RFK Jr.: ‘West Wing’ Star Who Dissed Cheryl Hines Is ‘Unmanly’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has defended his wife, Cheryl Hines, calling the trolling she received after he ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump “disturbing.”

He singled out West Wing star Bradley Whitford, slamming him as a “bully” and a “coward” after the actor criticized Hines for not speaking out against the endorsement.

“I’ve seen bullying by this character in The West Wing who is acting like a bully and a coward, he’s not being very manly. Let me put it that way,” Kennedy said. “If he were, he would confront me directly, rather than going after my wife, whom he knows and whom he knows does not support my decision.”

Hines had been vocal in her derision of Trump. The Curb Your Enthusiasm actress, in January, said she did not think her marriage “would survive” if her husband had become the Republican candidate’s running mate.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Beast, Kennedy opened up about the impact of backing Trump on his family, detailed his plans for the role he would play in a Trump administration and spoke about opposition efforts to dig into his storied past.

But, he dodged questions on whether he had spoken to his former running mate, Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s ex-wife Nicole Shanahan, who poured close to $19 million of her divorce settlement into the campaign. She has not endorsed Trump and instead said “I’m an INDEPENDENT American who is endorsing ideas, not a person or a party.” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The 70-year-old Kennedy became the first member of his clan to run for the presidency since his uncle Teddy in 1980—and the first in history not to run as a Democrat. But last month his campaign appeared to be in financial disarray.

Laure Andrillon/Reuters.

A series of members of his immediate family have vocally opposed his political aspirations and, while his daughter-in-law Amaryllis was his campaign manager, few members of the political dynasty have publicly spoken up for him.

Still, he told the Daily Beast that in fact half his family were behind him. “I love my family, I can disagree with them without hating them,” he added.

Days earlier, his older sister, Kerry, told MSNBC she was “outraged and disgusted” by his “gaudy and obscene embrace of Donald Trump.” On Aug. 24, five of his siblings called his support of the former president a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” in a signed statement.

“We all love each other, and there’s a lot of humor,” Kennedy added.

After the siblings crossed paths at the wedding of Mariah Kennedy Cuomo—daughter of Kerry Kennedy and her ex-husband, former New York gov. Andrew Cuomo—Kerry said her brother “knows my view and feelings very, very well.”

Despite his family’s concerns, Kennedy acknowledged that it is unclear if he would enter a Trump administration. The former president has made him an honorary co-chair of his transition team and although there has been speculation about Kennedy becoming secretary of Health and Human Services, he told the Beast that he had no commitment from Trump to offer him a cabinet role—which would be subject to Senate confirmation.

But Kennedy said he still had an agenda for governing. He would urge Trump to pardon controversial NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who lives in exile in Russia after leaking vast quantities of government secrets, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is now free in Australia after a plea deal ended his case earlier this year.

The self-described “Make America Healthy Again” candidate, who does not “trust experts,” also said he wanted to change the “emphasis at the NIH from drug development and infectious disease toward ending the chronic disease epidemic,” including what he called the “autism epidemic,” as priority action items.

Kennedy denies being anti-vax but has long supported debunked claims linking vaccines to autism. Critics will see his NIH comments as further evidence he is anti-vax—particularly his opposition to mandatory inoculation at a time when previously eradicated viruses including measles are on the rise in the U.S.

But, he claimed. “There’s nothing that I would do in office, for people who are happy with their vaccines, that would take that away from them. I don’t think any medical intervention should be mandated.

“These are things that the president can do that I will urge him to do,” he added.

Go Nakamura/Reuters

Despite having called Trump a “terrible human being” and the “worst president ever,” Kennedy claimed he and the former president are “unanimously in agreement” on one key issue: climate change.

“These are people who don’t want to see toxins dumped into our environment. They want to see toxins eliminated,” Kennedy said of the Trump family and team, but admitted that GOP nominee’s environmental record was “bad.”

During the former president’s first term, his administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. Actions to cut environmental regulation were estimated by researcher at New York University to likely cause 1.1 million asthma attacks from poor air quality each year and significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Trump himself has repeatedly referred to climate change as a “hoax.”

According to Kennedy however, even the former president’s son “considers himself a radical environmentalist.” Donald Trump Jr., who faces multiple allegations of illegal hunting and killed an endangered species of sheep during a hunting trip in Mongolia, also mocked studies which found air pollution disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic communities.

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Kennedy positions himself as a staunch ally of climate initiatives and was once a celebrated environmental lawyer with the National Resources Defense Council and other nonprofits. But he is also no stranger to backlash from environment and wildlife advocates.

Weeks after Kennedy admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park back in 2014, he now faces allegations that he chainsawed the head off a dead whale and brought the carcass home with him in 2004.

These controversies, he said, are part of having lived a “colorful life.”

“They could probably find a bear story every week if they look hard enough,” Kennedy added, echoing his “I’m not a church boy” response to being accused of forcefully groping a former babysitter. In July, Kennedy texted the now 48-year-old woman to apologize for “anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings.”

Like Trump, he also has ties to Jeffrey Epstein, having flown on the disgraced financier and sexual abuser’s private jet twice.

Kennedy was accused last week by best-selling author Kurt Anderson of being a drug dealer. He claimed the nephew of President John F. Kennedy sold him cocaine when they were both at Harvard University. Kennedy, who began using heroin as a teenager, did not deny Anderson’s allegation, and instead had “no comment.”

Thomas Machowicz/Reuters

While claiming that his past had been the subject of extensive opposition research, Kennedy alleged that the Democratic National Committee has “spent tens of millions of dollars lifting up every rock,” and interviewing every woman he has dated (a 2001 sex diary detailed his encounters, many of them sexual, with 37 women while he was married to his second wife.) He named one of the Democrats’ key operatives Lis Smith as leading the “team of negative researchers.”

“I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could vote, I could run for king of the world,” Kennedy said, repeating the closing anecdote of his presidential campaign announcement speech in 2023.

Still speaking of his failed White House bid in the present tense, he told the Beast, “I’m not running for Pope. I’m running for president.”

Read a full transcript of the Daily Beast’s interview with RFK Jr here.