RFK Jr. Says He’s Not Telling Americans to ‘Do Anything That I Do’ amid Questions About Using Nicotine and Tanning Beds

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shedding light on some of his personal habits that don’t exactly line up with what the Department of Health and Human Services would typically endorse.

Since his confirmation as secretary of the department in February, the 71-year-old son of Robert F. Kennedy has stirred controversy by promoting widely debunked theories about vaccines and positioning himself as a driving force behind the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.

In a recent interview with The Atlantic, he was asked how his reported use of tanning beds and nicotine — both associated with significant health risks — fits with the goals of the “MAHA” campaign.

“I’m not telling people that they should do anything that I do,” RFK Jr. responded when pressed.

“I just say ‘Get in shape,’ ” he added.

According to the Atlantic profile, the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy “regularly pulls Zyn nicotine pouches from his shirt pocket or desk drawers to tuck between his lower lip and gum.”

This detail comes on the heels of a January moment during his Senate confirmation hearing, when RFK Jr. allegedly slipped a nicotine pouch into his mouth while seated before lawmakers considering his nomination in Donald Trump’s administration.

Beyond his claims about vaccines, RFK Jr. has criticized artificial food dyes and seed oils, raised alarms about the national fertility rate, and taken a range of other contentious positions.

Trump’s decision to appoint RFK Jr. drew sharp public backlash from within the Kennedy family.

His younger brother, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, condemned the move in a Boston Globe op-ed, calling RFK Jr.’s conduct “a betrayal of all that my father worked for.”

“All those complicit in that betrayal have lowered themselves — not least my brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of health and human services, who knows my father’s legacy as well as anyone,” he wrote.

Reflecting on what their father — who served as U.S. attorney general — might have thought of the Trump administration, Maxwell continued: “Of course, there is no way to know precisely what he would have thought. But I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty in the richest nation in the world and our duty as citizens to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry.”

“I know, specifically, that he would have been appalled by the cruelty the Trump administration has directed toward America’s neediest,” Maxwell added.

Caroline Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s cousin and the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, also castigated him in a January letter to the Senate during his confirmation process, calling him a “predator” and declaring him “unqualified” for the role.

“Even before he fills this job, his constant denigration of our health care system and the conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines — including in connection with Samoa’s deadly 2019 outbreak of measles — have cost lives,” she wrote at the time.

Caroline went on to invoke her family’s legacy in public service, adding, “I am certain that he and my uncle Bobby, who gave their lives in public service to this country, and my uncle Teddy, who devoted his long Senate career to the cause of improving health care, would be disgusted.”

Two of Caroline’s children have also publicly criticized RFK Jr.

Her son, Jack Schlossberg, suggested during a November appearance on the MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) program The Weekend that Trump was “so obsessed with the Kennedys and the Kennedy name and the Kennedy brand that he caged one and put it in his Cabinet, a rabid dog in his Cabinet, put a collar on my cousin, RFK Jr.”

Her daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, similarly condemned RFK Jr. in an essay for The New Yorker, written while reflecting on her terminal cancer diagnosis.