Behind the Bastards - Part Three: The RFK Episodes

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Robert and Cody discuss RFK Jr's days as a professional rat-eater and explorer, and then things get weird.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oh What's cold my open it well, that doesn't sound very good at all Cody come on in here help me out with this I feel like I'm floundering here. What's intro my induction? How's it going everybody? What a pro what a pro just knocked it out of the park Cody welcome to my show D Behind the bastards a, a podcast. Thank you, Dee. Cody, all about him. Cody, it has been an eventful news week

since we started the RIK Junior episodes. It really has. Yeah. I didn't realize that until we hopped on again how much had truly happened since last we recorded. I was like, hey, Cody, remember when we recorded the day before former president Trump had an assassination attempt on his life?

It was the day before. When was the day before? And then it kept going, the news just kept going. Yeah, the news kept going. It was attempted assassination attempt, RNC, woohoo, JD Vance, what a weird guy. Yeah, JD Vance, fuck the couch, all the hits. Then it was Jovid and then it was Jover.

And now we're here, K-Hive. Kamala awakening. K-Hive. And now it's the Kamalu age, I don't know. Yeah, the K-Hive's glorious return, I guess. What a wild time. So I don't know. Yeah, the the K-Hive's glorious return, I guess. What a wild time. So I don't know. We'll see what what next week brings. Who knows? I mean, maybe tomorrow or today something will happen.

Maybe maybe maybe things will just never stop happening now. Yeah, maybe things are always going to keep happening. Yeah, fuck. I don't even know what else to say about it. But you know who understands the way our current national feeling of whiplash and just like mind-dulling shock is a guy who has been going through it longer than we have, RFK Junior. Junior.

FK Junior. Junior. Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then, a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others forever, rippling out for generations. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known

as Deah, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Deah's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events. Hear the story on Where's Deah? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I sat down to write these episodes basically when I was on the plane to the RNC right after Trump had been shot and like the whole, the jarring nature of just that, which was several twists in the national story ago, made me think of RFK Jr. Obviously, the obvious reason would be that he lost his dad during a presidential campaign because an assassin shot him, right?

Well, yeah, assassination attempts, I think, just make you think of Kennedy's. Right, right, obviously. And yeah, it kind of continues, you know, that campaign, they had to find a new guy to run, didn't wind up working out well in this case. And it kind of continues these weird distorted, maybe reversed echoes of 1968 that this whole

election has where it's like it's a lot like 68 but not. It's so interesting how it's so like it, but so not. Yeah. Mostly, I thought of RFK Jr. because the whole sorted business is was clear. Like everything that happened to Trump, like everything detailed that's come out about the Cory comparator, the guy who died instead of Trump, it's really clear evidence of the severe, maybe terminal brain rot at the heart of this country.

You know, not just our fetishistic love of guns, although that's a part of it, or all the conspiracy theories, but the casual derangement of even regular everyday people, the warping of sense and sensibility that you have to endure not only as part of life here, but to like survive in the United States. In the first comments I made to my own posts on the assassination,

I saw people theorizing that it was a false flag, that one of my favorites, and I think we're even past this now, was that Trump had bladed himself slicing his own ear with a hidden razor like a wrestler. And then on the right-wing side, obviously, people immediately decided to blame the female Secret Service agents on Trump's team because DEI, right?

Really, really, really America. You mean the women after he was already shot at? After he was shot at. Yes, yes. Solid point, Shody. He immediately, he thanked during his speech because obviously you're not gonna talk shit about your bodyguards. Yeah, that would be a bad move.

But what's really going on with all of this is that reality has fractured entirely in this country. The shooting of Donald Trump was a prism and the color of light that we run through that prism and the direction we shoot at it is gonna determine what comes out the other end. We're living in like reality a la carte. You and me and everyone we know

we're in the process of coping with this and we're doing mixed jobs of it. But RFK Jr. has spent his entire life pretty much in this space, right? For him, reality fractured back in 1968 and there's never really been any chance of fixing what's broken. We've already discussed a few of the ways

that he started coping with this brokenness as a young man. Some of these ways were not unhealthy. He leaned into his hobbies, even if they are crazy rich guy hobbies. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, he leaned into his hobbies. Describe the hobbies first, before you. They're baffling, yeah, they're unhinged hobbies, but they are hobbies.

It's true, hobbies are important. He and his friends used humor to help themselves cope and find control in the chaos, which is not a bad way to deal with it. But he also turned to drugs to cope. And when you've got a fracture, a fractured bone or a fracture of reality, nothing covers up the pain like heroin.

Bobby was using heroin and any other narcotic he could get his hands on by the time he got to Harvard. And that was not his only coping tactic for dealing with the pain and uncertainty of a world that for him had never been quite sane. Lim Billings remained his primary adult authority figure and anchor to sanity. Now, Lim legitimately cared about him, which put Bobby ahead of a lot of his fellows, but Lim also wanted him to be the new JFK,

and Bobby wanted to oblige him. JFK had first risen to superstardom by dent of his perceived tremendous heroism as the captain of PT-109. That heroism had already helped drive another Uncle Joe to an early grave. But Lim felt that for Bobby to have a chance of taking on that mantle, he needed to do something brave,

something that would just as crucially let him make the news for being brave. And I'm gonna quote again from Oppenheimer's book here as to what they decided to do. In the summer of 1974, before Bobby began his junior year at Harvard, Lem Billings proposed that they explore the very isolated and dangerous Apurimac River in southern Peru, an adventure that Billings had convinced Bobby would engrave his name alongside that of his father and his uncle Jack in terms of bravery and daring.

Several of his school chums went along, as well as David Kennedy, and they benefited from the best guides and equipment that money could buy. But there's a fairly low ceiling on how safe a journey like this could be, right? Like you're going to be in danger, even if you have the money for the best equipment. And Bobby immediately gets dysentery, and his dysentery is exacerbated, as Oppenheimer writes,

by his refusal to eat anything but the weirdest shit he could find. Quote, including boiled rat pulling out the eyes from the dead rodent's head and popping them into his mouth. Billings who idolized Bobby did the same. Bobby could also kill a chicken for food in a split second by snapping its neck

between two of his fingers. And he had the ability to drink half a bottle of beer then press his hand down on the bottle's mouth, making the thick glass bottom fall out. Bobby, what are you doing? What is this? What is going on? Like what is this life you've decided?

