felt that was the case with Putin now.
- [46:37]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Right?
- [46:38]
Megyn Kelly
It seems like it's him and not his complex, given the amount of his power over there. But yeah, your uncle, I love how you just call him your uncle. The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, he came by those positions honestly, because I read in your book you write that your grandpa, his dad, Joe Kennedy, that his pre war sentiment, this before World War II was that America should avoid foreign entanglements. And you write, But World War II had thrust leadership upon us. But you say Jack Kennedy was determined ultimately that our role as an exemplary nation should be just that, leadership by example. We should perfect our union and model democracy for the nations of the world, not force it upon them. Boy, oh boy, I've been wondering when I read these words, what do you think your uncle would make of what's happening right now with Ukraine and what we should do about it?
- [47:36]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, I don't ever speak for my uncle, you know, in terms of what he would do on specific policies. I, and I think that, you know, other members of my family, in respect to all of us, also avoid doing that. But you know what I. Listen, Megan, what I think is that we went to the war in Iraq in 2002, 2003, and it turned out to be. And it was this hysteria that Saddam Hussein was a monster, we had to get him, etc. But there was no real explanation about what the US interest in it was. And he had nothing to do with 9 11, although we were made to think he did. And nothing to do with the Anzrax attacks, although we were made to think he did. And there was no, there was a uniformity, kind of a propaganda wall that infected all of the news organizations, what we used to call the hello press. And I think it's really important when we have national policies like this, that we look at the nuance and that we allow other voices on TV and on the radio and in our newspapers. And the Ukraine is an extremely complex geopolitically and historically and in ways that Americans today are missing completely. And the people that we are pretending that we are now saying we need to help are we know about these very extremist views that are in the Azov battalion, et cetera, that we need to understand. And I just think that we should not rush into something without debate, without a real debate, without blocking out alternative voices and about really understanding what the US Objectives are and what's best for the world.
- [49:55]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah. Coming up, Kennedy on how he tries to raise strong minded, tough, resilient kids well, and people should listen to you because you've been advising important people like presidents for a long time. We pulled a picture of you sitting next to President Kennedy on the airplane and you tell me what this little boy in these cute little gray shorts is telling the President of the United States. What's going on?
- [50:27]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
That picture on the airplane is coming back from the convention in Los Angeles in 1960 and you know, he had just been named the Democratic candidate. And we sat.
- [50:40]
Megyn Kelly
He wasn't yet president.
- [50:42]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He was not yet president. He was still the United States Senator. And if you read. Is there an inscription on the bottom of it?
- [50:49]
Megyn Kelly
There is. I'm trying to read it here.
- [50:52]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
To me, saying a president gets his.
- [50:54]
Megyn Kelly
Advice from many sources.
- [50:58]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Something like that.
- [50:59]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, yeah. It's so great. You were adorable, by the way. Do you remember, like, were you. Do you remember when he won the presidency? Because you're young, but you're. Yeah. You remember that moment?
- [51:11]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Of course. That was, you know, I mean, we all worked in the campaign. I was out in Los Angeles for the convention. My parents were really good about involving us and everything. And, you know, we had sit down dinners every night with all the kids and we talked about politics. They talked about current events. We had, from when we were really little, we had to read the papers every day and write down three current events every day in our journal.
- [51:39]
Megyn Kelly
I like that.
- [51:40]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And we had to then give talks on the weekends at dinner. Each one of us did a short talk on political or did a poem or something.
- [51:50]
Megyn Kelly
All 11 of you?
- [51:52]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, you know, my. The family grew slowly. They didn't have 11 kids all at once.
- [51:59]
Megyn Kelly
Like, come on, keep it quick.
- [52:01]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There were seven of us and some were young, but the older kids were expected to, you know, do these things and the younger ones gradually didn't. You know, the thing about my mother and I had. I talk about this kind of very tense relationship that I particularly had with my mother for the first couple decades of my life, but she was. And afterwards I was able to see what an incredible human being she'd been and how, particularly when I had my own kids and try to make them sit down at the table every night and say their prayers and have high level conversations and arrive on time and have their, you know, her hands clean and all that stuff. And she did that every night with all of us. And we did it. And then we, we all said the rosary every night. We read the Bible every single night. We went to church every day in the summer and on Sundays in the winter as well. And, you know, if I try to do that to my kids tonight, ridicule me. And so I really have a tremendous respect for many, many gifts that she gave me. But, you know, one of those was just a very rich experience of growing up in a household that had that kind of, you know, that kind of laughter and fun, but also the discipline.
