RFK Jr. Admits to Roseanne Barr That He Dumped a Dead Bear Cub in Central Park

By Jacob Weindling  |  August 5, 2024 | 9:25am
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
Elections RFK Jr.
RFK Jr. Admits to Roseanne Barr That He Dumped a Dead Bear Cub in Central Park

Usually headlines where every word is crazier than the previous one are reserved for Donald Trump and his extended cinematic universe, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has mounted a serious challenge to his throne of the most unhinged politician of this era. This is a story that actually was reported on at the time ten years ago—by one of John F. Kennedy’s granddaughters, Tatiana Schlossberg—but no one knew who dumped the bear cub in Central Park. I used to joke with a co-worker at Paste during the Trump years that we live in a simulation that is actively messing with us, and this story is yet another data point supporting that theory.

The New Yorker report is out today, and it does confirm the story RFK Jr. told in the bizarre video with Roseanne he released ahead of it.

He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

What else is there to say? My role here has been completely diminished. I can’t write anything that’s more hyperbolic than RFK’s admission, and how do you make fun of someone who posed with the dead bear cub and then joked that’s where he got his actual brain worm from? I’ve been check-mated!

So congratulations RFK, in what is already the craziest post-1968 presidential election, you have somehow managed to set a new bar for insanity. History will remember this summer as one filled with Earth-shattering news like the near-assassination of a presidential candidate, the self-immolation of another on a debate stage, and a third playing spoiler with a worm in his brain and a dead bear cub in his trunk. If you ever find yourself wondering, “how can politics get any dumber and crazier,” RFK Jr. has proven that so long as he is around, there is nothing that is off the table.

 
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