Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visibly lost his temper in a congressional hearing this week, as a lawmaker confronted him about his bizarre penchant for collecting dead animal parts.
According to The Hill, Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA) hit the secretary with the question amid discussion about the next fiscal year's HHS budget.
“I got two seconds. Respectfully, you know what? I really wish you’d spend more time on, more time thinking about the American people, less time talking about whale heads, bear heads and raccoon parts,” said Carter. To which Kennedy shot back, "I don't talk about any of those things."
All of the things Carter referred to are callbacks to odd incidents involving the secretary spanning back decades, including an incident in which he dumped a bear cub carcass in Central Park, an incident in which he beheaded a dead whale with a chainsaw in Cape Cod, and an incident in which he stopped his car to cut off a dead raccoon's genitals as some kind of souvenir.
Kennedy, who infamously pushes anti-vaccine and anti-medicine conspiracy theories and has stacked HHS full of unqualified allies who have similar views, ran an independent campaign for president in 2024, and was recruited by President Donald Trump as health secretary to try to court low-propensity independents who supported that candidacy.
However, even the president appears to be tiring of some of Kennedy's influence, as he recently nominated a much more conventional public health official to head up the Centers for Disease Control.