Just like, what a sicko. What a sicko. He's not even a weirdo, he's a sicko. It's like, yeah. Baffling? Yeah, there's just like a level here that's, it's not even like, you're like, oh, you're up here. It's parallel.

You've escaped here and you've gone sideways to just this other world that is, well, did it cure his dysentery, eating the rats? I don't think it cured his dysentery, Cody. I do think it, again, I think it explains the worm. I was gonna say, like, when you were like, he decided, they decided to do something dangerous. I was like, so they decided to give him a brain worm.

They were just like, Bobby, get in there. We're gonna put this in your brain. Yeah, we're gonna live on the river eating rats. That's great, like, yeah. Like, voluntarily getting a fucking brain worm put in your skull. It's America will love you Bobby if you live on the river and eat rad eyes Some Americans will so funny So they brought with them on this journey down the river in Peru a variable medicine cabinet full of drugs Which a doctor had given them to accommodate potential illnesses

medicine cabinet full of drugs, which a doctor had given them to accommodate potential illnesses. Bobby put himself in charge of the trip's medicine cabinet and mostly he spent the trip downing every bit of morphine and every opiate that they had been given. Now, having been, I've had dysentery before and I would have taken morphine if I'd had the opportunity, but his friends were frustrated

because when they were sick and they asked for medicine, he would tell them, nah man, we gotta save the drugs for emergencies Well, he's not wrong But the thing is a true lie that he said yeah, it's a true lie that's where that movie came from Uh-huh RFK rats holding out on his friends in the jungle. Mm-hmm. So David became kind of like in the in the dark with the reporters being like no eat the rat slowly So David was unsettled by his brother's behavior in the jungle, but cousin Chris Lawford was amazed.

He considered this trip they were taking such a JFK worthy act that he started referring to Bobby as Jack and Lim, Lim is like, yes, call him Jack. No, that makes it worse. That makes it so much worse. You're ruining him. You're destroying this man.

This is like the most brain damage I can imagine giving a young man. Just like popping him full of drugs and calling him Jack. Like that's not good for him. Doing a heart of darkness to turn him into his uncle. God. What do you expect?

I can't, just like no chance this guy. No fucking chance. You, you gotta remember, he's incredibly good looking as a young man. He's got that Kennedy good looks. And so his friends, he's very photogenic. His friends take pictures of Bobby like fording rivers and doing these insane whitewater rapids rides and everything.

And they get into the news because he's a Kennedy, right? Anything he does is newsworthy. And people are so excited by these pictures of Bobby Kennedy Jr. looking hot on the river, like a little adventurer, that it draws the attention of a forward-thinking TV executive who like sees these and is like,

oh, there's potential here. Cody, you wanna guess the name of that TV executive? Oh no, is it an Ailes kind of guy? It's Roger Ailes. It is, it's literally Roger Ailes. It is, it most certainly is. Oh, well, good for that relationship to blossom. Who else could it have been?

Who else could it have been, I know, but my god, alright. There's three guys in the whole world. There are three people. There are three people. The world has three guys and they just bounce around. Now, the future father of Fox News was at this point consulting for TVN, a prototype conservative news network funded by the air to the Coors beer fortune.

This all culminated in a TV show, their relationship, Ailes and Bobbies, on a TV show about Bobby's next adventure. This time it was- Rattloy on the river with Bobby. No, they were gonna put him in Africa. They were gonna do a safari in Africa with Bobby Kennedy Jr. titled The Last Frontier.

Some of the details of this are interesting. Bobby was a smoker, but he refused to be filmed smoking on camera because he felt that public figures shouldn't smoke. He at this point claimed he didn't wanna be, he accepted that he was a public figure, but he didn't wanna have a political career, which given what happened to his uncle and his dad, makes complete sense.

He told this to Ailes during an interview. People with advantages in our society can use them to change the system and help large groups of people. The more they have advantages, the more they can help and the more they should help. So that's his attitude at this point in his life, right? Sure. I mean, I appreciate his position on public figures not smoking cigarettes.

He understands, yeah, this is a tacit endorsement and I can make my decision, but I don't know. Yeah, I shouldn't push it on kids or use the level of cool that I have by virtue of being a Kennedy to make this seem neat. And knowing I'm a Kennedy, got all these advantages and privileges and stuff, I should use them to help people.

And that's right on. You should maybe talk to somebody other than Roger Ailes. Maybe don't talk to Roger Ailes about this. He might not be the guy to help. But you get where he comes from here. You also get where this can lead in toxic directions, right? Cause like the idea that, you know, to whom much is given, much is owed,

there's a degree of sense in that, but it also leads to this noblesse oblige idea that like, well, we're the natural ruling class, you know, America needs me running things. He's not there yet, but that's where he's going to head. From what I can tell, he did fine on camera. He was a good like person to film, I guess, but he claims he didn't really enjoy the work.

Quote, I'm no actor. If we had to do a second take, I just fell apart. It was fun though. I knew I didn't have to adapt to this environment in Africa. I wasn't stuck somewhere that I couldn't get out of. It was sort of like Harvard students working in a factory and playing blue collar workers for a while. I don't know if it's how like that it is.

I mean, well, right. Like it's like in that example, it's like, oh, you're like kind of faking like, you're this person, you're doing this thing. Like you're like, you're like that. But like this guy's hawking by like rancid meat. Like, yeah, this isn't like, he's not cosplaying as a weirdo who does this, right?

He does come by the eating bushmeat, honestly. Bushmeat and morphine. Yeah. That's his breakfast of champions. He's not, you know, there's no pretending there. That's just pure Bobby. That is pure Bobby. Speaking of Harvard though,

Bobby was not a student who did very well, right? There's not a lot to write home about in terms of his academic performance. But in 1975, while he is entering his twenties and starting on the path to becoming a lawyer and adventuring in his part-time, one of his cousins probably, but not definitely committed a murder.

Cody, there's another swing here, right? There always are. There's a lot of deaths and scandals within the Kennedys. And most people just know about the big ones, but boy, there's a lot. Now, we're not gonna cover all of them, but this one is extremely relevant because Bobby is going to put himself

in the middle of this case as an adult. So the victim here was the daughter of another wealthy prominent family who lived near the Kennedy compound, 15 year old Martha Moxley. And I'm going to quote from an article in the New York Times here. Martha Moxley, 15, fails to show up at home after roaming her neighborhood in Greenwich with her friends. Her body is found bludgeoned and stabbed, half hidden beneath pine trees. A broken golf club is found nearby, believed to have been used in the killing. The murder

rattles the town, which is considered extremely safe. Nearly two years after the teenager's death, many Greenwich residents wonder why a broad police investigation has yielded no arrests. Martha was last seen alive on the lawn of a friend, Thomas Scackel, 17, Michael's older brother. The brothers are nephews of Ethel Scackel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy. The police traced the golf club used in the killings to the collection of the Scackel family.