- [53:30]
Megyn Kelly
Of course, everyone was a Democrat. Now we know that, you know, the things that we've been discussing that have been so disturbing over the past couple of years have been perpetrated on us almost universally by Democrats. And you noted it yourself. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, are you still a Democrat?
- [53:48]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, I'm still a Democrat because I think of the Democratic party as a party that believes in free speech, that believes in the highest ideals of our country. But I. And that is a party that is much more reluctant to go to war, that opposes the corporate domination of our country, and that opposes environmental pollution. And those are issues that both parties, people of both parties can share. I want to say this, Megan, that I think it is one of the intentions of people who are pushing totalitarianism is to encourage tribalism and division. And if you look at the strategies for shattering indigenous societies that the intelligence agencies have developed over many years, one of the key strategies is to divide people, divide them by race, by political party, by my religion, whatever. And so, you know, what I really try to do is I try to be a bridge, to try to find the common values that we have. We have a level of polarization now in this country that is dangerous. If you see that documentary social dilemma, it's very frightening because we are being manipulated to away from each other, to close the door on each other, to burn the bridges and to create two Americas is the most dangerous polarization that we've had since the United States civil war. And one of the frightening things in that show is that. I mean, what they show in that show is that these Facebook and the other companies have developed algorithms that are designed to keep your eyeballs on that site for as long as possible. And they're out of control of. Those algorithms set them in my motion. And then they do things and learn things that nobody really knows how they were working. But it turns out that the way that you keep people's eyeballs on the site is by reinforcing their worldview by telling them things that they already believe in. So if I live in this house and there's a Republican next door and we make an identical inquiry on Google or whatever, we get two different answers. My answer will reinforce my worldview. His answer is going to reinforce his. And the division. The abyss between us gets deeper and deeper, and this is a real problem for society. And we have to figure out ways to build bridges with each other. So I don't talk so much about my political party anymore. I believe in all the values I've ever believed in. I'm fighting for all the values and for the vision of our country that I always believe in. But I am happy to talk to Republicans, work with them to battle in the foxholes and the trenches, side by side with them and Democrats and everybody. And I don't ever ask anybody their political party. And I used to. So I'm not saying that is not part of my, you know, but I think right now, purposely, I really, I think it's so critical that we start talking to people that we disagree with and put aside all these tribal divisions which are destroying this country.
- [57:35]
Megyn Kelly
I love what you said. I agree it, I agree with it wholeheartedly. And I'm trying to live it professionally and personally and am living it. But forgive me for the follow up, but do you think you could vote for a Republican presidential candidate in 2024 or do you plan on voting for Joe Biden?
- [57:53]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My father always said vote for the person, not the party. I'm not going to talk about who I vote for, what I vote for, but I'm not going to. I really think it's critical that we become less part and that we find common ground, that we build bridges to each other.
- [58:17]
Megyn Kelly
Coming up, Robert on why he believes his father's shooter and the man convicted of his father's murder, Sirhan Sirhan, should be free. When you talk about division and how bad it is now, of course, I've got to ask you as a man who lost his dad to an assassination in the tumultuous 60s, Martin Luther King was killed same year President Kennedy also assassinated the same decade. People often look back at the 60s and say, you don't know what division is like. What we're suffering right now as a country is nothing like what we went through back then. And I realize you were just a boy, but how do you compare those two eras in terms of the country's division?
