Well being and Human Companies Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s youthful brother scorned him for standing with President Donald Trump amid the GOP’s cuts of meals help packages tens of millions of Individuals rely on, calling his stance a “betrayal” of the legacy of their father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr.
“In fact, there is no such thing as a strategy to know exactly what he would have thought,” Maxwell Taylor Kennedy wrote in an op-ed revealed in The Boston Globe. “However I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty within the richest nation on the planet and our responsibility as residents to be sure that no baby goes to mattress hungry.”
The youthful Kennedy mentioned his father, who would have turned 100 this 12 months, “would have been appalled by the cruelty the Trump administration has directed towards America’s neediest.” He pointed to the authorities shutdown, when tens of millions of Individuals have been susceptible to shedding Supplemental Diet Help Program advantages in November.
“It’s a betrayal of all that my father labored for,” mentioned Kennedy, who advocated for increasing what was then referred to as the Meals Stamp Program. “And all these complicit in that betrayal have lowered themselves — not least my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of well being and human providers, who is aware of my father’s legacy in addition to anybody.”
Kennedy will not be the one sibling to fireplace criticism on the well being secretary. Earlier this 12 months, his sister, Kerry Kennedy, criticized a number of conspiracy theories RFK Jr. has unfold throughout his tenure within the Trump administration.
“I like Bobby and I discover him extremely charismatic. However I’ve mentioned — and my different relations have been tremendous clear about this — that we disagree time and again and once more on the issues that he’s mentioned,” she mentioned.
RFK Jr.’s cousin, Tatiana Schlossberg, revealed in a private essay revealed Saturday within the New Yorker that she had been identified with terminal most cancers and criticized HHS federal analysis cuts she mentioned might damage different most cancers sufferers.
RFK Jr., who has pushed to ”get soda pops off of the meals stamp program” celebrated his father’s birthday in a submit on Instagram that includes {a photograph} of the 2 of them.
In his op-ed, the well being secretary’s brother blasted the Trump-loyal GOP for exhibiting “an nearly Dickensian cruelty” by “zeroing out funding for the poor” in favor of tax cuts for the rich within the “Massive, Lovely Invoice” handed over the summer time.
“That is unacceptable,” he wrote. “And it’s unacceptable, too, that my brother Bobby stands facet by facet with Donald Trump as these packages, significantly SNAP, are diminished. Stopping starvation is the first responsibility of each public well being official. You can’t Make America Wholesome whereas denying meals to our most weak residents.”