Thomas and another young man are considered suspects, though both passed lie detector tests." So that's fucked up, right? Now, Bobby's not involved at all in this at this point, right? He's not gonna be involved for years, but I needed, this is kind of when this happens chronologically in the Bobby Kennedy story.

And I'll need you to remember Martha Moxley because this whole case is going to become very relevant later. So later in 1975, the same year that this happened, Bobby got involved in his first political campaign. Not as a candidate, but helping his college buddy, Peter Shapiro, win election to the local assembly in New Jersey. Bobby mostly knocked on doors, but Shapiro would later claim that his mere presence got

the news attention. And is probably what cinched him the election, right? I got elected because I had a Kennedy on my back and like that still holds a lot of water. In 1976, Bobby was in his final year at Harvard and he picked as the subject for his thesis, recent historical and political changes in Alabama. Governor George Wallace, the segregation forever guy had just been shot and paralyzed in an assassination attempt. Bobby recalled later being shocked to find that the poor white working class people

who'd been the backbone of his uncle's presidential victory had shifted political allegiances, right? Basically like, wow, these different states that used to be the stronghold of the Democratic Party when my dad was in charge, they all seem to be very racist now, what could have possibly happened? How do we solve for this? There's no political theory about that.

No, no, no, no one's spent a lot of time studying. And then Bobby, eventually he's gotta find out how to get those people back on his side, unfortunately. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Bobby and his friend, Peter Kaplan, even wound up interviewing Wallace for the thesis. Although Oppenheimer speculates that Bobby didn't actually write the thesis.

He thinks that Bobby had Peter do it for him, which is exactly how Bobby works, right? It's good enough that I attach my name to this. I don't actually have to sit down and write the goddamn thing, right? Someone else can. People just need to see a Kennedy's. Exactly, he's a Kennedy.

We don't do our own things. Plus he's too busy hawk-toeing. Oh God, what? Hawk-toeing. Sophie, that joke was relevant two weeks ago. We've moved on past that. I'm still at the restaurant, which is a joke you don't also get.

That was one attempted assassination ago. least, that was one attempted assassination ago. Yeah, that was one attempted presidential assassination ago. We're past it. I wonder if the Hawk Tooie girl had something to do with shooting Trump. I know she did. Not impossible. Not impossible, yeah. But you know- Yeah, because we know

she's a Biden stand now, so. But Robert, you know what? Check out my blog. You know what is possible? That it's time for ads. It possible? That it's time for ads. It is possible that it's time for ads. I can't guarantee that. I can't prove it. I just have a gut feeling in my heart,

deep down inside me, that it might be time for ads. It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks. Two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. But this isn't his story.

It's a human story, one that I've become entangled with. I saw, as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and mine, changed forever.

It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom. And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch.

Our politikken. What does politikken even mean? There's bridging gaps. With no politics. Joined by their friend and agent, Doug Hendrickson, it's gonna be a wild ride. We can change the world. Podcast by podcast.

What are you talking about? Listen to politikken with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Poli-tickin' and start listening. In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months. Eventually, I found out what happened to the women. All except one. A woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Deah. Her friends and family ran through endless theories. Was she hurt hiking? Did she run away? Had she been kidnapped?

I'm Lucy Sherriff. I've been reporting this story for four years and I've been reporting this story for four years, and I've uncovered a tangled web of manipulation, estranged families and greed. Everyone, it seems, has a different version of events. Hear the story on Where's Dear, my new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen Heart podcasts. Listen on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We are back. So, RFK, you know, 1976 does his thesis and it's gonna be a couple years later

after he's out of college kind of doing law school. So he's graduated from Harvard that he's going to help in another election campaign. This one in 1980 is his Uncle Ted's re-election campaign. David Horowitz, future co-writer of the book, The Kennedys was with him for this. And even though Bobby had a girlfriend at the time, Horowitz later wrote, quote,

Bobby had a girl in every place. There were women there like moths to the flame. I just know that he was fucking everything in sight. By the end of the day, the rest of us were exhausted and Bobby was ill, had the flu or something, and all of us collapsed. But there was a girl waiting for him. I was younger then and I'm a healthy male, but I wouldn't have wanted just to go to bed with a strange woman. What is another fuck going to do for you? It was just insanity Compulsive nutty with him. Maybe in his mind. He was building this heroic myth He certainly couldn't have been getting a lot of pleasure when he was running over a 100 fever and looked really ill and was horse He had one girl who was a campaign worker. So he always had that one and one campaign event

He just went off to screw her So I think what's interesting about that, because Horowitz is kind of a slimy figure in this. He's writing this book, basically taking notes on his friend as they're doing this. But I'm interested in the fact that he's like, maybe he was having all of this casual sex with every woman he could find,

even when it did not make him happy, he was ill. Because he saw it as part of the myth, like his dad and his uncle are both these famous philanderers and he's like- He's New Jack, right? He's New Jack, right? I have to fuck everything that'll have me, right? I'm the New Jack and that's what Jack did.

Yeah, it's, I mean, he's trying to do that. Yeah, he's a New Jack City here. So Bobby also keeps using heroin heavily alongside Lynn Billings. Horowitz recalled that during Ted's campaign, they would drink heavily. And like one of the things they would do because there's no laws for Kennedy's,

he and his friends would all be in a motorcade together and they would be passing beer and cigarettes between each other's vehicles while driving. Horowitz wrote, that's the kinds of things Bobby did, perfectly illegal and crazy. And he did them because he was used to people keeping silent because nobody wants to be banished from the Kennedy magic circle and lose access. Right? He's just like breaking the law in dangerous ways to do it because he can. Yeah it's like a challenge. Yeah try and stop me. Try and stop me and if you if you have any issue with my behavior then you're out you're cut off

from the kennedys and nobody wants to be cut off from the kennedys that's the the most exciting thing you can be connected to. Yeah. God it's like it's like torn torn with so many of these stories. I'm like, that's pretty cool. But also like, don't do that. There is a cool aspect to it. Like, come on.