- [59:02]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Let me tell you, just by way of answering that question, an anecdote from my own life which was one of the most poignant experiences that I had with my father. And it took place and I had many, many wonderful experiences as I detail in that book. But this took place in the days after he died. And he was, of course, killed here in Los Angeles. And we, you know, I was here holding his hand when he died. We flew him back to New York where he was senator and we waked him at St. Patrick's Cathedral to a huge crowd of people. And it was multicolored people, you know, every color packing the sidewalks 8 to 10 deep for, you know, the entire Upper Midland and We put them on a train and we took that train down from Penn Station to Union station in Washington, D.C. there were 2 million people lining the train tracks. The train trip, that's usually two and a half hours, took seven hours because the trains could not move because there were so many people on the tracks. They were a cross section of the American public. There were black people, whites. The train stations in Newark, in Philadelphia, in. In Baltimore were just jammed with black Americans singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic and holding candles as we came through. My father's casket was in the caboose and I was riding at the end of the train or sometime in the different cars. And there were every religion. There were rabbis, there were priests, there were nuns, there were men in military uniform. There were hippies and tie dyed T shirts. There were Boy Scouts. I remember a group of about seven or eight nuns standing in the middle of a baseball field in Delaware in the back of a pickup, a yellow pickup truck. And there was just this incredible array. It was a cross section of the American experience. It was all the crowds that I had seen in all these political campaigns with my dad and my uncle since I was a little boy. And it was a complete mixture of the American, you know, diaspora. And four years later, most of the crowd was white because our population was. And they were holding signs, American flags. Pray for us, Bobby. Goodbye, Bobby. You know, they holding the babies up. When we got to Penn Station and Washington, or Union Station, Washington. President Johnson met us. We took my father up the hill to Arlington. We passed the Mall. And at that time, the Poor People's Campaign, which had been organized, conceived by my father, organized by Martin Luther King and Marian Wright Edelman, and it was thousands of poor men from all over the country. They're trying to create a political movement for poor people living in tents and shanties. And they all came to the sidewalk, they bowed their head and they held their hats against their chests as we went up the hill to Arlington to bury my father next to his brother. And four years later, I was in college and I was looking at demographic data from the 1972 campaign. So that was 1968. Mike was killed in the middle of that campaign. Four years later, the vast majority of those white voters between Baltimore and or between Wilmington and Washington, who had supported my father strongly. Four years later, the vast majority of them were voting not for George McGovern, who was aligned with my father on most issues, but for George Wallace, who was iometrically opposed. He was a racist. Segregation, you know, the worst kind. And it occurred to me then. So that same people that voted for my father were now voting for a guy who believed absolutely the opposite. It occurred to me then, and it struck me many times since, that every nation, like every human being, has a darker side and a lighter side. And that the easiest thing for a politician to do is to appeal to our bigotry, to our hatred, to our selfishness, to misogyny, to xenophobia, and to our greed and anger. And it's much more difficult to do what my father was trying to do, which is to try to make us feel like part of a community, that we are all on a heroic mission to perfect the Republic, to make this nation an exemplary nation, to make this nation a model for all the other nations, of what human beings can accomplish from all the races and colors and creeds that are gathered here when we work together to elevate what's best about us and to create something that is a model democracy for the rest of the world. And my father was able to get people to see the hero inside of themselves. That he believed that each one of us had a hero inside of us and that his job was to bring that hero out and get us to transcend narrow self interest and to act on behalf of community and to resist the seduction of the notion that we can advance ourselves as a people by leaving our poor brothers and sisters behind, that we had to go forward together, we had to lift up each other and all be part of this American experience.
- [65:11]
Advertiser
What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis, and that what has been going on within the United States over the period of the last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions, whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or on the war in Vietnam, that we can start to work together. We are a great country and a second selfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running and over the period of the next few months.
- [65:45]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And, you know, so that's the answer, I think, to your question, that, you know, we need to start appealing to the best side of all Americans and that and stop looking at their race, their religion, their political party or affiliation, or anything else, and just say, what. What do we need to do to make this country the best, the exemplary nation that it ought to be.
- [66:11]
Megyn Kelly
That was so moving, hearing you talk about him. It takes me back to. I was born long enough ago, that news about the Kennedys and the way they saw the world. And presidential speeches and speeches by Bobby Kennedy were still in the news and they played them often and they were still your dad, your uncle, still symbols of the Democratic Party and what it meant to be a Democrat, that it's changed so much now, as has the Republican Party. But as you were talking, my producers put on the screen a black and white picture of your dad, of Jack Kennedy and of your uncle Ted Kennedy together. These. When they were younger, they were strong, robust, good looking guys, you know, brothers, standing together, getting into politics, trying to help the country advance. And it reminded me of the way you wrote about growing up, just all the cousins. Was it like 29? I think you just said 70, but it's like 29 cousins or something like that running around.
- [67:05]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I had another, you know, my mother had a huge family too, so there were 20 Skakeles.
- [67:10]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, okay. Yes. But like growing up Kennedy, you know, they referred to Jackie and Jack as Camelot, but you guys had some of that, too. And like, I just wonder. They didn't let you play inside. If the sun was shining, you had to be outside and you had to be playing games and you had to be with each other. And it was sort of this seemed like a communal living in a way that too seems to be withering. Right. Like our connectedness to one another, be it family, friends, in part, things to technology. Can you take me back just for a minute so I can feel that too, of what it was like to be connected and be outdoors and not be glued to a phone and be taking risks and being going on boats and be playing football. All of it.
