Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has blamed a brain worm for past cognitive issues, is now insisting President Donald Trump is an “empath.”
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Saturday, the health secretary delivered a full-throated defense of the president—one that sounded less like political alignment and more like a total character rewrite.
“President Trump is exactly the opposite of everything that I believed him to be,” Kennedy told the crowd.
“I basically drank the Kool-Aid—that he was this bombastic narcissist who didn’t read books and was ill-informed. But now I know the exact opposite," he said.
“He’s an empath.”
Kennedy didn’t stop there.
He also marveled at Trump’s supposed intellectual range, claiming he has “encyclopedic, molecular knowledge” of everything from Broadway to Wall Street.
To illustrate his point, he recounted a moment on the campaign trail when Trump allegedly flipped over a placemat mid-flight and drew a “perfect map of the Mideast,” complete with troop levels along each border.
“I think Donald Trump understands the use of power better than probably any president that we’ve had, maybe in American history,” Kennedy said.
He also invoked his own family legacy, suggesting that both his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, would have supported Trump’s decisions on Iran and Ukraine.
“I think that if they were around today, that they would be making the same kind of choices that President Trump is.”
That kind of fawning isn’t new in Trumpworld. If anything, the louder the praise, the more it tends to signal trouble behind the scenes, and some signs suggest that might be the case for Kennedy.
On Saturday’s edition of Inside Trump’s Head, Trump biographer Michael Wolff said the president has been quietly calling his allies to ask blunt questions about Kennedy.
“I know that he’s been calling around and saying to people, you know, ‘I hear people say, Bobby is crazy. You think he’s crazy?’” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “And you know the answer he wants.”
Kennedy’s tenure has been dogged by controversy, particularly over vaccines, where medical groups and public health experts have accused him of pushing unfounded claims and undermining long-standing guidance.
Even within the administration, there have been concerns that his policies could become a political problem heading into the midterms.
Of course, none of that came up at CPAC. Instead, Kennedy used the moment to lean all the way in, ditching any remaining distance and embracing Trump with the kind of glowing praise reserved for the president’s most loyal inner circle.
Kennedy was met with swift ridicule online, with critics zeroing in on the more fantastical details.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office joined the pile on, posting a meme on X of Watchmen‘s Doctor Manhattan calmly declaring “I made it up” in response to a demand for a source.