Yeah, but also like, don't do that. And obviously, you could have killed somebody. It's just like scumbag, rich kid behavior. Right. But it's funny. You get why Ted Kennedy had a chapiquitic, right? Exactly, yes. Where it's like, oh yeah, you people do not care

if you actually hurt somebody, right? Yeah. As long as it's not a Kennedy. Yeah. You don't really care that much about hurting a Kennedy. You're used to Kennedy's dying. Yeah, even then you're like, yeah, we've got so many. Yeah, we've got plenty of Kennedys.

Horowitz describes Bobby's heroin use at this time as accelerating due to his associations with Lim, who goaded him on with promises that he's gonna be like his uncle JFK in the future, right? We'll do heroin and talk about the fact that you're going to be the next Jack. I promise you're just gonna be like, God. Lim was doing, I love the way Horowitz writes this,

Lim was doing heroin with Bobby and shooting delusions up his ass that he would be president one day. Wow. He's on heroin, but the real heroin is his uncle's legacy. Right, right, then the words of encouragement are the real drug. Yeah, never encourage kids.

You might make them into this. God. Bobby went to UVA after Harvard to continue his studies, and he rented a room at a farm owned by the family of one of his friends. One of the women who lived there, Connie Dempsey, had serious issues with how RFK handled his animals, particularly with the fact that after moving away from Millbrook in the pit of rotting carcasses there, he continued to want to feed his hawk the grossest meat he could find.

Oppenheimer writes, he had built an outdoor cage on Dempsey's property to house his falcon, but he also chose to feed it disgusting roadkill that he stored in Dempsey's home refrigerator. We tried to encourage him to buy chickens for this purpose, but we weren't too successful. What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Like, like. He just loves roadkill. He just loves rotting carcasses. This fucking roadkill hawk, like dead rotting flesh thing is so fucking weird, man. Well, and. Like, of all the things. I'm gonna put it in their family refrigerator.

These people letting me live with them. It's not just like the rotting flesh thing which is weird but forcing it on everybody in his life yeah like in this aggressive way like it just has gotten it's too far it's too much at a certain age like I know like I your all these people are dying you know and like you're processing this go to the rotting flesh pit fine, but to carry that for so long and give it to everybody You can buy another refrigerator Here And this is you know we've talked a lot about how I think he has some legitimate skill with animals.

He has at this point, I think given that up to a degree because he's so unreliable in terms of where he is. Like he just leaves his dog with them. He leaves these animals with the people who are like taking care of him. There's always someone who will let him live with them because he's a Kennedy. And he kind of just abandons his animals to them repeatedly.

Does he go get them back? Like, is it like, oh, like, oh, I assume for a few weeks, then he'll, yeah, and I'll be back and then I'll be back. It creates problems. It's very weird. I want to read another quote from Oppenheimer. Well, he had taught the dimpsies and others in his UVA circle

He's going to UVA at this point how to handle his bird He had upset the horse loving dimpsy when he began riding with the Falcon on his arm Which upset the horse and made it crazy Like he just doesn't give a shit about how his actions affect anyone around him Yeah, yeah, which is also like it's not weird again. It's like this. Yeah. Sorry. Fucked up kid. I mean, this fucked up family. But it seemed like at least at the beginning, he'd like had an affinity for animals.

Like maybe he was going to transfer any like empathy or care or consideration. Yeah. Have he should have for like human beings and just be like, oh, I'll care about animals. But it doesn't seem like he does that either. Like, except for his hawk, I guess. It's like him and his hawk against the world a little bit. It's just me and my hawk. That's all I got. Gotta scare horses and cops with it.

Gotta have something. It's like, again, it's like, yeah, he's, you know, he's got hobbies and companions. Okay, describe the hobbies and companions. Yeah, are they healthy hobbies and companions for him to have? Maybe potentially, potentially, being a hot guy could be a healthy hobby.

Bobby always lets it go well past the point where it would be healthy. He's putting roadkill in his friend's refrigerators. That's the line. That's the line, Bobby. So after he concludes his time at law school and he goes to UVA, Bobby gets a job as an assistant district attorney

in Manhattan. And again, that's only a Kennedy could make that jump with the record that he's got, right? It's wild. Yeah. There's no way he even wants to do that. He's an assistant DA now. What are you doing?

No. And of course his drug use only escalates at the point at which he is the assistant DA of Manhattan. And he continues pushing drugs on his brother as kind of a hobby. Like getting his brother to do drugs is sort of like one of his pastimes, right? And I'm gonna quote from a Vanity Fair article here.

David Horowitz remembers Bobby being so cavalier that he cut lines of cocaine for his brother Michael Kennedy and allowed him to snort a line in front of the rider. Only then did he introduce Horowitz as a reporter. Horowitz also recalls that Kennedy asked him for a ride to Harlem to score trucks. He's such a piece of shit. Like you're in front of a reporter, man. You and your brother, you don't think any of this is gonna get reported on that you guys are doing cocaine? I mean, it seems like maybe he thought it was funny, right? Yeah, he definitely thinks it's funny.

Like, is this the brother he completely fucked with on acid, right? I think this is a different brother. Different brother, God. This is a different brother. So he's just a shitty brother. So easy. Okay. Yeah.

There's a lot of Kennedy brothers. It's hard for me to keep track of them sometimes, but yeah, but this is a different brother So Bobby takes the bar exam and fails it in 1983 And he has to he resigns from office not long after that He is clearly in a downward spiral at this point and shortly after failing the bar. He's taking a flight You know, he's always flying jetting around everywhere, right? He ever passed the bar Eventually, yeah, he gets he gets barred. He gets barred Not you're not on Xanax that might have helped him out, but he passes the bar

It's a very very very very difficult test Yeah, I yeah, I don't know Sophie It seems like he passed it Eventually, so maybe it's not that I think so. Maybe it's not that hard. I think so. Maybe it's not that hard. Maybe it's not that hard. Yeah, lawyers. If a worm can pass the bar.

Maybe a worm can pass the bar. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's what Gilded is puffeting Bobby through the bar exam. Exactly, he's got it to him. Poor son of a bitch used up all his energy. Oh man.

So he's on one of his many flights. I think he's heading to North Dakota for some goddamn reason. And as is usual, he's doing a lot of drugs and he heard. He got word like there's a pile of rotting meat there that you got. You got to check it out. Bobby, they call it the corpse capital of America. They do. They do. Oh, yeah.