- [67:55]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, well, that was a pretty good description of it. But we were raised communally with all my other cousins. In fact, you know, we all lived in the same town, the seaside village, Hyannis Fort, which is magical, magical place and still is. My kids go up there every summer and they have over 100 cousins who are their age and they adore. At that point, we would migrate from one family house because it was. My grandparents had nine children. One of them, Joe, died during the war. Kick died in an air crash after the war. Rosemary was intellectually disabled. All the remaining kids, the remaining six kids, all had houses essentially next to each other or very close to each other in Hyannisport. And most of them had large families. And we would migrate. Every night we would eat in a different house. Oh, you know, on Thursdays we'd eat at Shriver's house. On Tuesdays we'd eat at Smith's. On Wednesdays, we'd at John Kennedy's house. On Saturdays, we did at Ted Kennedy's. On Sundays, we'd eat at our house. Robert Kennedy. And there was lots of competition between the family. You know, there was. People were engaged in every kind of competition we had. My grandfather had hired an Olympic swimming coach who was. Who was an Olympian named Sandy Eiler. And he taught us all sports. You know, he taught us boxing and swimming, and we had sailing and tennis lessons and all that kind of stuff. And we were always competing. But it was a healthy kind of competition, I think. And it was outside, and I think we weren't allowed inside during the daytime. Even if there was a rain or something, we were told, you can't come in. You got it. And there was no tv. And you got to figure out a way to, you know, do something outside. So. And it wasn't. We weren't tempted to go inside. Everybody wanted to be outside. I really am frightened for my kids generally. And I raised my kids as much as I could outdoors, so that I think they, you know, they love that. And, you know, I have a kid that just returned from two weeks whitewater kayaking in Patagonia, and he's on his way up to run the itinerad. And all my kids love the outdoors. But I really am frightened and concerned about this generation because I think they're, you know, the technology, the cell phones, the TikTok, the Instagram, and the kind of self loathing that accompanies a lot of those addictions is if they have to overcome stuff that we never had to overcome in the life that, you know, I think that the socialization of these children today, it's an addiction. You know, these devices are designed to addict people and they're addicting themselves to something that is not apparently healthy for any reason.
- [71:26]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah.
- [71:28]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And it concerns me a lot, but I don't know what to do with it. I do. Megan. I think that the Democrats who are advocating censorship, the concern they have, the underlying concern, is a legitimate concern because of the power of the social media. These inflammatory and violent and dishonest characterizations having a way of amplifying on the Internet the way they wouldn't do with conventional newspapers or news sources, and the algorithms that they use to keep us on the site also have the side effect of the fallout of polarizing opinion and making opinion, I think, more extreme and raising passions in a way. And I think as a society, we have to figure out how to deal with that. We have to figure out some fix I do not believe the fix is censorship.
- [72:43]
Megyn Kelly
I agree.
- [72:44]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
You can censor certain things. You can censor pedophilia, you can censor incitements to violence. But when you get outside of those and a couple of other narrow categories that, you know, censorship is not legitimate for any.
- [73:04]
Megyn Kelly
It's really offensive. If you think about the fact that these same companies who are silencing your view, right. They deem your view disinformation or too controversial for YouTube, whatever it is, those are the same companies that spend their days making money off of manipulating us and making us hate one another. It's almost like they claim the moral high ground with absolutely no solid footing on which to stand.
- [73:28]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, and they're making money, and they're tied in with the intelligence agencies and they're tied in with big pharma. Google owns three vaccine companies. Facebook, Zuckerberg has a billion dollar investment in vaccines. And they're all making money. They have partnerships with the big pharmaceutical companies. They're inseparable. And it's a really dangerous conglomerate because there's no. It's not paranoid to say the intelligence agencies are deeply, deeply embedded in these companies. And you have the, you know, you have military application, you have huge government contracts, you have deals with the pharmaceutical companies, and you've created this government corporate cartel that controls all of our communications. And so. And it's really, really dangerous.
- [74:24]
Megyn Kelly
It really makes you want to disconnect and just go live in the woods. Just go play outside like a Kennedy and don't look at any devices just to round back to you guys outside and playing and all that. Have to ask you, you write in the book, we built tree houses in the magnolia. We played for hours in the hay loft making forts from hay bales. We invented our own games, mostly involving some element of risk like, like tag on the roof, where we leapt from atop the barn to the tack room, tool sheds and horse trailers roofs, or onto a neighboring white pine. It reminds me of a quote that I read from your grandmother, the matriarch of the Kennedy clan, Rose, where, you know, you never know whether these are real or not, but what was attributed to her was better a broken bone than a broken spirit. And I love that it seems to capture her overall attitude, if not her actual words. But can I ask you about that? Because it's not without its downsides. Right? And I'm thinking in particular of JFK Jr. More with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Next. You know, a lot of us treasured him and Caroline Bessette and his wife. And you Know, just thought, oh, my God, why? Right? Like, why did he have to do it? Why did he have to fly the plane? Why did he have to go up in the bad weather? And a lot of people talked about that, like, is it a. Is it a blessing or a curse to be a Kennedy? To have this penchant for risk and this outdoorsman attitude? And, you know, a lot of people felt better about leading a more sedentary life with fewer risks in it. How do you make sense of it all? Having suffered such loss, people shouldn't listen.
