Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy denies ever having tasted dog meat after a photo surfaced of him holding the charred carcass of an animal.
Vanity Fair premiered on Tuesday with a deep dive into Kennedy’s long history of “reckless” behavior, recounting his drug use and sexual assault allegations.
As an example, the story noted how Kennedy had sent the photo in question to a friend last year, recommending that he try a restaurant in South Korea that serves dog meat — an image that could easily derail a presidential campaign.
The magazine said that The veterinarian identified the animal as a dog because it had a “floating rib” characteristic of canines.
The photo’s metadata shows it was taken in 2010, the same year Kennedy contracted brain worm.
On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published an article claiming that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had sent a photograph to a friend of himself pretending to devour a roast dog in Korea. Kennedy said it was a goat in Patagonia.
On Tuesday afternoon, RFK Jr. rejected claims that he ate dog meat, saying the story was meant to “distract us from President Biden’s cognitive deficits.”
On Tuesday afternoon, RFK Jr. posted on X saying that the gray-haired animal was not a dog but a goat and that the photo was not from Korea but from Patagonia.
He gave the same explanation during an appearance Tuesday afternoon on Fox News.
“Hey @VanityFair, you know that when your veterinary experts call a goat a dog and your forensic experts say a photo taken in Patagonia was taken in Korea, you’ve joined the ranks of the supermarket tabloids,” Kennedy wrote.
“Keep telling America that up is down if you want. I’ll keep talking about the fact that working families can’t afford to buy a home or food because our last two presidents embarked on a $14 trillion debt journey, paid for by hard-working Americans,” the independent continued.
“The DNC’s junk journalism may distract us from President Biden’s cognitive deficits, but it does little to elevate the national debate or reduce food prices,” he added.
The Vanity Fair article goes on to suggest that Kennedy may have contracted the brain worm in 2010 from the “dog.”
The candidate said he believed he contracted the tapeworm through food he ate, although it is unclear where he ate that food.
At one point, Kennedy suggested he had contracted the parasite in India, while the campaign more vaguely noted his extensive travels in “Africa, South America and Asia.”
In a divorce petition filed with his late ex-wife Mary Richardson, Kennedy said the tapeworm ate away at part of his brain, causing him to experience “mental fog” that diminished his earning potential.
Relatives interviewed by Vanity Fair were skeptical of this explanation.
They noted that RFK Jr. had been using heroin for 14 years.
‘A Kennedy has circulated a National Institutes of Health report on the impact of long-term heroin abuse, which hypothesizes that the damage can alter brain physiology, “creating long-term imbalances in neural and hormonal systems that are not easily reversed” and “that can affect decision-making skills, the ability to regulate behavior and responses to stressful situations,” the journal’s Joe Hagan wrote.
Kennedy acquired the habit at age 15 and was unable to kick it until he was 29.
‘At Harvard in the mid-1970s, Kennedy regularly injected speedballs, a mixture of heroin and cocaine, and became a pied piper to his friends and family, shooting up regularly with his troubled brother David Kennedy, according to several friends at the time,’ Hagan continued.
Kennedy has used his experience as a recovering drug addict to argue that he can better manage the country’s drug crisis.
But savoring dog meat may be going too far.
The American public has not been kind to politicians involved in dog-related scandals.
Now Sen. Mitt Romney saw his 2012 White House bid hampered after it was reported he had strapped the family dog’s crate to the roof of his car for a multi-hour road trip.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem appears to have been exiled from former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential bid after admitting to shooting her dog.
And the White House has had to answer questions about why two of President Joe Biden’s dogs, Major and Commander, were allowed to stay after a series of biting incidents.
DailyMail.com reported last month that the Secret Service destroyed a video showing the Commander-in-Chief biting an agent, prompting tours of the White House to be halted for 20 minutes so the blood could be cleaned up.