So he gets sick, dope sick. He's like, I think, well, not dope sick, that's when you don't have heroin. He gets sick because he does too much heroin in the bathroom of a plane that has stopped in Rapid City. Or that has to, the plane has to stop because he's sick. Or just like sickness. I think he's OD'd.

Like that's what, yeah. That's what getting sick from too much heroin is, right, an overdose. That's what we call it. Yeah, I think he basically OD's in the bathroom of this plane and they have to divert the flight to Rapid City because Kennedy is now on the verge of death in the toilet.

We got another one, folks. Oh shit, another Kennedy's going down. It's bad luck to be a Kennedy on a plane. Such bad luck. Drive everywhere. You could have finished that sentence anyway. Like there's no wrong end to that sentence. No, no, you're right there.

So they have to divert the flight and as they're treating him, they search him and they found heroin on him, right? So he gets arrested and charged. He has been caught in possession of heroin on a fucking flight. Bobby gets ultimately sentenced to just two years of probation and community service, because again, Kennedy.

And this is the start of him seeking treatment for his drug issues. He does actually get better on that at this point. He is able to like get sober and stay that way. Not long after this. Um, yeah, so that's good. That's good. Is it sober like from heroin or just like sober?

I think he's just sober. I don't know. Maybe he has some champagne now and again, but I think he's basic. He kicks the drugs. Yeah. He seems like he does that. That's at least what the reporting you will read on this says. I have no reason to kicks the drugs. Yeah, he seems like he does. That's at least what the reporting, you will read on this, says, I have no reason to doubt the matter.

We will talk about what he, I think he replaces drugs. Replaces it, yeah. That's always the question. Yeah, that's, that'll come up, but, you know, the internet's not around yet, so. So the time and access that Bobby and Michael Kennedy had given David Horowitz and his co-author Collier would create another calamity for Bobby the next year. In 1984, an excerpt from the book, The Kennedys was published in Playboy as part of a PR blitz. Michael who had struggled the most personally as a result of the drug addictions that he

had accumulated with Bobby became the black sheep of the Kennedy family overnight because he broke Omerta, right? Like you're not supposed to talk about this shit with outsiders and he had talked about how fucked up the family was to these outside reporters. So they exile Michael basically, right? Yeah, you're not allowed to, we know, we see, they're fucked up. Yeah, we know what's going on with us. But like you can't, yeah, you can't admit

that you know that you're fucked up. How dare you talk about it? Yeah. I'm gonna quote from an article in Vanity Fair here. The time and access that Bobby and David Kennedy had given David Horowitz and his co-author Collier would create another calamity for Bobby the next year. In 1984, an excerpt from the book The Kennedys

was published in Playboy as a result of a PR blitz. David, who had struggled the most personally as a result of a PR blitz. David, who had struggled the most personally as a result of the drug addictions he'd accumulated with Bobby became the black sheep of the Kennedy family overnight. He has given away all of these secrets that you're not supposed to tell outsiders about the family. You're not supposed to let them in

to the inside Kennedy stuff, right? We know what's going on here, but you don't tell other people. So David has broken Omerta here. And I'm gonna quote again from Vanity Fair to talk about what happens next. The family turned on David Kennedy for airing the family's addiction secrets,

and he stayed in a separate hotel during a family gathering in Palm Beach. Bobby, David had told the book's authors, was our last illusion. The next day, David died of an overdose at age 28. Oh. So we're down another Kennedy. Yeah.

Yeah. They just can't catch a break other than being like, not really wealthy and powerful. They caught that break pretty solidly. They caught that break. It turns out there are other breaks that you need to catch to be a happy person. Yeah, turns out that break kind of exacerbates other breaks maybe. David does to catch to be a happy person. Turns out that break exacerbates other breaks.

That's very sad. It's a real bummer. It's not amiss to look at what happens to him as another chapter in the long history of the Kennedy Curse, but that curse seemed to skip Bobby over and the tragic death of David helped to catalyze the need for him to commit to sobriety. He starts attending AA meetings, and within a few years he's found a cause to throw himself and the weight of his Kennedy name behind.

An environmental charity called Riverkeeper. Now, Bobby gets a lot of praise for his involvement with Riverkeeper. This is legitimately some of the best stuff he does in his life. I should note at the top of this that he gets involved with Riverkeeper in the first place because he has 1500 hours of community service. So it's you wouldn't say that he just like found this because he was looking for meaning in his life. He is legally required to he was looking for something to fill that.

Yeah. Court mandated. Now, look, that doesn't mean he didn't do good things there, but it's just useful context, right? Well, let me ask you this. The time he spent with them, was it the mandated amount of time and that was it? No, no, no. Or did he continue working with them?

He does keep working with them. Yeah, he doesn't get no credit for what he does with this organization. It was more like, okay, the impetus to do this was this. Yeah, you'll go to prison if you don't. It's how he found the place, but he liked it and joined it and kept doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, he's working as an environmental lawyer now, and he's also kind of the figurehead of the organization. In that role, Bobby attacks corporate polluters, and he's actually very successful in helping to exact a real cost from big business bad actors. In this capacity, he plays a major role in forcing GM to pay $1.7 billion to clean up pollution their factories

had washed into the Hudson River. And that's a real penalty right there. You're not talking about- Yes, that is actually- Yeah, a slap on the wrist. You notice a missing 1.7 billion in the balance sheet. Yeah, the B makes a big difference. Usually it's, God, it's usually so much less than that. It's usually way less than that.

It's usually like $40. Usually it's like the amount they're like, well, we can do this because we're just gonna have to pay this and that's fine. We're still gonna make, yeah. Yeah, no, we can do this because we're just going to have to pay this and that's fine. We're still going to make. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're doing some damage at that point. Bobby and his partner at Riverkeeper also succeeded in going after Exxon.