- [76:03]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
To me as a parent. The older I get, the less I know about parenting. So I'm. I am not going to give people advice on parenting. I mean, I can share kind of my experience, strength and hope, which is that, you know, my approach to parenting has been to really laissez faire, to try to be a good example, to try to encourage my kids interest in history and. And, you know, and values and. But also to understand that as much as I love them, that God loves them more and that he's. They're his children and that, you know, my role is not to control them, but to encourage them. And, you know, most of my kids went through periods of revolt against me, which I welcome. I think children need to divorce their parents. They need to develop their own sense of self. They need to develop confidence, and they need to be. I like when my kids argue with me. I have a couple of kids. I have one kid in particular who does not. He's not completely bought into any of my vaccine baloney or whatever, and he argues with me all the time. And I love that. I love that they can make up their own minds that. But it's really important that we develop in our country a generation of children who understand the importance of critical thinking and who understand that fear can disable our capacity for critical thinking. And we have to resist that. Like Franklin Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, because fear destroys capacity for critical thinking. And we need to be armored against. Against propaganda. We need to be armored against the orchestrated fear because if we. And so it's important to have brave children. It's important to instill courage and risk taking if we want to continue to have a democracy. There was a generation of Americans in 1789 or 1776 who understood that there's a lot worse things than death. There's a lot worse things than dying, and living as a slave is one of them. And that's why they gave their lives, they gave their fortunes, they in some cases, lost their families in order to give us the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. And, you know, we have lived off their courage for a couple of hundred years. And now it's time that we have to, you know, renew that commitment to courage again. And yes, yes, there's a new kind of risk taking.
- [79:07]
Megyn Kelly
Today's day and age requires a new kind of risk taking. You may not be getting in the cockpit of an airplane, but just to speak your opinion in today's day and age requires some measure of courage.
- [79:18]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, my father always, you know, my father really admired, as I say in my book, physical courage. And he was surrounded by people like Jim Whitaker, his best friends. Jim Whitaker, who was the first American on Mount Everest, John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the Earth. Sam. All these football players, Rosie Gear, Rafer Johnson, people who had demonstrated, and a lot of war heroes like Gerald Trembley and many others. They were all in our house all the time. And my father had this tremendous admiration for physical courage, but he always had. Moral courage is an even rarer commodity. And ultimately, that was the reason that my uncle wrote that book, Profiles Encouraged and won the Nobel Prize. The Pulitzer Prize was to illustrate a dozen stories of American politicians who had sacrificed their careers and in some cases, their lives or principle, to stand on a principle that they knew was going to cost them. And, you know, I was raised in a milieu where we were taught that it was a great privilege to be able to be part of some great controversy and that the best thing that could happen to us is if we could give our lives and our energies to something that. That was larger than ourselves.
- [80:56]
Megyn Kelly
Not just courage. But forgiveness was another value. I know it was instilled in you because you're Catholic. And that brings me to Sirhan Sirhan, the man who killed your dad. On June 5, 1968, outside the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California, he was sentenced to life in prison. And you and my old pal and colleague from Fox News, Douglas Kennedy, your little brother, were the two in your family, the two of your dad's kids, who were, as I understand it, in favor of him getting parole. He was paroled and you supported it. But then your other siblings were on the other side of it. And the governor, Newsom, he quashed it. So he's staying in prison. What convinced you to support the parole of the man who killed your dad?
