National News
GLENDALE, Arizona — At his first major campaign rally for former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a crowd Saturday night that he was under investigation for his handling of a whale carcass many years ago.
Kennedy, who endorsed Trump last month after ending his independent bid for president, said on the event in Glendale, Arizona, that he had received a letter from a national fisheries institute “saying they were investigating me because I collected a whale specimen 20 years ago.” He suggested the investigation was politically motivated and said he believed he was protected by the statute of limitations.
The whale incident got here to light this summer after Kennedy admitted that he had left a dead bear cub in New York City's Central Park as a joke in 2014. This drew attention to an article from Town & Country from 2012 In it, his daughter Kick Kennedy said Kennedy once used a chainsaw to saw off the top of a dead whale off the shore of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and made the five-hour drive to her home in Mount Kisco, New York, with the top strapped to the roof of a minivan.
The mention of the investigation was an odd moment in a campaign rally through which Kennedy was each urging his supporters to support Trump and continuing to attempt to sell his own policies on health and environmental issues – now with a fresh MAGA coat of paint.
“Make America healthy again!” shouted Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who promotes a disproven link between vaccines and autism, to the applause of a whole bunch within the Arizona Christian University gymnasium. “He's going to end the chronic disease epidemic and he wanted my help to do it.”
As Kennedy considered whether to finish his candidacy, he approached Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump to see in the event that they would offer him a Cabinet post. The Harris team declined to fulfill with him, but he found a sympathetic ear in Trump, despite the proven fact that that they had exchanged insults as rivals. While the previous president has not promised Kennedy a Cabinet post, he has hinted that he would work with Kennedy on a task force on chronic health issues.
At the event, where he appeared alongside former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, one other former Democrat, Kennedy attributed the country's political polarization to “hypnosis and a psychological operation” orchestrated by those in power.
Last month, the political arm of the Center for Biological Diversity, a progressive environmental group, sent a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calling for an investigation into the whale incident, arguing that Kennedy can have broken conservation laws.
Removing body parts from a protected marine animal is against federal law so long as there remains to be “soft tissue” on the carcass.
On stage on the rally, Kennedy said he received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute shortly after endorsing Trump. Kennedy could also be referring to the National Marine Fisheries Service, commonly referred to as NOAA Fisheries, which oversees marine conservation. Representatives from NOAA Fisheries didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Kennedy said on the rally that he had responded to his potential whale researchers, accusing the federal government of allowing offshore wind farms that will kill whales on a large scale. Trump has also provided no evidence to support this claim.
When asked in regards to the investigation after the rally, Kennedy declined to supply further details, calling the subject “gossipy nonsense.”
image credit : www.boston.com