And in his speeches and writing around this time, Bobby fits pretty seamlessly into the narrative of a left leaning environmental crusader going after conservative polluters, right? He is the lefty little guy, you know, standing up and fighting for the environment against the bad dudes from Ferngully, right? Like that's where he slots in at this point, right? In a book Bobby co-authored, he complains about right-wing stereotypes about environmental elitism

and the monopolization of resources for cash by special interests. Al Gore writes the forward of his book. So you can see him pretty firmly on like the liberal lefty side. You might even say like progressive left, right? Side of the political equation here, right? Yeah, that, that aggressive against corporations for these kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird how we got from there to here where we are today, but this is where he is at the

time. Yeah. So that trajectory makes sense to me still, but you know, it does. It does. He's actually an important role part of that whole national trajectory changing for a lot of people. As the nineties gave way to the 2000s, he was one of the most prominent Dems on the East coast

and widely seen as a potential candidate for higher office. Bobby like flirted with the idea of running for election, but he never quite managed to make anything happen. And you get writing from his, like in one of the books I read about him from 2015, you hear from like people who care about Bobby, thank God he didn't get into politics. We were really worried he was going to,

and I'm just so glad he's never run for president. Oh, yeah. That would be terrible. I mean, yeah. You can give advice to any candidate, it would be don't run for president. Don't get into politics. Don't get into politics, stay off planes.

Yeah, stay off planes, don't get into politics. And a new rule I would say for Kennedys, stay clear of rancid meat. Of avoid rancid meat. Just avoid rancid meat. Yeah, avoid rancid meat, probably heroin too. Probably heroin too, yeah. Just general advice that weirdly applies

also to specifically the Kennedys. Yeah. But that's good, I mean it's good to find your place in some position where you feel like you're doing something. Sure, we're not. And you make a difference and you have meaning, but you're not necessarily in politics in that way. So good for him for a while.

While Bobby seemed to be a model for recovery and a human repost against the notion that the Kennedys were doomed, the family curse continued. His cousin, William Kennedy Smith, had been tried for but acquitted of rape in the early 1990s. His other brother, Michael, was revealed to be sleeping with an underage person working as his babysitter, and then Michael died in a skiing accident in Aspen in 1997. His older brother, Joseph's ex-wifewife wrote a tell-all memoir about him

that scuttled his bid for the governor's chair in Massachusetts. And then in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., believed by many to be the future president, crashed his plane into the ocean near Martha's Vineyard. The 90s are rough for the Kennedys. You thought the 60s were bad, Jesus. Some of those, yeah, just didn't,

you don't even absorb them all you're not you're like Oh, yeah Like JFK jr. Is like the big one that you think of when you think of the 90s and the canadies but like damn That's so much. Yeah I assume we'll talk about babysitters a little bit later We are going to talk about babysitters, but you can see how by by like 2000 you could you could think Bobby's the one the curse skipped over. Right?

Like he's doing a lot, like compared to the rest of his family, yeah, he had that little brush with heroin, but he got over it. Wow. He's really doing great. He got over it in the seventies. Yeah, yeah.

He's been over it for a while. He's doing something that matters in the world. He's doing great. Yeah, he is not doing great. That is all, there's more going on under the surface than you would want to say. And we'll get back to that. But first Cody, you know what also has more going on

than you'd guess? Wow. My guess is either products and services or the stuff that I do online. Yeah, yeah, both of those things. Products and I do online. Yeah, yeah. Both of those things, products and codeys. Here they are. It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic

Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks. Two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. But this isn't his story, it's a human story. One that I've become entangled with. I saw as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and mine, changed forever.

It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom. And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 2020, in the small mountain town of Idlewild, California, five women disappeared in the span of just a few months. Eventually, I found out what happened to

the woman. All except one. A woman named Lydia Abrams, known as Dea. Her friends and family ran through endless theories. Was she hurt hiking? Did she run away? Had she been kidnapped? I'm Lucy Sherriff. I've been reporting this story for four years, and I've uncovered a tangled web of manipulation, estranged families, and greed. Everyone, it seems, has a different version of events. Hear the story on Where's Dear, my new podcast from Pushkin Industries and I Heart podcasts. Listen on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This could be the craziest podcast pairing ever. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Super Bowl champ, Marshawn Beast Mode Lynch, are politikin'. What does politikin' even mean? There's bridging gaps. With no politics. Joined by their friend and agent Doug Hendrickson,

it's going to be a wild ride. We can change the world podcast by podcast. Are you talking about the world? Listen to politikken with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search politikken and start listening. We're back. So we talked a little earlier about Martha Moxley,

who was bludgeoned to death with a golf club by somebody in 1975. Michael Skakel, a Kennedy cousin, was blamed because they found one of his family's golf clubs by the scene and he had been around there. Now, the evidence linking him to this crime isn't great. Like I think there's enough there that I think it's likely he did it,

but it's not in court terms, especially when you have Kennedy money, it's not perfect. He is, however, eventually brought to trial. It takes a long time. He's brought to trial and found guilty in 2002. I was gonna say, yeah, it took a long time. It takes a long time. He's brought to trial and found guilty in 2002. I was going to say it took, yeah, a long time. Takes a long time. And he goes on to serve 11 years of a 20 year

sentence. Now, one of the major pieces of evidence in favor of conviction was that Skakel had attended the Alon school, subject of a recent of a BTB episode. This is one of those like troubled teen boarding schools where you send your kids to be hideously abused. Right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The description of those like troubled teen boarding schools where you send your kids to be hideously abused, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the description of those schools.

Yeah, we did two episodes on the Elan schools. Michael is said people who went to school with him were like, he admitted to the murders during group. We would have these group sessions where we talk about the bad stuff we did. And for most kids, it's like I smoked pot, you know, in my parents' golf house or whatever. And with him, he's like, yeah,

I beat a lady to death with a golf club. It's not funny. It's just, the Kennedys are so much extra than everyone else. Oh yeah, no, like there's a dark laugh that you can take from that. Yeah, Jesus Christ. What?

But like, what a horrific- It's awful, yeah. place to be in life. Yeah. God. Yeah. So that all comes out, he gets convicted in 2002. And as soon as he gets convicted, RFK Jr. Who is again at this point, looks like the hero at Kennedy

bounds onto the scene, trying to defend his cousin by attacking the witnesses in a very Trumpian fashion. And also in a fashion that's going to become increasingly associated with Bobby Kennedy Jr. He embraces a conspiracy theory. Sorry, I'm just imagining RFK outside the houses of the witnesses with his hawk in the darkness. Just like you see the silhouette and he's got the hawk

and you start to smell like, is that rancid meat? You're smelling rancid meat at night. And he's like- Is that the carcasses of hundreds of cows? Is that rancid meat, Cody? And the answer is yes, it is, sorry. So in what's gonna increasingly become a thing for him, he embraces a conspiracy theory.