- [81:51]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, number one, even if Saran had killed my father, I would be advocating his parole. And my brother Douglas is agnostic. About whether Sarah Ann killed my father or not. But he even. He believes, like I do, that even if he did kill my father, he should be paroled. And you know, to me, that is an important personal stand because I think resentments and anger and revenge are impulses that are never. They're never good for you. I mean, resentments are like, as they say, like swallowing poison and hoping someone else will die. It has a corrosive impact on your own soul. So I think, you know what. But the better approach to people who hurt you is to pray for them, to forgive them, and then to keep moving. But if you let them live in your head rent free, then they are in control of you. And only by forgiving them do you escape their control and their influence. So I would be advocating, even if Sirhan did kill my father, Sirhan Sirhan did not kill my father. He certainly shot at my father. My father. And this is what Thomas Noguchi, who was the coroner, you know, said from the beginning, sirhan, sir. And was standing in front of my father. He was standing in front of the steam table. He never got more than less than five feet from my father. There were 77 eyewitnesses in that Ambassador Hotel kitchen. And they all saw what happened, which is Sir Ann fired two shots at my father directly. One of those shots went past my father and hit Paul Schray, who was a United Auto Workers, a very close friend of my father. He's the man who introduced my father to Cesar Chavez and one of his closest friends. And he today is alive and has been advocating for Sir Ann for 20 years. And he's the one who made me look at the evidence and read the autopsy report against my will and showed me that Sirhan could not have killed my father. The second shot at Sirhan fired at my father, ended up in a door jamb, a wooden door jam behind my father. And was later removed by the Los Angeles Police Department. Was then tackled by six men, including Rosie Guerrero, Johnson and a number of others. And his gun hand was pushed away from my father. But they couldn't. He had a superhuman strength. And they could not get the gun out of his hand. And he fired off six more shots and emptied the chamber. And all of those shots hit people. We have them all accounted for. Oh, we know what happened to all of Sir Ann shots. And none of them hit my father. My father was hit by four shots, One that passed harmlessly through his shoulder pad, all of them from behind. They were contact shots, meaning the barrel of the gun was either touching his flash or within an inch of his flesh or touching his clothing. They were fired by somebody who was, who was standing immediately behind my father. And all the shots were fired on an upward trajectory. So the gun was being held against my father's back and the trigger was pulled four times. The audio of the night records 14 shots for 13 shots fired. So Sir Ann only had eight shots in his gun. And there were many more shots than that fired and he never had a chance to reload. The man who killed my father is almost certainly Eugene the, who was a security guard and he worked at the Lockheed plan. He had a classified position. Lisa Pease in her book establishes that he identified himself as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. And he died at the very beginning of the pandemic in the Philippines. And he, the gun that he had that night was at 22, which he lied about repeatedly. He was. When my father died or my father was shot, he fell onto Caesar and Caesar fell back. So the two men were lying on the ground. And then Caesar pushed my father off and got up and he was seen by a dozen people with a gun in his hand. And he never denied that he had his gun pulled. He said he had pulled the gun to fire at Sirhan. But that gun was not found and it was not turned over to the police. It has since been found. And Caesar lied repeatedly about what he had done done with begun. So there's a lot more evidence. It's too much to go into here. But if you, you know, people who are curious about it, there are, you know, many, many books about that are written about what happened. And the orthodoxy in this case is not, doesn't make any sense as it does in so many cases.
- [87:37]
Megyn Kelly
It's fascinating. So I mean, that leads me to ask you what you think about your uncle's assassination because that's one of the most speculated about moment in US history, right? I mean, from Oliver Stone, right, to the Warren Commission. They concluded it was Arlen Specter, Senator Arlen Specter now, God rest his soul. I knew him kind of on Capitol Hill. And he used to say it's not the single bullet bullet theory, it's the single bullet conclusion. That's what happened. Single bullet. It was Lee Harvey Oswald and only Lee Harvey Oswald. Where do you land on it?
- [88:20]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, that was the Warren Commission. And the Warren Commission, of course he was on it. The key commissioner was Allen Dulles. And Allen Dulles, of course, was the head of the CIA who my uncle had fired after the Bay of Pigs. And he, we now know that he was deliberately, and this is not controversial, this is well established, he was deliberately steering the committee away from many facts that would have implicated the CIA, including the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset beginning in 1958 when he worked as a radar operator at the Atatsui Air Force Base in Japan, which was the CIA base where the. He was a Marine, where the U2 flights were based out of, that were over the Soviet Union. He defected to the Soviet Union. It was a fake defection. It was a dangle. It was orchestrated by James Jesus Angleton and Langley, who was the head of counterintelligence and Langley, meaning the division of the CIA that looks for Russian spies. And there was a KGB mole at Langley for many years. To this day, it's not identified. And they were trying to track a chase out that mole and Lee. They thought that when Lee Harvey Oswald defected, Angleton believed that the mole, that the KGB would wonder who he was and would ask the mole to check his file. And they had a trigger system on his file and Langley. I would identify anybody who touched it, but they weren't able to do it. And Oswald came back without any punishment and without even being debriefed by the State Department. He simply. He had made a very, very high profile defection to Russia. He married a daughter of a KGB colonel and then just walked into the State Department, said, I want to go home. They bought his ticket. They gave him $600. He was met at the airport in Dallas by a guy called George Marshall who was also working for the agency. And you know, there. And you talk about the Warren Commission findings, but the United States Congress assassination committees investigated. And the Senate did a new investigation five years after the Warren Commission. And they came to the opposite conclusion, that it was indeed a conspiracy. They didn't know whether the conspirators who actually murdered my uncle were Mafia or the CIA. There was a split within the committee. You know, the Warren Commission is working on very little knowledge that was heavily orchestrated and the subsequent investigations. And now we have millions of documents that, you know, that suggest a strong involvement by the agency coming up.
