President Donald Trump got his biggest laugh at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner by making fun of his own Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for eating roadkill.
Wild stories about Kennedy dumping a dead bear in Central Park and removing a dead raccoon’s penis have been swirling ever since he was competing with Trump as an independent presidential candidate in the 2024 election.
After shifting his loyalty to Trump and becoming the chief of the Health and Human Services Department, Kennedy was a target in front of the the Washington, D.C. press corps on Friday night.
“I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire very delicious beef tenderloin. It’s very special beef, and I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy is right here,” the president said during a rambling speech that lasted about an hour.
“Personally ran over the cow in his car,” Trump said. “And he cut it up, and he brought it here for you to eat tonight. So, it’s very fresh.”
Kennedy looked amused as the crowd roared with laughter.
In August 2024, Kennedy posted a clip on social media of him telling former sitcom actress Roseanne Barr about the time he took a bear that had just been hit by a car and brought it with him on a falconing trip in Goshen, New York.
“I was going to skin the bear — and it was in very good condition — and I was going to put the meat in my refrigerator,” Kennedy said.
He then went to New York City to attend a steakhouse dinner, where he said he realized he had to go straight to the airport afterward. With the bear carcass still in his car, Kennedy said he decided to dump the carcass in Manhattan’s Central Park.
Shortly after telling the world this shocking tale, Kennedy admitted to a reporter, “I’ve been picking up roadkill my whole life,” adding that he has a “freezer full of it.”
Another bizarre story involving Kennedy and dead animals made headlines in April, which Trump alluded to in his speech.
The president said Kennedy “also suggested an appetizer featuring his favorite cut of male raccoon roadkill.”
“But we drew the line at that, Cheryl,” referring to Kennedy’s actress wife Cheryl Hines, who was sitting next to him at the dinner.
“It is fun, but he’s a very different kind of a person,” Trump said. “But he has what it takes, and he’s smart. And he loves the country.”
The joke stems from an allegation that Kennedy once severed the penis of a dead raccoon while driving on the highway with his family.
That story was revealed in RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise a biography from The New York Post’s Isabel Vincent that relies on a series of alleged Kennedy diaries.
“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in a 2001 entry, according to the book. “My kids waited patiently in the car.”
Trump’s joke was among only a handful that landed in an hour-long, poorly received diatribe targeting his critics and the press, including Wall Street Journal reporters who won awards for their coverage of Trump’s relationship to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“All these awards,” Trump said. “Do I have a say?”