And in this specific conspiracy theory, it's that Martha had been murdered, not by his cousin, but by a group of black men. And I'm gonna quote from the New York Times. In 2003, Gatano Bryant, a former classmate of Mr. Skakel and a cousin of the basketball star, Kobe Bryant, came forward with information that he and the two teenagers had been in the exclusive

Bellhaven section of Greenwich on October 30th, 1975, the night of the murder. Mr. Bryant said that he had left early, but the other two stayed behind and told him they wanted to attack a girl, caveman style. Both men have denied any involvement and prosecutors have called accusations against them baseless. I am dead certain they did it, Mr. Kennedy said in an interview in Bedford, but people should read up the facts and meet and make up their own mind So yeah, Kobe Bryant's family gets into the case. I should note that this guy claims to be Kobe Bryant's cousin Oh, right. Not really Yeah, I should I should cuz I was like wait a second. I think this might be that guy surely He claims to be the cousin. I don't know if you somebody weird guys. So there's

asterisk asterisk asterisk No confirmation claims he was with these guys who said basically said we're going to brutally murder a white woman Right like what are you doing Bobby? What is this like? Yeah, like what the fuck when like when Bobby says like look at the facts woman. Right. Like, what are you doing, Bobby? What is this? Like, yeah. Also, like, what the fuck? When like when Bobby says, like, look at the facts, what is he referring to? Like, what? Just like the what are the facts that he's referring to?

Just that they were in town. Yeah. Yeah. What what counts as the facts in this case? So was it the golf club club, Bobby? Like what are you talking about? Golf clubs even more than your cousin now caveman style Says that fucking talks like that you fucking freak. Yeah Kennedy right like to defend his cousin he gets to because he's a Kennedy he gets to write an article for the Atlantic if you want to

Know how reliable the Atlantic can be. And it's a crazy long article. Like he writes basically a goddamn novella for the fucking Atlantic in which he throws out baseless allegations to defend his blood at the expense of victims and their families. To continue from the New York Times, in addition to implicating the two teenagers in the murder,

Mr. Kennedy suggests involvement by others. They include the Skakel family's former tutor, Kenneth W. Littleton, who was granted immunity in exchange for testimony and had long been a suspect, and Mrs. Moxley's older brother, John Moxley, now 57, whose account of his whereabouts the night of the murder varied considerably over the years, Mr. Kennedy wrote. In separate phone interviews this week, Dortha Moxley, Mrs. Moxley's 84 year old mother said the book had left her at a loss for words, adding that she had never seen the truth so twisted

and manipulated in my entire life. She added that she still believed that Mr. Skakel was the one who swung the club. So he's reopened a wound for this lady, you could say. Yeah. Yeah. Very publicly and aggressively. Yeah. Is is the implication

that like. These. Guys did the murder and then like these other people he's talking about covered it up. I think the implication is like is it like they did it like he seems to

be accusing like a bunch of different unrelated people of this. Yeah, of like. So like what's the theory? Wanting to hide it. I don't understand what the theory would be, right? Okay, right. Like it's something that happens a lot with this stuff.

We talked, alluded briefly to the Trump assassination attempt but like stuff like, where there are always these people jumping to conclusions of like, oh, it's this conspiracy, this or this, this. And I'm always like, but what is the theory that you're saying? Like you're pointing to this person and this person and this event, but what do you think happened?

That's always what you should ask yourself with conspiracies. And it doesn't always, it's part of why I think some conspiracy theories, it's not unreasonable to buy into to a degree, right? Is there a logical line you could draw on why someone would want JFK dead? Why the CIA would have wanted him?

Sure, that's a, you can, you have a theory there with a motivation, right? Is there a logical reason why people would have wanted Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Yes, you don't have to like, you don't have to explain to someone why that might have wanted Jeffrey Epstein murdered. Yes, you don't have to like, you don't have to explain to someone why that might have happened. Right?

Right. Yeah. Yeah, and those lines are very clear, but you know, like you see people say like, they tried to kill Trump. Who's they? Who are you talking about? Like, what do you mean?

Why would they do it this way? Who benefits from this, like Trump and he didn't even benefit from it like and like yeah It's like just so many things like that where I'm like, but what do you mean? I say in Trump had a man shoot past his ear Did he blame himself like a wrestler? Did they want to spook him like they they got this kid who sucks at shooting and like like what do you what is your? What do you think

happened? Yeah. What, like, what do you think happened that is likelier than a 20 year old with an AR 15 did something crazy? Like yeah, like, I just don't know what they're saying happened. And this is another example of that where it's like, you're just like throwing all the stuff out. Yeah.

But like, if you look at all the pieces, who's involved with this? They don't fit, there's nothing that makes this fit together. I don't know why. Right. Like, yeah. Now, what I will say makes sense in this case is Bobby's obsession with freeing Michael because Michael is one of the members of the family

who's stuck by him after he got busted for drugs and helped him get sober. And I get that that's painful, Bobby, but your cousin probably murdered a young woman. And by backing him and attacking the people trying to get him, keep him in prison, Bobby has laid a clear line against the family of a victim. Yeah, and it's interesting.

Vanity Fair writes, quote, "'Bobby was the only Kennedy to defend Scackel, showing up twice to the Connecticut courtroom. Theories abound about why Kennedy felt compelled to defend Scackel, including speculation that Scackel was blackmailing him. According to one of Kennedy's diaries obtained by the New York Post,

he thought his cousin was delusional and paranoid, even as he publicly maintained that Scackel was innocent of the murder. So maybe Bobby is just doing this for his own skin. Maybe there's some darkness, and we have an idea of what that darkness might be as Bobby starts to get accused by more women of sexual harassment.

Maybe his cousin knew something about him and is like, look, you use your PR juice to try and get me out of this, or I will ruin your life that you've carefully built back up, right? I'll tell people the real Bobby. Maybe that's what happened. Yeah, like, yeah.

I mean, there's already, like, all the stuff we do know is fucked up. Yeah, there's a lot that's fucked up as it is. And he's like eluded many times to like, I've got like millions of skeletons in my closet. I've got skeletons in my closet. I've got skeletons in my closet. I got more skeletons than that fucking rotting corpse pit. Yeah, exactly.

And believe me, I got a lot of rotting corpse meat. Believe me, I know skeletons. Oh, if you need some, do you need some? Do you need some? Sorry, I know I had the side question, but do you need some rotting meat? Cause I have some. Do you want?