- [91:44]
Megyn Kelly
He said nothing was off limits. So I went there and asked him point blank about the rumors about his father, his uncle and Marilyn Monroe. Wow. I mean, how does that. Sorry to go Oprah on you, but how does that make you feel that you got, you know, you believe the CIA was responsible for the assassination of two men who are so dear to you?
- [92:15]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
When you ask me, how does it make you feel? How does it make me feel. It's hard for me to separate my feelings from the, you know, from the kind of. From the larger issue about what the implications are for our country and for our democracy. That these are murders. That, you know, whether I'm right or wrong about them, we should be able to talk about them. We should be able to reason. We shouldn't be, again, shut down and censored. The people ought to be able to have a congenial conversation about these. And if the original verdicts do not make any sense, and let's have an investigation, what happened? Because our country took a turn when my uncle was killed, when I was a boy, when I was on my sixth birthday or seventh birthday, Dwight Eisenhower, January 17, 1961, made what I would consider the most important speech in American history where he warned our country against the rise of the military industrial complex and the subversion of democracy through this ascendancy of this corrupt cartel of intelligence agencies, the military agencies, military contractors and other people who are attached to the military industrial complex.
- [93:48]
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- [94:07]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
My uncle took office two days later. It was a farewell speech for Eisenhower, and he said, this is the most important issue. The enemy within. It's, you know, not the people from outside our country, but people within. He talked also about the health agencies and the health cartel very, very explicitly and presciently. And my uncle spent three years of his presidency battling the military industrial complex. And in the end, if the conclusions of those, you know, that subsequent committee of the assassinated health assassinations committee are correct, and it was members of that cartel that killed him. And if that's true, we should be trying to resolve that still, because at that point. So what happened when he died? He had. Two months before he had died, he had signed national security order ordering all of our troops out of Vietnam, ending the Vietnam war. The first thousand troops. There were 1100 troops. 11,000 troops. And the first thousand would be out by December. The remainders would all be out within 12 months, by the end of 1965 or by the beginning of 1965, as soon as he died. Lynton and Johnson, by the way, my uncle had been fighting for three years his own military intelligence apparatus who wanted to send a quarter million troops into Vietnam and make it our war. And he said, no, there's the Vietnamese war. They have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them advisors, we can give them helicopters, but we are not fight the war for them.
- [96:00]
Megyn Kelly
Sounds familiar.
- [96:02]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
And Johnson came in and immediately sent. We had the Tonkin Gulf resolution. He sent a quarter million troops in there and it became the American war. And then after Johnson, my father ran specifically against the war, specifically against the military industrial complex. He won California and that meant he was almost certainly going to win the convention. And he had already beat Nixon. Once he beat Nixon, he was his brother's campaign manager. In 60, he beat Humphrey, who was his only other opponent. Real opponent. Eugene McCarthy was not a serious candidate he would have beaten. He'd already beaten Humphrey in 1960 and he repeated Nixon in 1960.
- [96:55]
Megyn Kelly
So he was on his way to the White House.
- [96:57]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
He had a clear path to the White House when he was murdered. And he was specifically running against Vietnam War and against the military industrial complex. As soon as he was killed, Nixon comes in and sends a half a million troops over there and then fights. Until 1963, when my uncle left office, 75American Special Forces advisors had been killed in Vietnam. By the time Nixon left, 56,000American troops and millions of Vietnamese had died in that conflict. And the military industrial complex had to get more and more powerful. And you look at the rest of American history and it's a battle between this dwindling impulse for a democracy and the growing power of this cartel. And I think, you know, the murders of my uncle and my father were key parts in that turn that we made in the road and that part of unraveling that, restoring the path to democracy and the control over these dangerous, dangerous forces. You know, probably ought to begin with a real investigation of both of those murders. A real investigation for the first time in history.
- [98:17]
Megyn Kelly
Indeed. Indeed.
- [98:19]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
What.
