‘Something is deeply wrong with him’: Oh for god’s sake, now RFK Jr. is cutting off whale heads

First there was the barbecued goat that looked suspiciously like a dog, then there was the dead bear cub buried in Central Park, and now — seemingly making it a point to be connected to as many bizarre animal headlines as possible — RFK Jr. has allegedly beheaded a beached whale. 

I’ve been at this job for a while, and that is possibly the strangest sentence I’ve ever written, made all the stranger for the fact that it’s in reference to a former presidential candidate, and for the fact that it doesn’t even mention emus and brain worms, two other species which have somehow found itself connected to the nephew of JFK. 

At this point, I’m almost certain we will soon hear news that RFK Jr. once played tonsil tennis with a toucan, or skinned a meerkat to make into a bed cover. Between him and Kriti Noem, it seems no animal is safe from US politicians. In any case, while I don’t even really know where to begin, here goes. 

A recently unearthed story has recalled the time that RFK Jr. — who recently dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump —  beheaded a beached whale with a chainsaw. The source of the story is Kick Kennedy, the eldest daughter of RFK Jr. who relayed the harrowing tale in a 2012 interview with Town & Country. 

In another strange twist in this story, People reports that the 2012 interview was resurfaced by internet sleuths, who were digging up information on Kick following reports she was romantically linked to Ben Affleck after his divorce from Jennifer Lopez (are you following?). 

What they found instead was Kick’s recount of a time when — after hearing that a whale had washed up on Squaw Island — RFK Jr. raced down to the beach with a chainsaw. The politician then removed the animal’s head with the chainsaw, before “bungee-cording it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to New York,” the interview read. 

It somehow doesn’t stop there. On the commute home with the whale head on the car roof (I repeat, WITH THE WHALE HEAD ON THE CAR ROOF), Kick and RFK Jr. were forced to wear plastic bags over their heads, because “whale juice would pour into the windows of the car” whenever it accelerated.

Kick said that even though the whale juice was “the rankest thing on the planet,” chopping off a whale head and ferrying it for hours on a highway “was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.” Apparently, the choice to decapitate the whale boils down to RFK Jr.’s fascination with animal skulls and carcasses (which makes sense given his track record).

While the story is bizarre to the point of hilarity, it’s worth mentioning that what Kick is describing might be a felony, which is why some environmental groups have since called for RFK Jr. to be investigated over the issue. Investigators would certainly have copious evidence relating to the politician and animals. 

Weeks ago, RFK Jr. revealed that it was he who buried a dead bear cub in Central Park a decade ago as a joke. Before that, he denied allegations that the animal carcass he was holding in a resurfaced photo was a dog. Before that, he recalled once keeping a pet emu that regularly attacked his wife. And before that, he claimed that doctors had discovered a parasitic worm in his brain in 2010. 

All of it makes one thing clear, and it’s that no animal should be within a mile radius of RFK Jr.