My whole trunk's full of it. Like it's funny you bring up rotting meat cause I've got a lot of it for you. I just can't give it away. No, I can't. There's no room in the fridge. The fridge is full of the rotting meat. There's no room in my friend's fridges.

Yeah. Oh. Kennedy money and Bobby's tireless legal advocacy eventually did pay dividends. In 2013, after about a decade behind bars, his conviction was overturned on technical grounds. In 2018, the Connecticut Supreme Court confirmed that he had received insufficient legal representation.

A new trial was ordered, but the prosecution chose to cut bait and he was not put back in or charged again. So I don't know where you want to portion that blame wise, because I think there's a chance he really believed that he was freeing an innocent man. But I don't know. Maybe not.

Probably in the evil column. Probably. Yeah. But no way to know. It's weird. I mean, it's weird how aggressive he was about it. And again, know. It's weird. I mean, it's weird how aggressive he was about it. And again, like his defense is weird, like his defense and like his explanation of the

alternative is like odd. So, yeah, we'll see. Well, I don't know. We won't see. Maybe we'll never know the answer. We won't. We won't see. We're going to talk about is a clear mark in the bad guy column. I'll't know. We won't see. Maybe we'll never know the answer. We won't see. The next thing we're going to talk about is a clearer mark in the bad guy column. I'll

say that. In late 1998, the Kennedys hired a babysitter, 23 year old, Eliza Cooney. She was interested in working as an environmental activist. And basically the idea is this will be part of your internship effectively. Like I will teach, you can shadow me, you can like learn how to do what I do as this powerful and beloved environmental lawyer But I need you to watch my kids right, you know, not a bad trade as as these things go But unfortunately Bobby doesn't really have any plan to give her to mentor her right? That's how he frames this like I need someone to watch my kids and I'll mentor you

That's not what I mean. That's what I someone to watch my kids and I'll mentor you. That's not what I mean. That's what I you assume. Like, that's not I like, you know, OK, get to watch the Kennedy's kids, whatever. But like, that's not like a legit deal or situation or like there's like that's already a shady. Yeah. But yes, thing to. Yes. Move over like, by the way, what?

Like, that's weird. Yeah. So basically, she comes over, they're having a meeting with another person at Riverkeeper. And as they're sitting around the table talking business, she feels Kennedy's hand moving up and down her leg under the table. And she talks, because she has recently come out to that journalist at Vanity Fair, and she sends him a copy of her diary with an entry dated November 7th, 1998,

where she writes, from everything everybody says about the Kennedys and their babysitters, they had me worried. Like I have to watch out, be careful. And the other night in the kitchen with Murray, who's one of the other river keepers, I could have sworn he was touching my leg in hand. It seems like he thought I was somebody else

or wasn't paying attention. Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it, or I would move away. It was like he thought I was somebody else or wasn't paying attention, like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away. It was like he was on something or really tired or was missing Mary or was testing me." Now Cooney hopes in vain at first that this is some bit, right? Bobby's just exhausted. He just kind of reached for me. He wasn't really thinking it through. But just a week later, she walked in to see her boss standing in her bedroom, reading her diary, which was open next to the bed and filled with notes on her romantic life with her boyfriend.

The harassment continued after this. And she is shocked at one point when a shirtless 45 year old Bobby Kennedy asks him to rub lotion on his back. She thinks, isn't, you know, marry your wife home? Doesn't she do this for you? But she, she agrees. She like rubs him down,

even though she feels like it's inappropriate, because what else is she going to do? She's alone with the man. And she, she, she stops writing about her experiences after this point, because she knows that he's going in and reading her diary. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But she says they continue. I'm going to, I'm going gonna quote from Vanity Fair here. A few months later, Cooney says, she was rifling through the kitchen pantry for lunch after a yoga class, still in her sports bra and leggings, when Kennedy came up behind her,

blocked her inside the room, and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts. My back was to the door of the pantry, and he came up behind me, she says, describing the alleged sexual assault I was frozen shocked And yeah, that's bad

So that's Bobby Kennedy part three Sorry to end on such a bleak note Disgusting. Well, that's so gross. It'll get worse reasons it's also like It'll get worse reasons it's also like Not the one time it's not the one person that you would have his response Yeah, yeah exactly exactly

That's gross what a sicko gross motherfucker. You know what's not gross Your pluggables oh good so speaking of nothing we just talked about. Hi. Find me online. I host a show called Some More News. You can watch on YouTube and listen to it as a podcast. We've got a podcast called Even More News. My band is called The Hot Shapes. You can find us on SoundCloud or buy our album

Laverne on Bandcamp. I'm on websites as Dr. Mr. Cody. SoundCloud or buy our album Laverne on Bandcamp. I'm on websites as Dr. Mr. Cody, X. Yeah, X. Yeah. It's gonna give it to you. Blue skies. It being a bad time. Yeah. Robert, I'd like to plug Cool's A Media's newest podcast. We have a podcast?

I mean, you're currently on one, but yes, we have many podcasts, but we have a brand new one that has the trailer out right now, and it's called Weird Little Guys, and it's hosted by Molly Conger. Do you wanna tell the people about it, Robert? Yeah, basically Molly is the best researcher I know

and she obsessively trawls the internet court records for very weird little guys. These are like little strange Nazi freaks, businessmen running cons, all sorts of like tiny evil people who you're not gonna hear about from anybody else. Like what they do mostly stays locked into like local small claims cases or weird little corners of the internet.

But these are some of the craziest people and stories that you'll ever hear about. So check out Weird Little Guys coming soonish. Trailer's out now. Sounds amazing. Ep zero F zero F one on August 8th August 8th I was I was like It sounds like basically like D like F tier local Jacob walls

Yeah, these are like the weird little guys that like they just don't get that sort of national From never heard of but they're like trying to ruin our lives yeah what a great show that I haven't listened to yet that I love already Molly's the best Molly's the best and we'll be back with part four so soon Robert any any final thoughts? Uh, no, I think that's it. Well, bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games.

And then a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others forever, rippling out for generations. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Deah, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Deah's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events. Hear the story on Where's Deah? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Join by their friend and agent Doug Hendrickson, it's gonna be a wild ride. We can change the world podcast by podcast.

Listen to Politiken with Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch, and Doug Hendrickson on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Politiken and start listening.