- [98:19]
Megyn Kelly
What could it hurt? What would be the reason not to. On the subject of everything's okay to talk about. So forgive me, because this is. I realize in politic. Can we spend one minute on Marilyn Monroe?
- [98:35]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Birthday to you Happy birthday to you. There's not much I can tell you about Marilyn. I mean, I met her when I.
- [98:48]
Megyn Kelly
The rumors are that she had an affair with your dad, that she had an affair with your uncle, and even possibly that your dad was somehow there the night she died out in California.
- [98:59]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah, well, those are rumors that have been time and again proven completely untrue. There's two days my father's schedule. Every minute of his day is known. People know where he was every moment of the day. And it happens that the day that they say that My father, you know that these people who are selling books saying these things. The day that they say my father was with her, he was with us at a camping trip up in Oregon and in Northern California and it would have been impossible for him to be here. That was the day that she died. All the days that people that these authors who are just bogus authors have suggest, who are making money by, you know, saying these things. All the days that they claim that my father could have been with Marilyn Monroe are days when we know exactly where he was and he was on opposite sides of the country from Marilyn Monroe.
- [100:06]
Megyn Kelly
What do you make of the affair? Rumors between Bobby Kennedy and. Or Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe?
- [100:14]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Yeah. Again, all of the rumors about the affair. You'd have to find a time where he could have had an affair. And there is no conceivable time when the two people are in the same city.
- [100:28]
Megyn Kelly
There's always a way when a man wants to have an affair, he can find a way. Like, come on, there's that.
- [100:33]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I'm talking about my father. We know where he was on all the days. You know, the authors claim to know the days and you'd have to know the day because my father's schedule was known. He was on the campaign.
- [100:45]
Megyn Kelly
What about all of Jack Kennedy's affairs? Like, we, you know, we know he did that even though the New York Times wasn't writing about it. Washington Post.
- [100:54]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Listen, I wasn't around then. Oh, I can't answer that question. I can't answer the question about my uncle.
- [101:02]
Megyn Kelly
You were talking to him about salamanders on the plane, not his love life. That makes sense to me.
- [101:06]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Talking about his extracurricular.
- [101:12]
Megyn Kelly
Yeah, there was only so much he was going to share with you on board that at Air Force. I get it. Listen, I don't know how to thank you for all this time. Here we are four hours later, and you've just been so open and giving on every subject, personal and professional. I really, really enjoyed the exchange and I hope we can have more.
- [101:33]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Thank you very much. Thanks for your courage, Megan. Thank you for your integrity and I hope they leave this up more than about 10 seconds.
- [101:43]
Megyn Kelly
Wow. What an interesting man. Right? What a fascinating exchange. Thank you so much for joining us today, for sharing in it with us and both days. And remember, if you missed part one of my interview with RFK Jr. You can find that wherever you get your videos or podcasts for free. I always love to hear what you think of the shows that we do and I would especially love to hear what you thought of this one? What were your opinions? Did he persuade you on anything? Were you glad to hear from him? Do you think he's so controversial he needs to be universally banned as he has been? Would love to know your thoughts. Leave me a note. Right now we take him in the Apple reviews. Basically, the long and the short of it is Apple gives us no love. I mean, if you go into Apple podcasts, you will see Michelle Obama promoted and Hillary Clinton's podcast promoted. You will not see the Megyn Kelly show promoted. But one way of getting our show to sort of get traction on Apple is the more comments we get, the higher up we go. So it serves two purposes. It helps us fight the man over at Apple and it also helps me understand your thoughts on the program and your guest suggestions and what you liked and what you didn't like. I have read every single comment. There are over 22,500 of them now. And it's a great way for us to connect. Okay, while you're there, do me the favor of subscribing and downloading. Give me a five star review because some of the losers are giving like zero or one. Those are the haters who watch msnbc. So give me five stars. Please help me out and leave us a comment on social media if that's easier for you. Or you can just email me at questions@devilmaker media.com questions. Lots of ways of giving us feedback. Nothing and no one is off limits here on the Megan Kelly Show. We will keep bringing you the truth. Thank you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda and no fear.
- [103:51]
Public Health Representative
If you could hear love, what would it sound like?
- [104:01]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Son, can we talk about your drinking?
- [104:06]
Public Health Representative
Yeah, Dad, I think we should. Helping those closest to you think about their excessive drinking. Maybe that's what love sounds like. More at Rethink the Drink, an OHA initiative.
- [104:22]
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- [104:47]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No way.
- [104:48]
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- [104:51]
Megyn Kelly
Apply.