JFK grandson on video criticizing RFK Jr.: ‘I’m glad I did it’

The grandson of former President John F. Kennedy stood by his comments criticizing his older cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential bid and backing President Biden for reelection.

“I’m very glad I did it,” Jack Schlossberg, the son of Caroline Kennedy, Biden’s ambassador to Australia, said Tuesday on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “I stand by what I said in my video.”

Schlossberg called RFK Jr.’s candidacy “an embarrassment” in a video released in July endorsing Biden’s reelection bid.

Kennedy, an environmental activist, has raised eyebrows before his campaign and during it for backing various conspiracy theories, particularly related to vaccines.

At the time of his initial remarks, Schlossberg said his grandfather’s legacy is about “a lot more than Camelot and conspiracy theories. It’s about public service and courage.”

Schlossberg also endorsed Biden in the video, calling him “the greatest progressive president we’ve ever had” and declaring he “ended the COVID pandemic and he ended Donald Trump.”

“These are the issues that matter. And if my cousin, Bobby Kennedy Jr., cared about any of them, he would support Joe Biden too,” he said. 

“I think Joe Biden is a fantastic president,” Schlossberg reiterated Tuesday. “I think on every issue from the economy, health care, climate change, civil rights, his record speaks for itself.” 

When pressed by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, Schlossberg said, “I think the issues in this election are way too important for any of us to be distracted.”

The younger Kennedy family member appeared alongside his mother on NBC to present the family’s annual Profile in Courage awards, which named five South Carolina state Senators this year’s domestic award-winners and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida the international winners.

Caroline Kennedy said during the interview that she did not know her son was going to post his comments online over the summer and answered in the negative when asked by Guthrie whether it was “complicated” between family members.

“I know what I think, I know what Jack thinks, I know what Bobby Kennedy thinks and so, it’s not complicated,” she said.